Huawei is not, as Beijing would have us believe, just another telecommunications firm. It is a signal intelligence service in waiting and an integral part of Xi Jinping’s global strategy to establish economic, political, and security hegemony.
To be clear, Huawei poses a serious threat to U.S. national security. The Trump administration is absolutely right to restrain the company’s access to Western telecommunications networks. I note this in light of Huawei’s new U.S. legal action, announced on Thursday.
Huawei wants to overturn a Federal Communications Commission ruling that prevents rural cellphone service providers from using federal funds to purchase Huawei equipment. The company contends that the ruling “fails to offer Huawei required due process protections in labeling Huawei as a national security threat. Huawei believes that the FCC also fails to substantiate its arbitrary findings with evidence or sound reasoning or analysis, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.” Huawei’s lead counsel, Glen Nager of the law firm Jones Day, adds that the FCC’s judgment rests on “unsound, unreliable, and inadmissible accusations and innuendo, not evidence.”
But Huawei’s lawsuit is rightly doomed to failure. Although it hasn’t been released publicly, the U.S. government has overwhelming evidence that Huawei is indeed a security threat. And a very serious one at that.
The company is supported by Chinese People’s Liberation Army intelligence and cyberunits and by China’s Ministry of State Security intelligence service. Oh, and Huawei has been directed by Chinese government officials to maximize its access to Western telecommunications networks. That, Beijing hopes, will enable its intelligence officers to use Huawei’s built-in software and hardware flaws to assume control over information flows moving across those networks. In essence, China seeks to use Huawei as a vast new signal intelligence service, something that can be used to steal information, whether intellectual property, government secrets, or personal in nature (for blackmail).
To allow Huawei to operate on American soil would thus be the equivalent of the U.S. government inviting Vladimir Putin to lead Facebook and Twitter. In short, it would not be very clever.
Huawei knows all this, of course, and knows that its lawsuit is doomed. So why pursue the legal action at all?
Well, Huawei’s real motivation here isn’t actually about America. It’s about the rest of the world and about Europe in particular. With aggressive litigation in America, Huawei hopes to persuade foreign governments that they are better off allowing it to run 5G networks on their soil. Huawei’s litigation is only one part of a much broader lobbying effort led by Xi’s government. And the Chinese are playing hardball here, making clear to Berlin, Paris, and London that lucrative trade deals depend on their compliance.
Fortunately, the Trump administration is making the opposite case to our allies — most of them, at least. The case that Huawei is a threat that belongs outside our borders, decaying in an innovation death spiral.
