In the US a congressional panel has warned that Chinese Telecom manufacturers ZTE and Huawei are both a potential risk to the US national security, and later today the results of a reported 11 month long investigation into these claims will be published to congress.
The committee has recommended that the two firms should be barred from any mergers and acquisitions in the US, as they have failed to allay fears about their association with the Chinese government and military.
The information will be presented in a full report later on today but a leaked version of the document has already hit news source Reuters. The report accuses both Chinese manufacturers of refusing to cooperate with the investigation, of failing to properly explain their ties with the Chinese government, and – at least in the case of Huawei – of being the subject of “credible allegations” of “bribery, corruption, discriminatory behaviour and copyright infringement.”
In the report it states:
“China has the means, opportunity and motive to use telecommunications companies for malicious purposes,”
“Based on available classified and unclassified information, Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted to be free of foreign state influence and thus pose a security threat to the United States and to our systems.”
Both ZTE and Huawei are fast becoming major hardware players in the western world with Huawei ranking as the world’s second-biggest maker of routers, switches and telecoms equipment by revenue. In terms of mobiles, ZTE is the fourth biggest manufacturer of mobile phones globally, with Huawei coming in at number 6.
Both Huawei and ZTE have denied the allegations:
“Baseless suggestions otherwise or purporting that Huawei is somehow uniquely vulnerable to cyber mischief ignore technical and commercial realities, recklessly threaten American jobs and innovation, do nothing to protect national security, and should be exposed as dangerous political distractions from legitimate public-private initiatives to address what are global and industry-wide cyber challenges,” said Huawei’s spokesman William Plummer in a statement.
ZTE also said it “profoundly disagrees” with the claim it is controlled by the Chinese government.
The US committee will be hearing the full report later today.
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