US and UK spy agencies disagree about #Huawei threat

The CIA’s warning over Chinese telecom company Huawei in the Times of London newspaper yesterday –  April 20^th – seems at odds with the opinion given by the UK’s cyber spy agency GCHQ.

The newspaper article reported that early in 2019, in a campaign to get Huawei equipment banned from western communications networks, the CIA had presented evidence behind closed doors to the UK and other partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance – Australia, New Zealand and Canada – that Huawei was building “backdoors” into critical communications infrastructure it was installing, which would allow the Chinese state to spy on western security secrets. Huawei has always denied this.

However, in a recent special TV documentary programme by the respected BBC Current Affairs investigative programme “Panorama” broadcast on 8th April 2019, the head of the UK spy agency’s National Cyber Security Centre Dr Ian Levy said

“The threat of spying appears to be overstated. We can find no evidence of Chinese state malfeasance “

Abraham Liu, President of Huawei’s EU office, said:

“We are pleased that GCHQ agrees that Huawei does not pose a security threat.  Huawei has never been asked by any government to build any backdoors or interrupt any networks, and we would never tolerate such behaviour by any of our staff.

The Times article also highlighted that sceptics claim that the campaign, which has been stepped up in recent months, is part of the USA’s trade battle with China.

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