Huawei’s Guo ups the ante in 5G war of words, accusing the US of wanting to suppress a rising competitor
- In an FT opinion piece, Huawei’s chairman cites Snowden leaks about NSA activity and economic security as reasons for US attack on its 5G business
Amid an ongoing campaign by the US to shut Huawei out of global 5G markets on national security grounds, Huawei’s rotating chairman Guo Ping has upped the ante by saying that US attacks are motivated by a desire to suppress a rising competitor in a strategic area of technology.
A US delegation led by Ajit Pai, Federal Communications Commission chair, to this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona – the industry’s largest trade show where Guo himself spoke – repeated a call to keep Huawei out of global 5G networks.
Guo says part of the reason for US attacks on Huawei can be found in documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden in 2013 about the activities of the US National Security Agency.
Guo says the Snowden leaks illuminated how the NSA’s leaders were seeking to “collect it all” – meaning every electronic communication sent by anyone in the world, anywhere, anytime. Moreover, the documents also showed that the NSA maintains “corporate partnerships” with certain US technology and telecoms companies that allow it to “gain access to high-capacity fibre-optic cables, switches and/or routers across the world”.
As the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker but with headquarters in China, Guo says there is little chance of Huawei having such a “corporate partnership” and that it is very unlikely that any Chinese company would ever comply with an NSA request to modify equipment in order to eavesdrop. Guo says this is one reason why the NSA itself hacked into Huawei’s servers.
