My Take | Huawei a victim of American subterfuge

The American war on Huawei proceeds apace. Disguising the state-sponsored attack against China’s leading telecoms company and 5G provider as criminal charges may convince those who already harbour anti-China biases, but will not blind others who are clear-sighted about America’s tactics and intentions. Once again, the US Justice Department is no more than an instrument of American foreign policy, with its sanctions against Iran and trade war against China.

The charges are so obviously politically motivated that an extradition request for Huawei chief financial officer Sabrina Meng Wanzhou – detained in Vancouver – should be thrown out of the Canadian court as soon as possible. As former Canadian ambassador to China John McCallum had said, she had “a strong case”. For stating the obvious, he has been sacked because his bosses in Ottawa, as usual, must follow American imperium like a vassal state.

Huawei charges are US attempt to smear Chinese companies, Beijing says

The United States has yet to present evidence, but will it be as convincing as its allegations of “weapons of mass destruction” cited to justify its criminal war against Iraq, a conflict that, incidentally, made possible Iran’s expansion across the Middle East and so necessitated its rollback, including the use of sanctions related in the Huawei case?

Among the charges announced is an alleged conspiracy to steal trade secrets from a US competitor, T-Mobile. This was originally a civil suit over proprietary robotics technology and has already been settled, but US prosecutors decided to turn it into an industrial espionage case. Routine relocation of Huawei staff in and out of the country is now, according to those prosecutors, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.

Interestingly, US prosecutors claim Huawei’s actions began in 2007, and “allowed Iran to evade sanctions imposed by the United States and to allow Huawei to profit”. As shown by the massive Edward Snowden leaks, this was about the time when the US National Security Agency started targeting Huawei’s networks by setting up back doors into servers located in its Shenzhen headquarters.

Operation Shotgiant stole detailed workings of Huawei’s routers and digital switches that it sold around the world, though its original aim was to establish links between the telecoms firm, and Chinese intelligence and the military. No incriminating evidence was found, but this hasn’t stopped Washington from repeating the charge today. The breaches enabled US agencies to hack into any computer or telecoms network around the world that used Huawei’s products.

Are such cyber-breaches illegal and criminal – or perfectly legal if Americans do it?