US and UK Ban More Chinese Kit as Xi’s Grip Weakens
Two key members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance have made further moves to stop Chinese equipment imports. The fear is that Chinese companies can be “persuaded” by the Chinese Communist Party to help them spy on us.
This time, the FCC is banning communications equipment from being approved. In the same week, the UK announced it’s stopping government departments from buying suspect security cameras.
Yet more woes for Xi Jinping (pictured), as his citizens rise up and protest his terrifying Zero-Covid restrictions. In today’s SB Blogwatch, we ponder possible protectionism.
Your humble blogwatcher curated these bloggy bits for your entertainment. Not to mention: Made You Look.
‘Oh, Bother,’ Said Pooh
What’s the craic? Diane Bartz, Alexandra Alper and Ismail Shaki report—“U.S. bans Huawei, ZTE equipment sales, citing national security risk”:
“Protect U.S. national security”
Telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE … pose “an unacceptable risk” to U.S. national security. [New FCC] rules … also bar the sale or import of equipment made by Chinese surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology Co, video surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd and telecoms firm Hytera Communications Corp Ltd.
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Hikvision said in a statement that its products don’t threaten U.S. security: “This decision by the FCC will do nothing to protect U.S. national security, but will do a great deal to make it more harmful and more expensive for U.S. small businesses, local authorities, school districts, and individual consumers to protect themselves, their homes, businesses and property.”
Meanwhile, over the pond, Vlad Savov has this—“UK Bans Chinese Surveillance Gear From Sensitive State Premises”:
“Lack of safeguards”
The UK government’s new instruction to [its] departments bans the addition at sensitive sites of equipment produced by companies subject to China’s National Intelligence Law. The government also advises considering whether to remove gear from such firms that’s already in place and applying the same risk mitigation to areas not considered sensitive.
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Discontent about the lack of safeguards preventing the Chinese government from acquiring data and information from its companies has grown in recent years and other governments have taken steps to limit their exposure … China’s Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co. are among the world’s leading video surveillance providers.
Context? Laurens Cerulus, Sarah Wheaton, Peter O’Brien, Elisa Braun, Stuart Lau and Matt Honeycombe-Foster sniff the wind—“How Washington chased Huawei out of Europe”:
“The Five Eyes”
Huawei is giving up on Europe. The Chinese telecoms giant is pushing out its pedigreed Western lobbyists, retrenching its European operations and putting its ambitions for global leadership on ice. … When it comes to the great European game, Huawei has lost — and sent all its political players home.
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Pressed by the United States and increasingly shunned on a Continent it once considered its most strategic overseas market, Huawei is pivoting back toward the Chinese market. [It’s] a radical shift that began in September 2021 … when Meng Wanzhou … returned to the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen, after spending nearly three years in Canada facing extradition to the U.S. on charges of conspiracy to commit bank fraud and wire fraud. … As the daughter of the founder — and the presumptive heir to the company’s leadership — Meng had played a key role in the legal and public relations fight between Huawei and Washington.
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“We will give up markets in some countries,” the firm’s founder said in his speech this summer. “For example, we will give up markets in the Five Eyes countries and India.” The Five Eyes refers to an intelligence-sharing arrangement between the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. All five countries have banned or are in the process of banning Huawei and other Chinese companies from their critical infrastructure because of security concerns.
Security and what else? flumpcakes has a couple of suggestions:
While I have no doubt than basically anything from China is probably backdoored (and to the fault of western countries outsourcing manufacturing for cheap labour) … how do we know that the Cisco equipment also isn’t backdoored and if I send a few malformed TCP packets it opens up its control plane on the receiving port? … There must be some reason people are only taking action now? Unless it’s just a “better late than never” response after years of this.
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Our entire electronics industry is critically dependent on China for manufacturing. … Personally I would like all electronics and products to be made in countries that respect some level of human rights … but that doesn’t really seem like an option currently.
Cisco backdoored, you say? quenda agrees:
You can be sure China does not allow NSA-infected Cisco equipment in any sensitive areas. … I’m not a military contractor, just a home-owner, so I’d actually rather be spied on by the Chinese than by Five-Eyes. China won’t care about my … tax evasion.
It’s worse than that, according to rcarr:
If most products are being made in China anyway, how do we know they’re not putting backdoors in everything including goods branded for non Chinese companies? … At this point I think most people assume that any major global government can access whatever device you own if they really want to.
But AmiMoJo smells protectionism:
Not really. The chance that there is actually a backdoor in those products is vanishingly small. … In fact even hobbyists have managed to reverse engineer the Hikvision firmware enough to replace it with their own. Sensitive sites will be running intrusion detection, and have the CCTV system on an isolated network anyway.
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There is a reason their equipment is so often found in those secure locations. It’s cheap, it has good optics, and the firmware is good enough. … This is really about the fact that Hikvision dominates the market.
Cheap? MichaelZuo smacks his forehead:
Isn’t it obvious why it’s so much cheaper? Their pricing for market share and cutting costs wherever they can in terms of labour conditions.
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I don’t see how [it] makes any sense at all … spending many billions on R&D to develop the most intricately hidden backdoors … and eating that cost to deploy them. … All it would take is for one genuine case of a backdoor to be confirmed and then all that investment would be nearly worthless.
Meanwhile, DamnOregonian damns Chinese vendors with feint praise:
I work with a lot of CPE gear in my line of work. … The Chinese aren’t putting any more nefarious **** in their little barely-modified Broadcom copy-pasta jobs than anyone else.
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And the Chinese are about as good as the American companies at [fixing] security vulnerabilities … which is to say ****ing terrible.
And Finally:
You have been reading SB Blogwatch by Richi Jennings. Richi curates the best bloggy bits, finest forums, and weirdest websites … so you don’t have to. Hate mail may be directed to @RiCHi or [email protected]. Ask your doctor before reading. Your mileage may vary. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Do not stare into laser with remaining eye. E&OE. 30.
Image sauce: South African Government (cc:by-nd; leveled and cropped)
