Why the Huawei Hate?
Way back in 2018, the Australian government decided to ban Huawei equipment for 5G mobile networks. This appeared to come out of nowhere, since multiple networks have been using Huawei equipment. It has a precedent however, with Huawei being banned from contributing towards the NBN in 2012. Also there was a clue in the fact that USA three letter agencies have been trying to smear Huawei for the past twenty years…
Years later, this decision continues to make no sense to me. Now look I’m not a mobile network expert, and I know people in related fields tend to exaggerate their knowledge. But with most of the internet now encrypted, there’s not going to be much Huawei could gleam from the traffic flowing through it’s radios. The only viable attack would be service denial, with Huawei leaving a kill switch in the equipment to disrupt mobile service.
Perhaps that is the USA’s concern, with a promise of 5G enabling more infrastructure and essential services to be connected online. A disruption of 5G service could lead onto a power, water and transport disruption as these become more reliant on networked control.
In that case, why the fuck have they been pressuring other countries to also ban Huawei? Is Papua New Guinea loosing 5G connectivity is going to impact the US that much?
What if instead it’s about competitive commercial interests? Huawei has spent the last 15 years committing 10% of its revenues into Research & Development. In 2017 they spent twice as much on R&D than Nokia or Ericsson. With key patents in 5G protocols, Huawei was a clear leader in the 5G equipment market, being picked by the majority of mobile networks across the world. While the two viable competitors Nokia and Ericsson aren’t US companies, the US may have simply felt a loss for China equates to a win for America.
The publicly stated reason for the Huawei ban is basically that the founder Ren Zhengfei used to serve in the PLA and is therefore the enemy. I gotta say this seems like the US projecting more than an explanation of how exactly Huawei would perform their espionage. Not for a lack of trying, around 2010 the NSA hacked into Huawei’s corperate network to find their assumed links to the PLA. Except they didn’t find anything, which we know for sure thanks to Wikileaks.
The Australian Context⌗
Despite the claims of the Huawei ban being about ’national security’, this doesn’t actually seem to be a priority for the Australian government. There’s different rules when it comes to infrastructure such as ports, power distribution, or I dunno, flippin water.
For example, Jemena owns and runs a large part of powerlines and electric distribution in Victoria, and it’s straight up 60% owned by the State Grid Corporation of China. So while all of the attention is on Huawei maybe being directed to maybe somehow monitor Australian internet usage, a Chinese government department partly owns powerlines in Australia. Imagine the damage that could be done knocking out the electricity grid and not just one mobile network of three.
