Everyone knows the $100B/year US security apparatus taps almost the entire Internet. Friendly governments help from Australia to Canada to France. Companies like AT&T, Ericsson, Verizon, and Nokia obviously cooperate.
The NSA assumes that China is attempting to do the same and that Huawei as a Chinese company will provide assistance. The evidence suggests otherwise.
Huawei is the primary opponent of US security. Hundreds of expert agents have been looking for evidence of Huawei spying. They haven’t found anything. The dog hasn’t barked. Almost certainly, little or nothing is going on.
Could it be that Huawei’s offence is not cooperating with US spying, unlike Nokia & Ericsson? I have no evidence, but it’s a plausible inference.
The newspapers the day I’m writing this reported the US cracked into Iran’s networks for a cyberattack. Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei are the primary suppliers to the Iranian carriers. Nokia and Ericsson have long cooperated with the US. Their systems are presumably easy to crack.
Huawei does not collaborate, which could hinder US attacks. As Huawei is becoming the dominant supplier in much of the world, this is a serious problem for the US cyber command.
The US has the largest and best spy operation in the world, dwarfing the resources of the Russians or Iranians. I’m sure the intent of the Chinese and other spies are the same as the Americans. We just have more.
The United States has blocked many efforts to strengthen Internet security, not wanting groups that contain a representative group of nations. For folks like Vint Cerf, that might be an effort to protect freedom of speech. For the US government, it’s an attempt to protect the ability of the NSA to do what the NSA does.
The 14 people from three-letter agencies on the US ITU WCIT delegation were not there to protect freedom of speech.