Backdoor evidence suggests Huawei deserves to lose network empire

The feud between Huawei and the US government is not new but the company recently lost access to all the important hardware and software, thanks to the sanctions by the Trump administration. This is a big deal for Huawei since the company might not be able to manufacture smartphones altogether. However, Huawei is much more than just a smartphone brand. It’s one of the biggest companies in China and is currently leading the 5G race.

With all that in mind, the lawmakers have expressed their concerns in the past and no one is actually happy to see one company dominating the 5G development. It’s not like the concerns are solely based on the fact that Huawei is leading the 5G race but the fact that there’s evidence suggesting wrongdoings on the company’s part. While researching on the topic, we came across an interesting article from PhoneRadar that summed up all the allegations made by lawmakers in the past. The article supported those allegations with proper evidence suggesting Huawei might not be innocent after all. The article goes back to the early 2000s when the Chinese hackers got the passwords of Nortel’s top executives and they accessed the proprietary IP which was then used by Huawei to sell the same services at lower costs forcing Nortel out of the business (Source). Huawei was also accused by Cisco for I.P. infringement and even said that Huawei stole the software code of its routers. The lawsuit was later settled with no details revealed to the public (Source).

Fast forward to 2007, FBI found $30,000 cash and a bag full of classified Motorola documents on an employee who was connected to Huawei. The plan was to copy Motorola’s wireless technology for Huawei phones and the case was later settled confidentially (Source). Recently Vodafone also came forward claiming that they had found vulnerabilities in Huawei’s equipment back in 2011. The backdoors that Vodafone found can give unauthorized access of the Vodafone’s fixed-line network to China-based Huawei. This is one of the reasons why Vodafone has paused using Huawei’s equipment in 2019 (Source).

With evidence like this, one might ask if the US government is wrong blocking Huawei from going into agreements with other companies. That said, the Trump administration still needs to come out with the proof of Chinese involvement. The evidence listed above just shows that Huawei is taking advantage of its position but doesn’t prove that the Chinese government is involved.