Why I don’t think Huawei will install back doors in 5G telco equipment — it would be a forced error when they are poised to achieve a win that will give them a strategic advantage for years and maybe decades to come.
I don’t think they want to backdoor everything. That’s a sort of crude short term move. I think they want to own the network infrastructure long term, at which point they will can do a lot more than just backdoor, and do it far easier. Huawei is being positioned for future benefit i.e. this is the Infiltration phase, not exploitation phase.
I think they’d get settled in and exploitation starts around 10yrs in. They’ll have crept into more of the network by then and their contractors will be permanently onsite for support etc. they could just backdoor by physical access.
The way I see it, adding back doors is a really really small short term win. Especially when compared against the long term strategic advantage of being the company on which most of the Internet runs. Add in the prestige of a CCP state company being financially successful…
“Completely agree”
Completely agree. Especially in light of the recent CISA news (which really just confirms what we knew), they're successful without needing widespread backdoor access.
I was going to say who can blame them for trying? Except everyone. Everyone can blame them for trying.
— Alex F. Rudolph (@alexfrudolph) September 18, 2020
I am sure even the US IC knows that “back doors” is a silly argument. The problem is that the real reason is too complex, “gentlemen, we cannot allow there to be a national telco manufacturing gap.”
The consequences of Huawei becoming the dominant global telco equipment manufacturer are bleak for the West:
* China will control a huge swathe of cyber terrain.
* It would provide China with a unique and exclusive data stream for training AI and ML models.
Generally speaking, it is strategically disadvantageous for your communications infrastructure to be entirely controlled by your opposition.
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