Huawei faces dual US bans, Dutch accusations of carrier backdoor

The U.S. government has leveled a dual blow against China's Huawei, both blocking it from acquiring American technology and preventing American telecoms firms from using Huawei equipment.

For the latter President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and banning U.S. businesses from using telecoms equipment from firms considered a national security risk, Reuters reported. An enforcement plan is due by October.

Though that order didn't name Huawei specifically, the Commerce Department subsequently added Huawei and 70 affiliates to its "Entity List," stopping it from buying components from U.S. corporations. That should take effect in the next several days, and U.S. officials said they believe it will make it hard or impossible for Huawei to sell some products because of its use of American suppliers.

Those suppliers can apply for licenses, but will have to prove that there's no national security risk. In 2018, government agencies were barred from buying Huawei and ZTE products.

In January the U.S. unsealed a 13-count indict against Huawei, accusing it and CFO Meng Wanzhou of defrauding financial firms by lying about its relationship with an alleged front business operating in Iran. Meng was arrested in Canada a month earlier on a U.S. warrant, but is still battling extradition.

On Thursday, Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant cited intelligence sources as saying that Huawei had created a backdoor on the network of an unnamed telecoms firm, and that intelligence agency AIVD was investigating whether the vulnerability had enabled spying by the Chinese government.

Huawei has denied any wrongdoing, saying it "keeps the door closed to governments or others who want to use our network for activities that would threaten cyber security." The firm is believed to have ties to the Chinese government, which has fueled worries in the U.S. and elsewhere about involvement in building 5G networks. The U.S. has pressured allies to adopt a similar stance.

Dutch telecoms company KPN recently said it would keep Huawei gear away from the "core" of its mobile network, but still use Huawei radio towers.

Latest Exclusives

Latest comparisons

43 Comments

wood1208 10 Years · 2938 comments

About 5 years ago

Banning Huawei selling equipment in USA is one thing but importantly rest of world must ban otherwise it effects everyone. A person calling or sending data on USA network which goes through internet than on some countries internal network which was provided by Huawei with backdoor so at the end you still sending your information to China.

Fatman 8 Years · 513 comments

China sells low-priced telecom equipment for a reason - so they can monitor and steal everything that passes through.

avon b7 20 Years · 8046 comments

wood1208 said:

Banning Huawei selling equipment in USA is one thing but importantly rest of world must ban otherwise it effects everyone. A person calling or sending data on USA network which goes through internet than on some countries internal network which was provided by Huawei with backdoor so at the end you still sending your information to China.

That is why the whole thing is absurd from a security perspective. Huawei is everywhere and I mean eveywhere in the communications chain. The US would have to homebrew it's own parallel communications system, put itself firmly within its own bubble of paranoia and cut itself off from the outside world. But even then, it would be literally powerless to stop the network from being compromised in some way. Why would Huawei even need to place backdoors for illicit means if governments are poring over systems trying to find a way in. Remind me how many critical holes Cisco has plugged just this year.

This latest action is protectionism, just like it was from the start. If we want to talk government (not private companies) then by all means throw the FBI, NSA, CIA and other agencies into the soup and see who has more tentacles in more pies.

Ironically this kind of protectionism sometimes backfires. When the US banned intel from selling Xeons to China for use in HPC, not only did intel see revenues drop by 1 billion dollars (IIRC) and ended up laying off 12,000 workers, but the Chinese simply cooked up their own solution and jumped straight to the top of supercomputing charts.

Now Donald Trump has raised eyebrows around the world by upping the stakes both with Iran and China at the same time and voices are claiming he has lost control.

On top of that, China will obviously not take nicely to having a company considered the national pride be attacked without evidence. Whatever comes next Donald Trump will only have himself to blame.

As for Apple, if November and December were bad months in China for sales, I shudder to think what the anti US backlash will be to this in terms of iPhone sales in China over the next few months.