Verily, Huawei Doth Protest Overmuch

"Huawei does not work on military or intelligence projects for the Chinese Government. This information is not new and is not secret, being freely available on career websites."
"It is not unusual that Huawei employs people from public service and government."
"We are proud of their backgrounds and we are open about them."
Ed Brewster, spokesperson, Huawei

"Huawei is not aware of its employees publishing research papers in their individual capacity. Huawei does not have any R&D collaboration or partnerships with the [Peoples Liberation Army] PLA-affiliated institutions."
"Huawei only develops and produces communications products that conform to civil standards worldwide, and does not customize R&D products for the military."
Huawei spokesman Glenn Schloss

"Huawei doesn’t customize products nor provide research for the military."
"We are not aware of the papers some employees have published. We don’t have such joint-research projects [with the PLA]."
Huawei Chief Legal Officer Song Liuping

Xi Jinping, left, and Ren Zhengfei in 2015.

Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Pool/Bloomberg

A bit of a news scoop there, in that it appears a trove of CVs which link quite a few Huawei employees to the Chinese military have been uncovered. Any western intelligence source was always quick to point out the high likelihood of China's largest communications giant Huawei having been enlisted to do work on behalf of Beijing. It was made abundantly clear by President Xi Jinping that the government has every expectation that all Chinese individuals and corporations alike have an obligation to convey intelligence to their government.

That expectation extends most particularly to Chinese living abroad. Chinese students in their tens of thousands studying at Western universities are tasked by a special branch of the Chinese Communist Party that rules China, to render to them or to the Chinese diplomatic corps abroad at their many foreign missions anything that could be useful to China, apart from doing their utmost when the occasion arises to defend their country from criticism and suspicion.

Huawei, as a telecommunications giant with a global reach has diligently insinuated itself and its communications expertise in the G5 upgrade programs of many countries. That following on their years of integration with other nations' telecommunications networks. That infiltration enabling it to electronically monitor other nations' politics, military, corporate interests and technology helps give China a leg up in intelligence as well as furthering its own corporate and research and development interests.

Now, the trove of data that has been unearthed linked to a search of online data, has released vital information of great interest to the very countries whom Beijing and Huawei are attempting to persuade that there are no suspected intelligence links between the Chinese government and its largest communications giant that should leave doubt in the minds of foreign nations that they would be vulnerable to cybertheft and potential threats of Internet interference, by allowing Huawei entry to their databases.

Instances of Huawei-employee links with the Peoples Liberation Army now having been unearthed arms uncertain Western governments with the certain knowledge that agreeing to retain Huawei services would indeed be inviting the possibility of Chinese espionage. That sensitive national programs and projects could be exposed to probing foreign intelligence, placing them at an advantage over the nation's security.

The irony is that the discovery was made when a university search for plagiarism was launched. The revelatory site linked to the CVs was stumbled upon, as it were. Plagiarism? That's China's forte! Its predatory data theft practises have been deplored for decades. Its never-ending search for proprietary formulae are legendary. Its disregard of copyright law viewed as just another impediment to China's progress.

Thousands of papers appear to have been co-published with cooperation between Huawei researchers and those of the Peoples Liberation Army. The full extent of their entanglement and cooperation is speculative but appears logically evident. "Far closer links" appear apparent between the telecommunications company and cyber agencies of the Chinese military. Some Huawei staff -- including its founder -- have been employed as agents in the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

Others worked on joint projects with the PLA, were educated at the country's leading military academy and appear to have worked at a military unit known to have launched cyber attacks on American corporations as well as those of other nations. From just the handful of CVs found on that single source it is now known that a number of staff with Huawei had graduated from the PlA's Information Engineering University representing a military academy known for its "information warfare research".

With this fresh data and its assumed reliability, what government of which country would now be willing to undertake the potential risk of enabling the telecommunications giant to remain a fixture for further intense integration into their national communications grid? A month ago British Prime Minister Theresa May gave permission to Huawei to build parts of the British network national security concerns aside.

Now that Christopher Balding, associate professor at the Fulbright University Vietnam in investigating Huawei's ownership structure uncovered up to 25,000 Huawei employees' CVs, how will that play out?

Recruitment platforms had uploaded the CVs allowing them to appear online and on accessible sites. In collaboration with the Henry Jackson Society, a think-tank based in London, Professor Balding concluded that some one hundred Huawei staff had connections to the Chinese military intelligence agencies; their "backgrounds indicated experience in matters of national security".

There is the example of a Huawei employee whose CV reveals she works for both the telecom giant as a software engineer as well as at the Radar Academy of the Chinese Army. According to Professor Balding, the academy "matches closely her work for Huawei". "We have no cooperation with the military on research. Perhaps we sell them a small amount of civilian equipment. Just how much, I’m not clear on because we don’t regard them as a core customer", said Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei.

"Huawei is not a military company. Do not think that because the head of Huawei used to serve in the military, then the company that he built is part of the military", cautioned Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe. "[Chinese] universities are quite open to working with the military. If it’s very sensitive, it will be classified. Different projects have different sensitivity levels and sometimes the government will own the IP", explained Wong Kam Fai, a Chinese University of Hong Kong professor.

"It’s possible that there’s a lot of research that people are just not seeing, because some military research is sensitive and classified. In the U.S. they have similar arrangements as well. The U.S. has military grants. There are many sources of funding, including from the military for research", accurately pointed out Professor Wong.

Huawei workers walk together at the end of their workday at the Research and Development campus on April 24, 2019 in Dongguan, China.    Kevin Frayer/Getty Images