U.S. prosecutors have charged a Chinese professor with fraud for allegedly taking technology from a California company to benefit Huawei, in another shot at the embattled Chinese telecommunications equipment maker.
Bo Mao was arrested in Texas on Aug. 14 and released six days later on $100,000 bond after he consented to proceed with the case in New York, according to court documents.
He pleaded not guilty in U.S. district court in Brooklyn on Aug. 28 to a charge of conspiring to commit wire fraud.
According to the criminal complaint, Mao entered into an agreement with the unnamed California tech company to obtain its circuit board, claiming it was for academic research.
The complaint, however, accuses an unidentified Chinese telecommunications conglomerate, which sources say is Huawei, of trying to steal the technology, and alleges Mao played a...
U.S. prosecutors are looking into additional instances of alleged technology theft by Huawei Technologies Co., according to people familiar with the matter, potentially expanding beyond existing criminal cases against the Chinese telecommunications giant.
Among the situations being examined are episodes in which Huawei was accused of stealing intellectual property from multiple people and companies over several years, as well as how the company went about recruiting employees from competitors, these people said.
The inquiries, which include a subpoena for documents from Huawei by federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, suggest that the government is investigating aspects of Huawei’s business practices that weren’t covered in indictments of Huawei issued earlier this year.
The new inquiries overlap with findings from a Wall Street Journal investigation in May that documented numerous allegations of intellectual property theft against Huawei throughout its history,...
A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) is calling on the Defense Department to end its pattern of purchasing electronic equipment with known cybersecurity risks, particularly from China.
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who chairs the SASC Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee, issued a letter to Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist Aug. 27 noting her concern that “despite repeated warning from multiple government agencies, DoD is continuing to purchase and use computers and other electronics with known cyber-security risks” including “equipment from a company with connections to the military and cyber espionage programs of” China.
She singles out Lenovo [LNVGF], China’s largest computer company, and calls out the Defense Department for spending more than $2.1 million on the company’s products last year.
Even after repeated warnings from government officials and agencies pertaining to the use of Lenovo and other Chinese products, the DoD IG found that defense...
Earlier this month, our colleague Bronwyn Howell emphasized the high economic costs facing Western nations considering a ban on Huawei equipment in their 5G networks. Her core argument is summed up in one sentence: “Quite simply, Australian and New Zealand political leaders must decide whether they will prioritize US-driven political considerations over local economic ones, which unequivocally rest with China, and by implication, Huawei.” We disagree with two aspects of this assertion: First, despite its recent leadership on the issue, concerns about Huawei are not just “US-driven.” Second, and more fundamentally, the decision is not about politics versus economics, but rather what price countries are willing to pay for secure 5G networks.
While the US has taken the lead in the international campaign to block Huawei from 5G networks, Australia began sounding the alarm in 2018, following an eye-opening war game. That July, Australia announced it would ban Huawei products from its 5G networks. The same month, the UK’s Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre Oversight Board released a report saying it could “provide only limited assurance that all risks to UK national security from Huawei’s involvement in the UK’s critical networks have been sufficiently mitigated.” It was not until late 2018 that the US began publicly campaigning for allies to ban Huawei from their 5G networks. Wariness of Huawei began before the current US campaign against the company.
The presence of Chinese owned technology companies like Huawei raises serious security questions for the United States. Given the level of influence the Chinese Communist...
This week, an interim regulation comes into effect to ban federal agencies from buying telecommunications and surveillance products from Huawei. The law is well overdue—in addition to protecting American intellectual property, the rule will finally help to safeguard the privacy of American citizens.
Despite Huawei’s insistence that it complies with American law, the company has shown a consistent and repeated disregard for the most basic principles of American commerce. From violating sanctions on selling American technology to Iran to blatantly stealing American inventions, the company allegedly rides roughshod over American regulations, both inside and out of the United States.
Even if Huawei’s executives are sincere in their intentions, many argue that the Chinese legal system enables Communist Party apparatchiks to compel the company to do their bidding....
DoD) Inspector General (IG) report released on July 30 found that more than 9,000 commercially available IT products (COTS) purchased in FY 2018 — costing at least $32.8 million — could be used to spy, surveille, or sabotage US military personnel and facilities. In contrast to traditional DoD processes for large acquisitions such as weapon systems, aircraft, and command and control systems, these purchases were made via Government Purchase Cards which are intended to simplify procurement of less than $10,000.
However, just because the dollar amount are small doesn’t mean that risk is reduced, as the products in question were long identified as security threats. Moreover, many of the most devastating cybersecurity attacks such as those against Target, Equifax, and the Office of Personnel Management were instigated at low levels of approval and control, frequently via contractors or COTS devices. The report warns that “if the DoD continues to purchase and use COTS information technology items without identifying, assessing, and mitigating the known vulnerabilities associated with COTS information technology items, missions critical to national security could be compromised.” While it is not clear whether discussed in the redacted report, the issue could be that contractors or others with purchasing cards are not up to speed on the vulnerabilities.
The IG audit shows that the US Army and Air Force purchased thousands of products already flagged as security risks. They include over 8,000 printers...
It is well known that the Chinese government has the country on lockdown: people are monitored 24/7 with millions of CCTV cameras; the “Great Firewall of China” blocks access to unapproved content and tracks attempts to circumvent it; municipal party leaders keep tabs on citizens. All networks and equipment are operated by companies either owned by the government or are beholden to them. All surveillance data is aggregated into a unified system of social credits intended to standardize the assessment of the social and financial reputations of individuals and firms.
People who don’t live up to the Chinese government standards are sent to “transformation-through-education” or reeducation camps and generally are denied due process to defend their activities, according to Amnesty International. In practice, not a single bit of information moves outside of the government’s purview.
It’s curious then why more cyberattacks originate from China than any other nation. Indeed, if China was so concerned about law and order, they could...
Defense Department employees have procured thousands of printers, cameras and computers that carry known cybersecurity risks, and the practice may be continuing, according to an audit released Tuesday by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
More than 9,000 commercially available information technology products bought in fiscal 2018 could be used to spy on or hack U.S. military personnel and facilities, the report said. Without fixing oversight of such purchases, more risks lie ahead, potentially including perils for top-dollar weapons that use such “commercial-off-the-shelf” or COTS devices.
Despite cybersecurity concerns that U.S. Department of Defense strategists have admitted “keep them awake at night,” a review by the U.S. military’s Inspector General has found that significant purchases of “COTS information technology items with known cybersecurity risks” were made last year. It is estimated that “70 to 80% percent of the components that comprise DOD systems are COTS items.”
The heavily redacted IG report highlights “at least” $33 million of Government Procurement Card purchases of equipment from the likes of Lenovo, Lexmark and GoPro. As a result, it warns, “adversaries could exploit known cybersecurity vulnerabilities that exist in COTS items, and missions critical to national security could be compromised.”
The risks identified refer to “micro-purchases” of less than $10,000 an item. This does not include the traditional defense acquisition process but instead “fixed-price commercial...
Few Americans have experienced China like Jonathan D. T. Ward who speaks Chinese and crisscrossed the Middle Kingdom. Dr. Ward earned his PhD in China-India relations at the University of Oxford and founded the Atlas Organization, a consultancy focused on the rise of China and India, the new geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, and US-China global competition. His new book China’s Vision of Victory describes how the Chinese Communist Party is guiding a country of 1.4 billion people towards what it calls “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” and, with it, the end of an American-led world.
Roslyn Layton spoke with Dr. Ward about his new book and its key takeaways including the importance of economic competition, building a global economic alliance...
