What I don't understand is why the US government would point fingers at the Chinese for putting backdoors in Huawei devices when it was really the NSA all along. It seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot by giving pointing out the backdoors. My best guess is that they assumed someone would figure it out eventually and they wanted to spread misinformation to get out ahead of that.
I don't think they are referring to the same vulnerabilities.
The US government was publicly accusing the Chinese government of inserting backdoors in Huawei products, while at the same time seeking and exploiting vulnerabilities in Huawei products themselves.
Perhaps this was an attempt to cover tracks by pre-emptively blaming the Chinese government for backdoors installed by the US government, should these backdoors ever be discovered.
Personally I'm inclined to call Hanlon's razor on the hypocrisy of it all.
Why couldn't it be both? To me, the least-surprising explanation would be that both the Chinese government and the NSA were trying to exploit Huawei. Any finger pointing could be chalked up as typical "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing."
It's also a good way to drum up support; start by accusing the "other side" of doing whatever it is you want to do. You're basically coordinating with the other team with the full cooperation of the people you've scared.
According to the article, it wasn't the NSA that put backdoors in Huawei devices, it was Huawei. It sounds like like any intelligence agency that can bribe a Huawei support engineer has access to any Huawei networking device. That definitely includes the Chinese and the American intelligence agencies.
The US intelligence agencies can simultaneously act to protect the information security of American businesses by warning people of the vulnerability AND act to exploit the vulnerability for their own intelligence-gathering goals.
I think an important part of the mission of the NSA is to spread fear, so that people are more likely to consent. This means terrorist (which of course isn't really a danger if you look at the numbers), nuclear Iran, cyber China, etc.
Has anyone else come up with a better reason?