
Huawei calls the US intel community’s bluff - howard941
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/huawei-calls-the-us-intel-communitys-bluff/
======
nrclark
It this article seriously trying to pass off "quantum encryption will be part
of 5G networks" with a straight face?

I haven't seen _any_ quantum communications hardware on the market. Of any
kind. For any industry. And despite that, it's ready for mass adoption in cell
phones? I don't think so.

~~~
hamiltont
Not sure that is the argument - by my read, they expect to a quantum network
as part of the network core. I cannot tell how far out of the core it would
extend (definitely not down to individual mobile devices, but perhaps to
individual cells?), which would be the determining factor in how much this
affects global SIGINT

~~~
Faark
Please link me any product pages for hardware enabling a quantum stuff for
their network core. I might have missed some revolution, but expect this to
be.... "wishful thinking". At best.

~~~
hamiltont
There are multiple reports of using the Micius satellite to generate quantum
networks. This has some marketing spin, since the satellite itself has to be
trusted, but it is still an impressive achievement. As I understand, the
satellite acts as the relay node. Have not looked at their publications to see
hard numbers describing the approach practicality.

I totally agree that we are very, very far from a consumer (and perhaps even
an enterprise) product. However, it does seem to me (based on scientific
papers, news, and patent filings) that the Chinese take quantum networks
seriously and are pushing hard to get a government network. IMO, this network
would come with all the limits of new technology (slower than you would want,
fewer guarantees, etc) but with all the advances of spending hundreds of
million to be the first creating a new significant technology.

If you're aware of these points already, and still believe them to be wishful
thinking, I would be curious what makes you say that

------
Aaronstotle
The issue is that Huawei, like any other Chinese company, is an extended
branch of the government. Auditing source code doesn't change the fact that
Huawei is legally obligated to turn over data to the CCP.

~~~
deepVoid
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. are all extended branch of the Trump
government as well. They collaborated with NSA to spy on other nations and its
own people. It is a well-known fact. Google is working with the US military to
weaponize AI. Amazon and Microsoft work with the military to weaponize cloud
technologies.

~~~
viklove
Not even close to the same. See how Apple resisted the federal government's
requests to access the San Bernardino terrorist's phone:
[https://www.npr.org/series/469827708/the-apple-fbi-debate-
ov...](https://www.npr.org/series/469827708/the-apple-fbi-debate-over-
encryption)

Something like this could never happen in China. Tim Cook would've be in a
state prison in a matter of days.

~~~
deepVoid
That's nonsense. Huawei has never proven to be connected with China government
either. It is a private company owned by its founder and employees. There is
ZERO evidence whatsoever that Huawei has spied for China government.

~~~
kube-system
Huawei has publicly stated that Ren Zhengfei holds veto powers as part of
their shareholder agreement, so I'm not sure that their claimed ownership
model actually translates to the same level of control that implies in the
western world.

Not that ownership matters anyway. AT&T isn't owned by the US Government
either, but I bet the CCP doesn't want them implementing infrastructure
projects in China. Actually, we know for a fact they don't because their
'national champion' policy is well known.

------
ZeroCool2u
Wow, this reads like a CCP propaganda piece.

~~~
magashna
Once I saw that the rebuttal is "quantum communications" I just laughed.

~~~
slowmovintarget
Yes. Quantum encryption requires a fiber hard-line with polarized photons. You
can't hand-wave that into a wireless network.

~~~
AstralStorm
I suspect it's about connection to BTS or at least core network which already
is often fiber.

Not out of realm of possibility but would take a long time to fully develop
and deploy.

------
kube-system
The premise of this article is a straw man and a red herring. I haven't heard
anyone in the intelligence community suggest that Huawei has _already_
implemented any back doors in their devices.

The concern is the ongoing support that is inherently necessary with
networking equipment.

~~~
klingonopera
> I haven't heard anyone in the intelligence community suggest that Huawei has
> already implemented any back doors in their devices.

I'm not sure I follow you, wouldn't this then not rather imply that it only
_seems_ like a straw man if you've been led to believe that they're planning
backdoors in their 5G network equipment?

~~~
kube-system
The article implies that the US intelligence community has said there are
back-doors; here's what I was referring to:

> Now Huawei has called the American intelligence community’s bluff. Huawei
> founder Ren Zhengfei offered to license his company’s technology to the West
> and allow Western companies to take it apart, re-write the source code, and
> otherwise purge it of any possible trace of Chinese hacking

~~~
klingonopera
...well, I thought that the official narrative was actually "Huawei spies for
China". But if it's not, what is the official reason for the embargo then?

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59w49b/huawei-
surveillanc...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59w49b/huawei-surveillance-
no-evidence)

~~~
kube-system
It's not. Tense is important here. From the first sentence of your article,
emphasis mine:

> American telecom companies are being pressured by the government to avoid
> doing business with Chinese hardware manufacturer Huawei due to concerns
> that the Chinese government _would_ use Huawei devices to spy on Americans.

US authorities have not said Huawei _has done_ anything nefarious. Almost all
concerns are about what _could_ or _would_ happen.

Someone tasked with national security recommendations must consider the future
scenarios that _could_ unfold as a result of present-state policy. This is why
countries around the world have long considered basics like agriculture as an
essential component national security. This isn't because they think other
countries are poisoning their food during times of peace, it's because a
reliance on basic needs gives excessive power to the country supplying it.

I highly suggest reading some actual official reports to get a non-clickbait
version of the argument:

[https://republicans-
intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligenc...](https://republicans-
intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/huawei-
zte%20investigative%20report%20\(final\).pdf)

~~~
klingonopera
> Almost all concerns are about what could or would happen.

...which is why they now want to show the source code.

Where does this imply, that that implies, that backdoors have been planted in
the past, from which you suppose a straw-man argument?

~~~
kube-system
Networking hardware requires continued security updates and support for secure
operation. The current source code has no relevance to this concern.

You should read the report I posted -- You'll find that there are zero
concerns in it about problems with Huawei's current code.

An offer to audit the current source would only be relevant to a concern with
the current source code.

------
klingonopera
Here are some links about that 2017 quantum video call. I've narrowed down my
selection to (perceived, I may be wrong) Western media. Searching the names of
both participants appears to yield the best results, they are "Chunli Bai" and
"Anton Zeilinger".

It would seem that no China-sympathetic media left it out to herald it as a
sensation, whereas in Western media, reports appear to be mostly confined to
scientific[0][1] or alternative[2] medias, a notable exception being the
DailyMail/tabloid[3] article(?).

I only have a very rudimentary understanding of both cryptography and quantum
mechanics, any takes on the actual significance of this?

[0]: [https://phys.org/news/2017-09-team-world-space-ground-
quantu...](https://phys.org/news/2017-09-team-world-space-ground-quantum-
network.html)

[1]: [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/china-s-quantum-
sate...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/china-s-quantum-satellite-
achieves-spooky-action-record-distance)

[2]: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwg53k/china-is-
another-s...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xwg53k/china-is-another-step-
closer-to-building-a-quantum-internet)

[3]:
[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4930302/Chin...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4930302/China-
holds-world-s-quantum-video-call.html)

------
matthewdgreen
This story is amazing. As a professional cryptographer I urge HN to vote it to
the top of the front page.

~~~
carapace
It _feels_ like it is [amazing], but it also feels like propaganda. (Of course
it could be both: propaganda can be based on truth.)

Can you expand a little on why you find it amazing?

~~~
matthewdgreen
Since I’ve stepped in it by letting my amusement show:

1\. Quantum encryption (actually quantum key distribution) is not going to
make Huawei — or anyone’s — cellular networks “hack proof”. Nor does this even
matter.

2\. We already have very strong classical encryption algorithms, unless the US
or someone has a quantum computer. People don’t break networks in frontal
attacks on encryption schemes.

3\. The rest of the article is bonkers.

~~~
AstralStorm
It is very easy to create backdoor classical encryption systems by adding
multiple keys, especially for public key cryptosystems. If this is done in
hardware, you'd be hard pressed to find it.

Not so with quantum encryption. At least I'm not aware of research that shows
that this can be done. Though I have seen some interesting spying instead of
the bass quantum encryption schemes which didn't use all of the phase and
magnitude.

~~~
matthewdgreen
I have no reason to believe this is true. Side channel attacks on QKD have
been very effective, which is a strong indication that the ability to trust
your hardware is essential to the functioning of these systems. You’re
proposing a model where one cannot trust their hardware, and I see no evidence
that modern QKD systems have been hardened against that attack.

PS I’ve worked a lot on cryptographic backdoors in the non-QKD setting but I
don’t work on QKD.

------
mrbonner
I just saw a bunch of Google's Ads about Huawei's "Facts" from the WSJ online
edition: ie: "Fact: Ripping and replacing Huawei equipment from the US rural
areas will be very difficult..." They are ramping up their campaign against
the U.S gov claim.

~~~
Frqy3
The telecoms research company I used to work for has decided to get into the
business of writing "white papers" for Huawei that are not far removed from
this piece of "tech journalism".

Good for short term revenues, but not good for long term reputation. Part of
the reason I am no longer working there.

------
president
Vulnerability to hacking is only a minor issue. It's more about not investing
in a company (Huawei) that is in bed with a government party that is and has
been looking to undermine US/western interests.

~~~
AstralStorm
Whose interests?

US/Western companies have been undermining interests of people living in those
countries themselves for quite some time by outsourcing and tax tricks. And
ultimately their own as Chinese became good at cloning, then some innovation
by portion at things they build...

------
ethbro
Isn't this just the Qualcomm tax, with a sprinkling of worry about state power
without judicial checks?

------
ttobbaybbob
This article seems to make some pretty big, unsubstantiated claims.

ie "America’s spies hijacked the Trump Administration’s trade agenda and
turned into a global campaign against Huawei. This has been a humiliating
failure."

They also mention Huawei's founder's interview with the economist: "...in an
interview with The Economist:" However The Economist link routes to another
asia times article that does not mention The Economist anywhere.

My limited understanding is that quantum cryptography is still a relatively
nascent field, and unlikely to be production ready for the roll out of 5G
networks (though, admittedly, I could be wrong about this).

In one of the linked to articles
([https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/us-china-tech-
war-...](https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/07/article/us-china-tech-war-and-the-
us-intelligence-community/)) they say "The ultimate form of data security is
quantum communications, an application of physics that China has pioneered."
and link to [https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-
comm...](https://www.insidescience.org/news/china-leader-quantum-
communications) which describes a set of events that don't seem to be
corroborated by any reputable publication, and don't appear in the wikipedias
or publications of the scientists mentioned (despite descriptions of similar,
more experimental demonstrations)

I'm not familiar with the Asia Times but this article (and others they link
to), at least, seem propaganda-y?

~~~
klingonopera
Paywalled, but that interview does appear to exist[0][1].

From the looks of things, Asia Times is HK-based, but the confusing whole
online/dropping-online-from-the-name-who-are-they-now-exactly (last paragraph
in introductory Wiki-text) makes me wonder...

[0]: [https://www.economist.com/business/2019/09/12/ren-
zhengfei-m...](https://www.economist.com/business/2019/09/12/ren-zhengfei-may-
sell-huaweis-5g-technology-to-a-western-buyer)

[1]:
[https://www.economist.com/business/2019/09/12/a-transcript-o...](https://www.economist.com/business/2019/09/12/a-transcript-
of-ren-zhengfeis-interview)

[2]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Times](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Times)

------
helen___keller
What a beautiful example of garbage tier politically-motivated tech reporting.
It checks all the boxes:

New, unhackable technology that the security community doesn't want

Quantum is here to save the day

Trying to connect to current events with absolutely no evidence, including the
latest Trump tweet

Party A had bad motivations, but party B has pristine pure motivations the
entire time. No evidence is offered to support this.

