
Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies - __sy__
https://twitter.com/BaldingsWorld/status/1147259303268454400
======
yorwba
So this research is based on a subset of 590 million or more CVs that were
leaked by Chinese recruitment platforms. The author uses keywords like "华为",
"Huawei", "People's Liberation Army" and "PLA" to identify people who worked
for multiple institutions.

That seems like a great dataset for some statistical analysis, but
unfortunately we aren't even told how large the subsets are. (The figure of
590 million is from a news report about the leak.) So it's hard to tell how
large the problem is, and how it compares to other companies or countries.

The results are presented as three profiles based on three CVs from the leak,
but edited to obscure their identity. It's only mentioned in the conclusion
that the profiles are actually composites, which I take to mean that they
combine information from multiple CVs each. That's unfortunate, because many
of the claims rely on one and the same person being involved in multiple
activities. We'll have to trust the author that those modifications do not
embellish anything.

The three profiles are:

1\. A software engineer in Huawei QA since 2011 who from 2012 on also held a
research and teaching position with the PLA's National University of Defense
Technology, working on signals, remote management and scripting. The paper
claims that this places them within a branch of the Strategic Support Forces
(who are responsible e.g. for cyber warfare). It's not clear to me whether
that's something specific to that person, or whether any similar research at
NUDT is classed that way. NUDT also does civilian research, e.g. Microsoft was
criticized for publishing a paper on beauty estimation co-authored with NUDT
researchers:
[https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=107...](https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=cps_fac_pub)

2\. A Huawei engineer who was responsible for building lawful interception
capabilities, working on roll-outs in multiple countries. He served as a
representative for the Chinese Ministry of State Security on one project
"likely guaranteeing project specifications". The author tries to imply that
this was to grant the MSS access to other countries' networks, but
alternatively Huawei simply has product managers responsible for communication
with the law enforcement agencies doing the intercepting in their _own_
country's networks. The author also tries to link that person to a "backdoor"
in infrastructure of Vodafone Italy. However, Vodafone has denied the
allegiations in the Bloomberg article he cites:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430)

3\. A network engineer who developed civilian and high-security military
communication systems at CASTC, then worked at China Unicom for a year and
then went to Huawei to lead network expansion projects. At CASTC, he gained
expertise using Cisco and Nortel switches. The author construes this to imply
that he assisted in espionage attempts involving fake Cisco routers.

Of the three, I'm going to classify 1. as harmless research (otherwise
Microsoft is just as implicated as Huawei) and 3. as "person with security
clearance changes jobs". 2. however at least supports this part of the paper's
conclusion: "the institutional relationship between Huawei and Chinese state
security services directly contradicts Huawei claims that they have no
relationship with these services." Huawei should probably clarify those
statements to mean that the relationship doesn't grant Chinese security
services access to other countries' data.

~~~
whoopdedo
> denied the allegiations in the Bloomberg article

There's that name again. Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. How many
times has Bloomberg published an article that they can't back up?

------
rdlecler1
A lot of people in this thread are complaining that the US does this to but
does anyone seriously believe that having Huawei tech embedded in American
infrastructure is a good idea?

~~~
geofft
Yes, I do. Here's a few reasons:

\- I genuinely think that the Huawei stories are by and large protectionist
fearmongering and that Huawei products would win in a free and high-
information (and high-correct-information, of course) market. I think better,
cheaper products are good for the US.

\- If Huawei is actually using their products to spy, or there is even a
belief of such, that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that
don't trust routers, open-source and verifiable devices for end users, etc. If
it's just the US government, there's a strong pressure on US companies not to
treat their own government as an adversary, which creates the danger that it's
easy for the government to become an adversary (even if they are not today, it
can change hands quickly).

\- I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using
infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico circuit,
and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object to
infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese government.

~~~
koolba
> I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using
> infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico
> circuit, and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object
> to infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese
> government.

One big problem is that there is no recourse against China. Unless you have
some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years
from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.

Say what you want about the USA's intelligence organizations but at the end of
the day there's a path for change. We elect a new top of the house every four
years and all our intelligence agencies ( _are supposed to..._ ) report to our
civilian leaders. China's is a black box that's only getting darker over time.

~~~
monocasa
What path? The NSA was found to be breaking the constitution, and as far as we
know hasn't stopped.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _What path?_

Through legislation and free deliberation.

> _The NSA was found to be breaking the constitution_

No, it hasn’t. Many believe it is, but the courts have so far upheld the NSA’s
activities.

The American public’s views on the topic are mixed [1]. The fight is in
convincing the public this is an issue.

[1] [https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-
americ...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americans-
think-about-nsa-surveillance-national-security-and-privacy/)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
[https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-judge-says-
nsa-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-judge-says-nsa-program-
appears-violate-constitution-flna2D11751613)

[https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjolt/vol11/iss1/8/](https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjolt/vol11/iss1/8/)

The evidence suggests that blanket surveillance is a thing, and that's it
_very clearly_ unconstitutional.

Of course in this situation it's always possible to appeal to "national
security" but that's an unconvincing legitimisation unless it can be proved
that national security has been enhanced to an extent that warrants the
suspension of constitutional protections.

So far as I know this has never even been tried in court, never mind proven.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
It's shown up in court, but defendants have had a tough time showing legal
standing [1]. Keep in mind that the state secrets privilege [2] is judicially
mediated. Given the lack of demonstrable, specific harm, the matter is--
rightly, in my opinion--deferred to the political branches as a political
question (as opposed to a legal one).

That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which
we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would
be outlawed. That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China,
moreso now that Xi is a dictator.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewel_v._NSA)

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

~~~
monocasa
> Given the lack of demonstrable, specific harm, the matter is--rightly, in my
> opinion--deferred to the political branches as a political question (as
> opposed to a legal one).

I'm not sure how it can be relegated completely to political representatives,
given that the secreacy means that the check on representative desicions (an
informed populace voting for their representatives) isn't present.

> That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program
> which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal,
> it would be outlawed.

You can freely debate specific policies in China, and broadly unpopular
policies in China are suspended.

That can't be said for the US, where whether a law is passed has more to do
with whether the ruling class supports it, rather than it's broad popularity.

[https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...](https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf)

> That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now
> that Xi is a dictator.

The whole 'Xi is a dictator' thing is severely overblown in Western media. Oh
no, he has the same term limits as Angela Merkel now. Literally a dictator.

PS: linking to the states secrets wikipage to increase your number of
citations is lol inducing.

~~~
lclarkmichalek
You understand that Angela Merkel is subject to free and fair elections, which
Xi is not, right?

------
badrabbit
Tons of former NSA persons work in the US private sector,especially within
infosec.

~~~
filoleg
The keyword here is “former”. In the Huawei scenario, a lot of them seem to be
active intelligence officials, not former ones.

~~~
mrtksn
How do we know that "former" is not just on paperwork?

When I hear the arguments against China and their tech companies, I don't have
a problem believing them, however I do not expect anything less from the USA.

Remember Snowden? I'm simply assuming that Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco or
any other US tech company are tapped by the US 3 letter agencies. There were
some reveleations on that(PRISMA) but it's probably just tip of the iceberg.

And now the Chinese. So what?

~~~
darawk
I think the big difference is that US companies can meaningfully resist the US
government if they choose to, and they often do. Chinese companies cannot.

~~~
geofft
The way that Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio so meaningfully resisted the government
that he was convicted of insider trading for telling people his company would
be successful when it actually relied on a government contract that was pulled
in retaliation, which he couldn't use as a defense in court because of
national security concerns? For which he served four years in prison, and
Qwest no longer exists? That sort of meaningfully resist?

The message to me from that case is clear—if the US government tells you to
jump, you answer, how high.

~~~
_dczq
You had to go back 12 years for your example. I think that speaks pretty
loudly to the differences between countries.

~~~
geofft
Correct, it's been twelve years. Nacchio was the most recent person stupid
enough to say no to the US government. They made an example of him. In recent
years, US telecom CEOs know they should quietly say yes, and not put up a
fight.

~~~
the-dude
Hmmm, didn't Apple through Tim Cook resist the US government regarding the
unlocking of iPhone's?

~~~
dodndkf
No, this is totally different.

There is no reason to believe that the NSA doesn’t have the ability to access
iPhones [0]. Either through explicit help from Apple or otherwise.

Tim Cook’s stance was within the fiction of constitutional order. The FBI
wanted to pretend that they couldn’t access the phone and bully Apple to give
them access. This is to:

1\. Legitimize their own access 2\. Be able to, more easily, use the courts to
punish someone (instead of droning a foreigner)

That last one is important. The DEA is known to use (unconstitutional)
parallel construction to prosecute drug smugglers. If they have legitimate
access to your phone, it’s easier to pretend that they obtained their evidence
legitimately.

Tim Cook also has an interest in maintaining the aura that iPhones protect
your safety. There’s no reason for you to believe that w/out having the
source.

[0] or do you believe that no one working on the iPhone has secrets that the
NSA can’t leverage? Or that the richest security service can’t manufacture
custom chips as needed to clone the devices SSD? Or hasn’t capped the chips in
the iPhone already? Or run it through the most through fuzzer?

------
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
It seems that many of the commenters here forgot about the arrest of Huawei
Poland's sales director suspected of spying: [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-46851777](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46851777)

~~~
geofft
What is a Western country arresting (and not even yet successfully
prosecuting) a Huawei employee supposed to prove, besides that the West is
suspicious of Huawei?

------
tekkk
It's sad to see these threads get quickly out of hand with emotions getting
the best of some of the HN audience. I have been commenting from time to time
in these threads, but it seems impossible at times to have rational
discussion. I don't really feel strongly about China one way or the another, I
just know they do not always uphold the same values as I do. (And so do many
other things)

Anyway, I think it's important to look at this issue as a whole from also the
viewpoint of the Chinese - to understand how the Chinese society works and why
there is such strong emotional response when people start accusing China.
Because I don't really have first-hand experience, I found these very
interesting videos that I think are enlightening:

serpentza - How China stops Overseas Students Integrating

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uXreGimP-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uXreGimP-o)

serpentza - China NEEDS an ENEMY to Survive!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2fUGBQDMQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2fUGBQDMQ)

The author who is from South-Africa has been living in China for some time,
and how he describes his life there is quite illuminating. In short: China
seems to have mastered how to create an "us vs them" culture and blatantly
aggravates their citizens to move their focus away from their internal
problems. Well, I know it's a little bit tangential, but I thought it was
quite interesting.

~~~
yorwba
A single person's opinion won't help you much in understanding "the Chinese
viewpoint". To counter it with another opinion, I don't think the citizens of
any country can be said to have a unified viewpoint. Chinese people are just
as capable of having nuanced opinions on political issues and disagreeing with
each other as everyone else.

Additionally, you can't just assume that emotional reactions to accusations
leveled against China are all due to Chinese posters with an "us vs them"
mentality. When I see accusations that are exaggerated, get the details wrong
or are made up from whole cloth, I am prone to react similarly. Of course I
feel the same about official party propaganda, but that doesn't tend to get
posted to HN.

------
oil25
Can someone share the cited research? Twitter appears to be blocking Tor these
days - what a disappointment:

> 403 Forbidden: The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill
> it.

~~~
StudentStuff
Twitter has also been refusing to load tweets in Firefox for Android (on
T-Mobile USA), instead showing "Please wait to refresh". Its like they think
I'm DDoSing their infra, rather than trying to view a tweet every few days...

~~~
thewhitetulip
Same here, firefox android with disabled cookies

They put me on rate limiter

Same for logged of chrome on android

But if I login then everything is fine.

I stopped using Twitter that very day

------
MisterTea
Arguing about which nation is spying on you better is like arguing about which
cancer causing carcinogen is better for you. It all sucks and isn't going away
anytime soon.

China will spy on you just as much as USA/Russia/UK/Israel/ad nauseum... if
given the chance. So enjoy staring at your shiney tech and remember that any
number of nation states are most likely staring back at you. Enjoy modern
life.

------
theautist
My personal opinion is that I'm not at all surprised by this. The Chinese
government is a one-party rule that controls all aspects of life. Criticize
the government or the party there and you're gone. They would be foolish, with
the things they're known to do, to not take advantage of such big opportunity
to spy on many countries. I think it's very reasonable for western democracies
to be careful before embedding Chinese (or any other authoritarian country)
high tech in their infrastructure.

------
ulfw
This is such bullshit. Head of an American online travel company based in
Bangkok is Ex-CIA. Large rest of the C-suite is all Israeli Defence Forces. So
now what?

------
est
So if a Chinese telecom wants to do business globally, it has to exclude all
CCP members and avoid state intelligence personals all together?

~~~
plandis
That seems like a good way to build trust with citizens outside of China. I
believe that a wide portion of people in Western Europe and the US are
distrustful of the Chinese government so excluding those individuals is a
positive.

~~~
mathnmusic
Someone should tell this to MongoDB which took funding from CIA.

~~~
jacquesm
I'd think Palantir would make for a better example. Simply look at anything
that InQTel has funded.

[https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/in-q-
tel](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/in-q-tel)

------
user00012-ab
I find it hard to take anyone seriously who posts their "breaking research" as
a series of tweets; find the correct platform that fits your message; if you
are a 10 year old girl, then a series of tweets might be fine.

~~~
whyenot
If you have a lot of followers, twitter can be a very effective loudspeaker
even with the character limit. By the way, 10 year olds don’t tend to use
twitter — boys or girls (why is it so often young girls who are held up as a
negative example?)

------
powerapple
so the take is do not have a job before working for Huawei. If there is
someone working for American company before joining Huawei, American
government is linked to Huawei :D

~~~
threezero
The take is to not simultaneously be employed by the Chinese government and
Huawei.

------
fulafel
Also, there are large numbers of people in companies like huawei and cisco
working on clandestine eavesdropping and "interception" is a public feature of
the products. These people have to have close ties with users of the features.

------
MiroF
wild - this thread appears to be brigaded by pro CCP posters

~~~
dang
This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and follow them when posting here?

When people's views are divided, internet readers are a million times too
quick to assume that the other side is brigading, shilling, spying,
astroturfing, promoting secret agendas, fifth-columning, foreign-agenting, or
(this seems to be the latest favorite word) disingenuous—even when they have
zero basis for thinking so. (Someone representing an opposing view is no basis
for thinking so.) This is a cognitive bias. It leads people to imagine
nefariousness and project it onto other users. That poisons the community—and
this poison is actually the bigger problem by far. We've even seen individual
users singled out for attack merely for a different point of view. In the
limit case it converges on mob behavior.

Therefore all HN users are expected to have the self-restraint to rein in this
impulse, most of all on paranoia-prone topics like spies hiding things in
technology, nations planting foreign agents, and all the rest of this. Yes,
these are things; and internet commenters imagining them is also a thing.

Here are a few of the other explanations I've posted about this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20239719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20239719)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20199254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20199254)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19862158](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19862158)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19404162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19404162)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19402447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19402447)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16632589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16632589)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532039)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

~~~
danskeren
It's really not. If you spent 10 minutes on HN Algolia and looked through all
threads that reference China in the title (e.g.
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=china&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=pastMonth&type=story)),
and then visited the comment section of any thread that had no relation to USA
(e.g. "WeChat is Watching: Living in China with the app that knows everything
about me", "Report on forced organ harvesting in China", etc.) then you'll
_always_ find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US whataboutism.. You
can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend.

It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly
disappear from the frontpage for no reason despite just recently appearing, or
even being at the first position. An example from a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543).
I really don't understand how you can deny this.

~~~
dang
> _you 'll always find Chinese nationalists/shills resorting to US
> whataboutism_

You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not
sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you.

> _You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won 't see this
> trend_

Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with
Russia a year ago. All this shows is what controversy is hot right now.

> _It 's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to
> quickly disappear from the frontpage_

Moderators routinely downweight hot controversies and political battles, as
well as articles that repeat what has already been discussed recently. If we
didn't, the front page would consist of nothing but that. Your mistake is in
jumping to the conclusion that this has anything to do with our own political
views or some secret bias about China. It does not. Our job is to protect HN
from (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars. Why?
Because those things kill intellectual curiosity, which is the point of this
site. Everything we do as mods follows from that principle.

By the way, that last bit can be inverted to get a reliable test for moderator
action on HN. If moderators do X, can you find a path from the principle of
intellectual curiosity to X? If so, that's probably why we did it. If not, you
can always ask us what the path is. We're happy to answer questions, but
(again) as the guidelines say, it's better to send them to hn@ycombinator.com.

~~~
danskeren
Could you clarify one thing: if a thread has already reached the frontpage
(and is in a position where it should only continue to gain popularity rather
than disappear, e.g. 50 upvotes in 20 minutes), does mass flagging the thread
have any influence on its score? Because from outside observations it surely
seems like it does, especially when you take into consideration that I’ve on
several occasions seen a thread get knocked out, only for a moderator to push
the thread back to the frontpage again.

I would also argue that by allowing users to resort to US whataboutism then
these comments break multiple rules by introducing flamewars and engaging in
political battles.. which, in my opinion, result in you failing to prevent (a)
mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars.

I’m also very curious about the logic behind down-weighting this thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543).
In my opinion, it’s very high quality journalism, with two journalists risking
their lives to give unprecedented access to a region that’s been
technologically cut off from the rest of the world. I also believe it’s the
first time we saw what China did to the children of the families that had been
sent to the camps.

~~~
dang
Normally I'm happy to answer questions like this. But when you repeat the
exact provocation that I just asked you twice to omit from your HN comments,
my trust that you're asking in good faith goes away.

It's unfortunately common for some users to question HN moderation as a way of
challenging the mods to political or ideological duels. Our experience with
that is that no matter how patiently one answers, every answer is met with a
flurry of new questions, because the purpose is not to learn but to fight.
This is risky for us—it amounts to a DoS attack on the site, quickly
exhausting our time and energy, stealing resources from other users and from
work we might do to improve HN for everybody.

I'd be delighted to be wrong, but your comment seems to signal that you don't
want to use HN as intended, which includes respecting the way it is currently
moderated. So first I need a reason to believe that you actually do want that,
and then I'll be happy to answer whatever you like.

~~~
danskeren
If you feel my tone was aggressive, condescending or negative in other ways
then I’m sorry.

I think it’s an unfair interpretation to believe that I don’t want to use HN
as intended, I’m just tired of seeing every thread that’s critical of China
head down the same path. You said:

> That is not at all an accurate description. This is a classic example of how
> people feel like the site is biased against their point of view even when
> it's the dominant one.

The US whataboutism is undeniable, you also acknowledged it yourself, while
highlighting the same thing happened with Russian threads. I think it’s naive
to believe that “all this shows is what controversy is hot right now”. Because
it’s a common and effective tactic that occur on all social media, and in
threads that aren’t related to China/Russia, everyone usually seem to be able
to behave and stay on-topic.

As for mass flagging and quick downvotes, I can only make assumptions based on
personal experience and careful observations (been using HN for over half a
decade and tend to refresh the site every few minutes). You seem to
blame/credit moderators for causing the threads to disappear, whereas I was
under the impression it was often caused by mass flagging.. so I’m genuinely
curious if flagging a thread has any effect on its position, or if it simply
alert a moderator to take a closer look.

~~~
dang
Yes, flagging affects a submission's rank. So do moderation penalties and
various software penalties. User flags are usually the main reason.

------
markus_zhang
However with the same logic you can pretty much prove none if the big
companies in the world is independent.

~~~
cf498
It gets especially funny for any company hiring Israeli security experts. Or
even the US for that matter, college is expensive and there seems to be an
array of people who get their degree financed that way.

~~~
MiroF
but in the US they usually aren't simultaneously employed

------
buzhidao
It is clear from the author other tweets, that he is on a mission..

------
hatsunearu
So how long do you think he'll last until he magically disappears?

~~~
rasz
Who? You mean Author working for American Literary Historical Society in New
York City?

