“If such espionage has been truly conducted,” Mr. target, adding that in his personal opinion, “The irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us.” William Plummer, a senior Huawei executive in the United States, said the company had no idea it was an N.S.A. Company officials insist that it has no connection to the People’s Liberation Army. Huawei, which has all but given up its hopes of entering the American market, complains that it is the victim of protectionism, swathed in trumped-up national security concerns.
The documents offer no answer to a central question: Is Huawei an independent company, as its leaders contend, or a front for the People’s Liberation Army, as American officials suggest but have never publicly proved? saw an additional opportunity: As Huawei invested in new technology and laid undersea cables to connect its $40 billion-a-year networking empire, the agency was interested in tunneling into key Chinese customers, including “high priority targets - Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kenya, Cuba.” “If we can determine the company’s plans and intentions,” an analyst wrote, “we hope that this will lead us back to the plans and intentions of the PRC,” referring to the People’s Republic of China. Those concerning Huawei were described in the 2010 document. Many countries cannot say the same.”īut that does not mean the American government does not conduct its own form of corporate espionage with a different set of goals.
companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line. Hayden, said: “We do not give intelligence we collect to U.S. breaks into foreign networks only for legitimate national security purposes.Ī White House spokeswoman, Caitlin M. The Obama administration distinguishes between the hacking and corporate theft that the Chinese conduct against American companies to buttress their own state-run businesses, and the intelligence operations that the United States conducts against Chinese and other targets.Īmerican officials have repeatedly said that the N.S.A. could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if ordered by the president, offensive cyberoperations. But the plans went further: to exploit Huawei’s technology so that when the company sold equipment to other countries - including both allies and nations that avoid buying American products - the N.S.A. One of the goals of the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was to find any links between Huawei and the People’s Liberation Army, one 2010 document made clear. It obtained information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches that Huawei boasts connect a third of the world’s population, and monitored communications of the company’s top executives. documents provided by the former contractor Edward J. The agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart, according to N.S.A. WASHINGTON - American officials have long considered Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, a security threat, blocking it from business deals in the United States for fear that the company would create “back doors” in its equipment that could allow the Chinese military or Beijing-backed hackers to steal corporate and government secrets.īut even as the United States made a public case about the dangers of buying from Huawei, classified documents show that the National Security Agency was creating its own back doors - directly into Huawei’s networks.