The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly expressed concerns about potentially troubling capabilities of Huawei-made equipment to intercept and disrupt top-secret Pentagon communications, including channels used by US Strategic Command (US STRATCOM), the unified combatant command responsible for ordering nuclear strikes.
Over a dozen sources told CNN that US counterintelligence has been quietly probing purported efforts by China to install listening devices near US military and government facilities, as well as the sale of Huawei equipment to telecoms providers in rural communities near military bases at "suspiciously" low prices. The probe, apparently under way since the Obama administration, has been so secret that many senior policymakers in Washington didn’t even find out about it until 2019.
Citing one example, sources indicated that China had made an offer in 2017 to build a $100 million ornate garden at Washington, DC’s National Arboretum – situated less than 5 km from the Capitol and the White House, and less than 2 km from the Pentagon atop a strategic height. On top of that, the outlet’s sources said, China wanted to ship equipment to the site via diplomatic pouches, which are off limits to US Customs inspections. The project was subsequently quietly snuffed out before construction began amid security concerns.
On other occasions, sources indicated, Huawei appeared to be offering below-market prices for cellular providers in rural municipalities near military facilities, with the investigation initially “examining [the company] less from a technical lens and more from a business/financial view,” according to former FBI counterintelligence agent John Lenkart.
As for the fears that Huawei-manufactured equipment in cell towers is being used to intercept strategic communications, CNN’s sources expressed frustration, admitting that from a technical standpoint, “it’s incredibly difficult to prove” whether such illegal activities are taking place. Spooks are nevertheless confident that Huawei gear has the capability to intercept both commercial and restricted cell traffic and airwaves, including channels used by STRATCOM.
“This gets into some of the most sensitive things we do,” one worried former FBI official said. “It would impact our ability for essentially command and control with the nuclear triad. If it is possible for that to be disrupted, then that is a very bad day,” they said.
No Backdoor
Huawei has consistently denied that its equipment is being used for any malevolent purposes, including to spy on Americans or the US government or military, and has emphasized that it is a private, independent company with no affiliation with the Chinese government. The tech giant has also expressed readiness to sign a “no-spy” or “no-backdoor” guarantee to assuage any privacy concerns, a commitment few of its Western competitors have been willing to make.
In a statement to CNN, the company stressed that all of its products on the US market “have been tested and certified by the FCC,” and that the equipment “only operates on the spectrum allocated by the FCC for commercial use. This means it cannot access any spectrum allocated for the [military].”
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University radio spectrum lab director Eduardo Rojas told CNN that “it’s not technical hard" to build a device that can listen out for restricted bands, and said US investigators could conclusively discover whether Huawei products were doing so by stripping them down “to the semi-conductor level” and reverse engineering them.
It’s not clear whether the investigators have done so, or what the results of any such investigations have been.
The Trump administration launched a crusade against Huawei in mid-2018 as part of its broader trade war with the PRC, and in 2019, the Federal Communications Commissions restricted US telecommunications companies from using products made by Huawei and ZTE (another Chinese tech firm) in their cellular and Internet infrastructure. A year after that, Congress allocated $1.9 billion to assist small telecoms companies rip out Huawei and ZTE gear.
However, two years on, a whopping 24,000 pieces of Chinese-made telecoms equipment is still estimated to be operating, with the FCC saying it needs $3 billion more to reimburse telecoms providers that have submitted applications to remove the gear.
Along with US intelligence, the Commerce Department is reportedly running its own probe into Huawei, with that probe kicked off in 2021, and focused, among other things, on the equipment’s communications with servers in other countries during software updates. On Thursday, sources told Reuters that that investigation includes efforts to determine whether Huawei equipment is being used to collect classified information on everything from planned military drills to data on the readiness status of US bases and equipment and sending it to China for analysis.