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America's Latest Effort To Thwart the Growth of China's Huawei is Playing Out Beneath the World's Oceans (wsj.com)

A new front has opened in the battle between the U.S. and China over control of global networks that deliver the internet. This one is beneath the ocean. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; syndicated source.] From a report: While the U.S. wages a high-profile campaign to exclude China's Huawei from next-generation mobile networks over fears of espionage, the company is embedding itself into undersea cable networks that ferry nearly all of the world's internet data. About 380 active submarine cables -- bundles of fiber-optic lines that travel oceans on the seabed -- carry about 95% of intercontinental voice and data traffic, making them critical for the economies and national security of most countries. Current and former security officials in the U.S. and allied governments now worry that these cables are increasingly vulnerable to espionage or attack and say the involvement of Huawei potentially enhances China's capabilities.

Huawei denies any threat. The U.S. hasn't publicly provided evidence of its claims that Huawei technology poses a cybersecurity risk. Its efforts to persuade other countries to sideline the company's communication technology have been met with skepticism by some. Huawei Marine Networks, majority owned by the Chinese telecom giant, completed a 3,750-mile cable between Brazil and Cameroon in September. It recently started work on a 7,500-mile cable connecting Europe, Asia and Africa and is finishing up links across the Gulf of California in Mexico. Altogether, the company has worked on some 90 projects to build or upgrade seabed fiber-optic links, gaining fast on the three U.S., European and Japanese firms that dominate the industry. These officials say the company's knowledge of and access to undersea cables could allow China to attach devices that divert or monitor data traffic -- or, in a conflict, to sever links to entire nations.

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Re:US and Russia have done it, so I guess we know by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually, Saddam did have chemical weapons. WMD's. Yes, he did. He did not have a nuclear program advanced as advertised by Dick Cheney's cassus belli, and his biological program had been buried.

    Mentioning it constantly doesn't make the allegations against Huawei, a directly-owned and fraudulently controlled tentacle of the Chinese Communist Party, any less guilty or any less of a threat to western interests.

    I don't see why you're so keen to make apologies or excuses.

  2. ECHELON by darkain · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The United States is worried that China is doing in 2019 what the USA did starting in the 1960s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  3. Proof by Maelwryth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Look, this whole Huawei is selling equipment that can be used to spy would be very simply solved if the U.S. would show some proof. If they can't do that then they are either lying, aren't technologically able too or haven't been able too because Huawei can come straight back with U.S. equipment and show how it is being used to spy. Since 9/11 the U.S. has been a political disaster on the world stage and they just aren't trusted anymore. Not even by their allies.

    --
    I reserve the write to mangle english.
    1. Re:Proof by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If they can't do that then they are either lying, aren't technologically able too or haven't been able too because Huawei can come straight back with U.S. equipment and show how it is being used to spy.

      You missed a key - And likely most the important - Reason that the USA can't "prove it." Doing so will likely damage existing intelligence gathering operations and/or put intelligence operatives in harm's way.

      If the USA has an intelligence asset inside Huawei then revealing their proof might harm that asset.

      Things are further complicated by the fact that the White House doesn't keep secrets very well, so the intelligence services are likely hesitant to reveal their sources.