Huawei, the embattled Chinese network equipment provider, has a new accusation to address. In the West, the company has become well known for its 5G network equipment and as the second-largest maker of handsets in the world. It is also a leader in AI technology.
Huawei Spyware Is Everywhere
But Huawei has been condemned by the United States and others for building spyware into its hardware and other back doors for data gathering and theft from network users. The use of Huawei 5G network equipment among allies of the United States, such as the UK, has been a contentious subject.Accordingly, U.S. authorities have warned allies that proceeding with Huawei equipment installation would lead to a minimization of the sharing of sensitive and security information. Specifically, the United States has asked the UK to refrain from using Huawei for its 5G network upgrade, citing clear security risks.
Enabling Mass Imprisonment
In recent articles, Forbes identifies Huawei as playing an integral role in China’s widespread and pervasive Orwellian surveillance state apparatus. In a November exposition, Forbes contributor Zak Dorfman explains how the company’s advanced surveillance and tracking technology is a critical enabler of the CCP’s oppression, imprisonment, and torture of millions of Uyghurs in the western province of Xinjiang:“The far-reaching use of [Huawei] technology to underpin all of this is a consistent theme throughout. This includes AI-based surveillance, intrusive data collection and smartphone and general communications monitoring. Any missteps seemingly run the risk of internment. And once detained, only modified thinking and behaviors seem likely to secure a person’s release.”
China as Big Brother to the World?
Quite regrettably, Huawei surveillance and monitoring technologies aren’t limited to China and the Party. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted in its November 2019 report, Huawei is instrumental in China’s policy of “exporting authoritarianism.”Huawei’s comprehensive municipal surveillance technology and procedures bundle is packaged with the soft marketing hook of “safe city” technology, a euphemism that hides the technology’s true purpose of allowing the state to surveil, and efficiently control and oppress its citizens.
And much of the world is following China’s lead, particularly in Asia and Africa. These nations tend to be much less free and open than Western societies and fall into either poor or middle-income wealth brackets.
As of April of 2019, more than 230 cities were using Huawei “safe city” surveillance technology, mostly in Central Asia and Africa, but some in Latin America and other places as well. Assuming that China is accessing the data of these cities and countries, it puts Beijing in a powerful position as Orwell’s “Big Brother” for much of the world.
The implications are difficult to overstate.
The growth and expansion of Huawei’s “safe city” technology across the world threaten the spread and even continuation of Western liberal and democratic ideals, and aids in the spread of authoritarianism. The technology gives dictators and non-democratic states, indeed, China itself, the ability to identify and detain democratic movements and leaders before they can become effective liberalizing factors in Huawei client states, wherever they may be.