HUAWEI

Chinese company is a real threat to US military bases

The latest news sheds some light on what has been one of the reasons why Huawei has been so aggressively driven out of the US telecom market since the presidency of Donald Trump. According to The Verge, citing CNN, an FBI investigation revealed that Huawei supplied equipment to cell towers installed near US military bases in rural areas, even though it made no economic sense.

In other words, some hypotheses became known, taking into account that the US authorities once announced the total replacement of Huawei equipment with analogues on a national scale. According to the American media, we can even talk about intercepting the negotiations of the US Strategic Command, the body responsible for the country's nuclear arsenal.

Huawei reportedly sold very cheap equipment to small regional telecommunications providers in states such as Colorado, Montana, Nebraska and Oregon, arousing the suspicions of federal agents. The investigation revealed that Huawei could not profit from it, but the equipment was located close to US military bases, including those with nuclear weapons.

According to CNN, citing one of the former FBI employees, agents began to investigate the financial aspect of Huawei, studying transactions of companies that did not promise return on investment even in the future. While it has been discovered that Huawei equipment may have technically disrupted military communication systems, it is much more difficult to prove information theft. However, Huawei itself officially denies such statements, arguing that the company's equipment only operates on frequencies officially approved by the US Federal Communications Commission and therefore technically cannot work on the frequencies used by the local military.

According to Reuters, a similar investigation was launched by the US Department of Commerce after President Joe Biden came to power. The agency is also concerned that Huawei equipment is allegedly capable of intercepting data from missile silos and nearby military bases. It is possible that the ministry will introduce additional restrictions on Huawei's work in the country.

In 2019, the United States began to actively oppose the activities in the country of Huawei and China's ZTE. In particular, telecommunications companies were prohibited from using federal subsidies to purchase equipment from these manufacturers, and the US Federal Communications Commission announced a program to completely replace equipment from these companies already in use. However, many small operators still use it, mainly due to lack of funding.

Replacement costs rose from $1.8 billion in September 2020 to $5.6 billion in February 2022. Last Friday, the FCC sent a letter to the US Congress in which it said it had no US$3.08 billion sufficient to fully compensate for provider replacement, the FCC can only cover 39.5% of the US$4.98 billion needed to meet the needs of operators among those who have applied for the program. It was recently reported that US officials suspected Huawei of military espionage, but just how ingenious the intelligence services used the economic method of investigation became clear a little later.

AVnews