Researchers studied 25,000 leaked Huawei resumes and found troubling links to the gov't. and spies

Business Insider ^ | 07/09/2019 | Isobel Asher Hamilton

[SeekAndFind]

New research analyzing the resumes of Huawei employees suggests links between the company and the Chinese military and intelligence agencies could run deeper than previously thought.

Researcher Christopher Balding, of the Fulbright University Vietnam, processed data from a trove of more than 590 million Chinese resumes that leaked online last year to unearth the ties.

With the help of three researchers from British right-wing think-tank, the Henry Jackson Society, he trawled through the data to find Huawei employees' resumes.

Taking a subset of some 65,000 resumes, the researchers found roughly 25,000 belonging to current or former Huawei employees.

The researchers then searched for key terms, such as the People's Liberation Army. From this, they narrowed down the list to just over 100 individuals who had experience in national security.

The relationship between Huawei and Chinese state agencies is key to the US government's claim that Huawei poses a national security threat. The US maintains that Huawei provides the Chinese government with technological backdoors through which to spy. Huawei denies this, and CEO Ren Zhengfei said in March he would rather shut down the company than spy for the government.

Balding presented three profiles of resumes he found in a paper released online, although he edited them in order to hide the identities of the individuals described. One profile describes an R&D engineer who simultaneously served as a Ministry of State Security representative.

According to Balding, this engineer "engaged in behavior that describes planting information capture technology or software on Huawei products." He also worked on "building lawful interception capability into Huawei equipment" on projects both domestic and international.

[SeekAndFind]

HERE IS THE LINK TO THE PAPER RELEASED ONLINE:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3415726

ABSTRACT:

Using a unique dataset of CVs, this paper analyzes the relationship between key Huawei personnel and the Chinese state security services. Based upon an analysis of this dataset, I find there is strong evidence that Huawei personnel act at the direction of Chinese state intelligence, and that there exists a deep and lasting relationship between Huawei, its employees, and the Chinese state. This should raise questions within Western governments worried about Chinese access to domestic information.

Keywords: Huawei, intelligence, Ministry of State Security, People’s Liberation Army

Suggested Citation:

Balding, Christopher, Huawei Technologies’ Links to Chinese State Security Services (July 5, 2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3415726

[fruser1]

What about google’s links to China? US gov already has google in the house. They’ve got to be sneaking some stuff over the Great Wall for some gratis with the lotus eaters.

[Pollard]

Imagine a tech company in a communist state having ties to the state. Who’d a thunk it?

[Oldexpat]

Yeah. This a big surprise to who?