The issue of Huawei first floated when the Chairman’s daughter, who is also the CFO of Huawei, was arrested in Canada. The Americans claimed that she has violated sanctions and wanted her to be extradited to US for trial.
This is not the first time Americans had extended its legal arms outside of its country’s boundary. Huawei is not an American company. Why should it be subjected to American political sanctions? It was not very clear why American government wanted to do that at the very beginning. But later on, it becomes clear that the Americans have reverted back to their dirty tricks.
This is not the first time the American government had used its political dominance to attack foreign companies to curb their growth, or even forcing them to be sold to American companies.
Toshiba was once a fast growing Japanese company but it was targeted in the 1980s, with two senior executives jailed on the charge of selling high precision machinery to Russia. Chinese ZTE was forced to the knees with political administrative means and $1 billion fine was extorted before it was let off. There were also European companies subjected to American pressures in the past.
The coordinated attack on Huawei started from a charge of “breaching American sanction on Iran” to charge of “espionage via Huawei’s hardware”.
It is no secret that Americans have been spying on the whole world, including its allies in Europe over the past decades via communication infrastructures installed using American products or technology. Snowden had actually leaked information on how NSA spies on each and every country through the use of backdoor implemented in communication hardware.
So it is not something new but simply hypocrisy on Americans’ part in playing dirty on Huawei.
Perhaps the Americans have found out that they can no longer have an easy hack on Huawei’s equipment to spy on other countries, which is why they are making so much noise.
I would not be surprised if the Chinese government emulates what the American government NSA has been doing all this while, spying on other countries through similar method. But at this very moment, there is absolutely Zero evidence provided by the Americans except the speculative insinuation put on Huawei’s Chairman, who is an ex-PRC army personnel.
This may be one of the minor reasons why Trump wants to attack or even destroy Huawei at all cost, even if it means hurting American companies which supplied over $11 billion worth of components to Huawei.
Yes, it might be the 5G technology that they are so afraid of. But this is not only about the commercial dominance of Huawei’s 5G technology.
Ultimately, it points to military supremacy. US is able to bully its way through the world for all these decades simply because of its military supremacy. It can have trillions or zillions of deficits but it doesn’t care at all.
But Huawei’s advanced 5G technology has the potential of tilting the balance of Military strength towards China. In modern warfare, more and more sensors will be used and there will be a revolutionized war communication technology to enhance battlefront monitoring and controls.
Huawei’s advancement on 5G technology or even faster hidden technology will give PLA a boost and multi-level upgrades in war theater command and management.
This is the greatest fear of USA, a potential adversary having more advanced military communication capabilities. This is why no matter how damaging it is towards its own Americans companies, Trump has to destroy Huawei.
However, I suspect that Huawei does have the Chinese government’s support for the simple reason that it has critical technological assets that could help it modernize its military.
It is not an exaggeration for Chairman Ren to say that Trump had underestimated the strength of Huawei. This is because it would most probably had secured full support from Chinese government to protect its critical technological assets.
It would be interesting to see how Huawei could turn the table around and build up its own in-house components manufacturing capability within one year. The problems of operating systems are just smokescreen to the bigger picture.
Make no mistake about it. It is Cold War II in the making.
Goh Meng Seng
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