Huawei and Chinese Surveillance

This quote is from House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company.

Long before anyone had heard of Ren Zhengfei or Huawei, Wan Runnan had been China’s star entrepreneur in the 1980s, with his company, the Stone Group, touted as “China’s IBM.” Wan had believed that economic change could lead to political change. He had thrown his support behind the pro-democracy protesters in 1989. As a result, he had to flee to France, with an arrest warrant hanging over his head. He was never able to return home. Now, decades later and in failing health in Paris, Wan recalled something that had happened one day in the late 1980s, when he was still living in Beijing.

Local officials had invited him to dinner.

This was unusual. He was usually the one to invite officials to dine, so as to curry favor with the show of hospitality. Over the meal, the officials told Wan that the Ministry of State Security was going to send agents to work undercover at his company in positions dealing with international relations. The officials cast the move to embed these minders as an act of protection for Wan and the company’s other executives, a security measure that would keep them from stumbling into unseen risks in their dealings with foreigners. “You have a lot of international business, which raises security issues for you. There are situations that you don’t understand,” Wan recalled the officials telling him. “They said, ‘We are sending some people over. You can just treat them like regular employees.’”

Wan said he knew that around this time, state intelligence also contacted other tech companies in Beijing with the same request. He couldn’t say what the situation was for Huawei, which was still a little startup far to the south in Shenzhen, not yet on anyone’s radar. But Wan said he didn’t believe that Huawei would have been able to escape similar demands. “That is a certainty,” he said.

“Telecommunications is an industry that has to do with keeping control of a nation’s lifeline…and actually in any system of communications, there’s a back-end platform that could be used for eavesdropping.”

It was a rare moment of an executive lifting the cone of silence surrounding the MSS’s relationship with China’s high-tech industry. It was rare, in fact, in any country. Around the world, such spying operations rank among governments’ closest-held secrets. When Edward Snowden had exposed the NSA’s operations abroad, he’d ended up in exile in Russia. Wan, too, might have risked arrest had he still been living in China.

Here are two book reviews.

Tags: books, China, surveillance

Posted on November 26, 2025 at 7:05 AM • 57 Comments

Comments

Clive Robinson • November 26, 2025 9:00 AM

@ ALL,

This sounds damming,

“He couldn’t say what the situation was for Huawei, which was still a little startup far to the south in Shenzhen, not yet on anyone’s radar. But Wan said he didn’t believe that Huawei would have been able to escape similar demands.”

But it’s not factual, it’s at best opinion from something that happened a long time ago.

Now something factual, Huawei set up a technology center in the UK which allowed GCHQ to have full access to design documents through all aspects of the products to the finished and boxed units.

GCHQ looked and found nothing, they even contrary to agreement smuggled people from the NSA and other security agencies in to look things over.

They found nothing…

Now that means that either there was nothing to find or the Chinese Security people are way way more clever than the UK and US security agencies[1].

But as usual with the US, the politicians are happy to burn any other nations security methods, sources and assets if they think they can get more personal power from doing so… (and in Scooter Libbey’s case even burn US assets).

The problem was they found nothing for the politicians to rattle their sabers and bang the drum over.

So they just put a load of nonsense together and “tried to sell it as a bridge to nowhere”.

The US MSM as usual pumped up via “anonymous sources” and eventually the US Politicos had to resort to threatening allies to get them to stop using Chinese chips and equipment.

We see the same nonsense still in action from US Politicians… The simple fact is that it’s not about China but the US.

Back when Ronny Ragun and Mad Maggie Thatcher were in power they very very stupidly “Deregulated Capitalism”… And we are still suffering from this.

People rather foolishly believe that “the market is best” with only a “light touch”. The reality is that the capitalist way is in reality the way of monopoly and worse, especially when the product is “information”.

I’ve noted before that one of the reasons traditional markets of physical goods had limitations was “Distance Costs”. That is the further you move a physical object from the manufacturer to the customer the more it costs. This means that local manufacture has a competitive advantage against large corporates with one or at most two points of manufacture.

This limitation does not apply when the good are intangible “information objects”. Which means the marketplace gets badly skewed in favour of large corporations.

And this is before we start talking about the criminal and fraudulent activity of corporations done by well payed lobbyist entities.

So you the voter have no say in legislation to keep corporations under sensible control and stop them behaving in ways that bring all sorts of harms on to society.

The US and probably the West is about to go through another major recession thanks to corporate begaviour and there is no legislation in place that will stop it happening.

And the ordinary tax paying citizens are the ones who will yet again have to bail the corporations out.

Cory Doctorow just recently wrote a piece on this actual issue as a follow on from “enshitification”,
https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/20/if-you-wanted-to-get-there/#i-wouldnt-start-from-here

[1] As we know from the NSA and the Dual EC-DRBG it is possible to hide things even from alleged experts.

Bill • November 26, 2025 10:53 AM

Bruce, isn’t this standard in the West? I’ve heard similar stories from people in intelligence about being placed in American banks.

Wannabe Techguy • November 26, 2025 12:00 PM

So Clive, who decides what is “sensible control” and likewise as the saying goes “who watches the watchers”. Don’t get me wrong though,I don’t trust any of them.

lurker • November 26, 2025 12:37 PM

Possibly much of the campaign against Huawei is sour grapes because Huawei made better equipment, faster and cheaper than western companies could. They also built up a bigger portfolio of 5G patents which would have required western companies to pay royalties to someone outside their club.

Huawei’s hardware build quality is up with the best, but when their top line phones threatened to eat into Apple’s market they had to be stopped. They built a laptop computer which equalled the lowend Macbook in quality and performance, at two-thirds the price, but that was banned from sale in the US.

The Diplomat has a review/author interview:

blockquote> … As early as the 1990s, you note in the book, Huawei had been subject to security demands from the Chinese government. What do we know about if and how Huawei rebuffed those demands? …

Huawei has resisted becoming too intertwined with Beijing over the years, with Ren fearful the company would lose its competitive edge if it was subsumed into state bureaucracy. But the reality is that tech companies must cooperate with the national-security requirements of their governments – that is the case under the law in China, the United States, and countries around the world.

https://thediplomat.com/2025/01/eva-dou-on-the-secretive-house-of-huawei/

Disclosure: I am a satisfied user of Huawei devices since 2012. I care if they phone home, I suspect they don’t because the phone home traffic will be read by the US spooks.

Winter • November 26, 2025 12:51 PM

Huawei personnel had unlimited access to essentially all Dutch mobile phone traffic of the main Dutch provider. There were no records kept of who had accessed what.

Huawei’s ability to eavesdrop on Dutch mobile users is a wake-up call for the telecoms industry
‘https://theconversation.com/huaweis-ability-to-eavesdrop-on-dutch-mobile-users-is-a-wake-up-call-for-the-telecoms-industry-160316

While the full report on the issue has not been made public, journalists reporting on the story have outlined specific concerns that Huawei personnel in the Netherlands and China had access to security-essential parts of KPN’s network – including the call data of millions of Dutch citizens – and that a lack of records meant KPN couldn’t establish how often this happened.

lurker • November 26, 2025 2:48 PM

@Winter, ALL

From the same Conversation article

KPN essentially granted Huawei “administrator rights” to its mobile network by outsourcing work to the Chinese firm. Legislation is only now catching up to prevent similar vulnerabilities in telecoms security.

Translation: the business methods of telecom operators nowadays is to minimize costs and maximize profits by outsourcing maintenance to the supplier or their agent. Dutch law may be able to constrain business methods in nationally essential infrastructure; apparently US law can’t, it’s easier to ban the supplier.

SocraticGadfly • November 26, 2025 4:05 PM

Per Lurker and Winter and partially contra Clive:

Yes, US companies of various sorts have long, long had CIA embeds in overseas operations. And, per the infamous AT&T “backdoor” in San Francisco, US telecoms with operations or products abroad have surely acted like Huawei.

Western companies have also, either directly, or with intelligence agency embeds, stolen IP. French intelligence is notorious for this.

As for the “partially contra Clive,” his footnote:

>[1] As we know from the NSA and the Dual EC-DRBG it is possible to hide things even from alleged experts.<<

That could surely include Huawei hiding things from the GCHQ, could it not?

KC • November 26, 2025 4:29 PM

From Gov.UK:

Having fully considered consultation responses, the key deadline to remove all Huawei equipment in the UK’s 5G network by 2027 remains unchanged

Is this wrong?

Winter • November 26, 2025 4:53 PM

@lurker

Translation: the business methods of telecom operators nowadays is to minimize costs and maximize profits by outsourcing maintenance to the supplier or their agent.

The point was less the access, but the fact that it was so shoddy arranged. The fault was the politicians who arranged the telecom market to maximize competition with little eye for security.

KPN was the former official national telecom provider. Its employees used to be civil servants.

Clive Robinson • November 26, 2025 5:19 PM

@ Winter,

You try to make this sound damning,

“Huawei personnel had unlimited access to essentially all Dutch mobile phone traffic of the main Dutch provider. There were no records kept of who had accessed what.”

But again “opinion not fact” and probably made up to sound threatening for political reasons.

You offer no evidence of misbehaviour by Huawei staff, and then say “no records kept”.

This tells me that those who were responsible for the contract management what you call the “main Dutch provider” were those actually “negligent in the extreme” as such record keeping was either,

1, Not in the contract with Huawei.
2, Not monitored by those responsible for ensuring contract compliance.

The first couple of rules of contracting for over half a century is,

1, No freebies, you get exactly what you pay for.
2, If it’s not in the contract you pay extra for it (a lot extra).

This is true of all “competitive bidding” systems.

So as @Wannabe Techguy notes,

“who decides what is “sensible control” and likewise as the saying goes “who watches the watchers”.”

It’s those who “write and monitor” the contract and payment made under it.

Which is what you call the “main Dutch provider”, which is an organisation running on “Capitalist Rules”.

The fact that is as @lurker points out in the article they quote,

“But the reality is that tech companies must cooperate with the national-security requirements of their governments – that is the case under the law in China, the United States, and countries around the world.”

It’s “a door that swings both ways” so you need to ask,

1, Why did the Dutch Government not legislate or regulate for “sufficient oversight”?
2, Why would the “main Dutch provider” do any more oversight than required by legislation/regulation?
3, If the “main Dutch provider” wanted to do that oversight why was it either not in the contract or not verified as being done?
4, Why would Huawei personnel do work not contracted to be done with a profit eating cost?

It boils down to Huawei personnel were working to contract and it was the Dutch provider or Dutch government that was negligent…

The fact you are trying to “invent crime” without evidence (to kowtow to US political wishes). And then “victim blame” to cover up Dutch Authorities failings, is shall we say “a little low”.

Corporations, Companies and partnerships are all legal entities that “work to contract” to ensure profitable working. That is by minimising cost, thus maximising profit. Legal action is expensive and in effect it is that which keeps both sides “honest”. So the capitalist view is,

“Don’t do extras only contracted or legislated”

Unless there is a fiscal reason to do so (like getting a contract renewed). It’s established behaviour going back well over a century or two and as far as I can tell started with those “shipping goods” with later, “oversight” of their insurers who likewise want to make profit.

Simple “risk and reward” processes drive “honest trade”, the legal system via contract law, and government legislation and regulation are the established mechanisms to ensure that “honest trade” is both fair and honest.

The fact that Dutch entities did not put in place contractual or legal requirements in the contract is not the fault of Huawei and their personnel who responded to what I assume was a legal and honest tendering process.

If you claim Huawei personnel behaved dishonestly then “put up the actual evidence”. Also include the political context for the “nothing burger” claims being made. Which is the Dutch Government kowtowing to US political “might is right” nonsense, payed for by US corporations illegally for “market protection” (monopoly/cartel) Protections that protect the neo-con corporations by inflicting harms not just on US, but Dutch and other Nations Citizens.

Clive Robinson • November 26, 2025 6:21 PM

@ lurker, Winter, ALL,

You say,

“Disclosure: I am a satisfied user of Huawei devices since 2012. I care if they phone home, I suspect they don’t because the phone home traffic will be read by the US spooks.”

What you “suspect” can be reasoned out further, by asking a couple of questions…

The first is based on the assumption of “hover it up” (which might not be the case) and is,

1, Just how much data would be sent back to China, and if not sent back where it is being stored and searched?

The simple answer is where ever the data is going it needs considerable infrastructure to get there, and that would be noticeable to local authorities be they Government or Corporate.

The only reason the AT&T “secret room” did not come out sooner was that AT&T a US Corp, were highly complicit with the US Intel Agencies and could pretend that the infrastructure was “dark fiber” or “technical support” “experimental” or similar internally. Basically a “nested ring of lies”.

The fact Huawei personnel were mostly not foreign (Chinese) but local employees would make such lies to obvious to support without many questions arising.

The next infrastructure issue is how fo you get a suitably “fat pipe” back to China without it being noticed. Such infrastructure is very expensive and very obvious, to obvious to easily hide.

But the second question is on the assumption it’s highly targeted surveillance. We have been told that Chinese APT groups working in China gained access to CALEA “law enforcement back doors”.

Knowing to a certain degree just how insecure CALEA infrastructure is[1] and how the NSA/CIA used it (see Greek Olympics) you have to ask the question,

2, If Huawei personnel had fat pipe access for the Chinese Government, why would the Chinese or US intel agencies take the risk of using CALE access[1]?

The most likely reason would be “lower risk” than trying to set up a “fat pipe” infrastructure back to China.

[1] Back in January after several months of semi-public rumbling it became clear that alleged Chinese APT entities had been “spying on the Feds, Spying on the unknowing”,

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/17/fcc_telcos_calea/

Aside from the fact it was “face palm funny” and had been foretold by security professionals for years amounting to decades, the FCC finally hurumphed out of executive embarrassment.

lurker • November 26, 2025 7:03 PM

@KC

The words as published are correct at the link you posted. But some might argue the reason for them is wrong. Note the last item on the bullet-pointed list on that page:
“a requirement not to install any Huawei equipment that has been affected by US sanctions in full fibre networks.” Digging deeper:

Per gov.uk “This update was driven by the US Foreign-Produced Direct Product Rule Amendment (FDPRA) which significantly increased the extent of US trade sanctions against Huawei and has increased the risk to UK networks.” but they recognise limiting the number of suppliers is also a risk: “Only having one supplier to national fibre access networks has a significant detrimental impact on the security and resilience of UK networks.”

The UK National Cyber Security Centre published advice on the use of equipment from high risk vendors in UK telecoms networks which was reviewed on 14 July 2020, and presumably is still valid.

Clive Robonson • November 26, 2025 8:12 PM

@ SocraticGadfly, ALL,

With regards the NSA/GCHQ and the embarrassment to NIST of having to withdraw and reissue the FIPS containing the Backdoored Dual EC-DRBG.

You note,

“That could surely include Huawei hiding things from the GCHQ, could it not?”

Which might also account for why the UK GCHQ, sneaked US Intel Agency staff including those of the NSA into the Huawei technology approvals center. Probably most likely looking for vulnerabilities they could exploit rather than Chinese “Back Doors”.

So the answer is a qualified “yes” a “backdoor” or similar could have been put into Huawei products.

But, and most importantly, it actually would not be of much use, and if used be of very short life expectancy.

The reason the NSA Dual EC-DRBG could be got away with was,

“No unexpected traffic”

The use of a random bit generator was predicated by the standards and protocols. Thus using it was “expected behaviour” not “unexpected traffic” which would be seen and queried by simple external observation.

To get user info or calls etc to China would need quite a lot of “unexpected traffic” (that could be easily detected and blocked).

Obviously the more “unexpected traffic” there is, the more prominent it becomes and in effect “blows the whistle on it’s self.

I suspect the Chinese are very much aware of the issue, so won’t use it.

Ismar • November 26, 2025 9:39 PM

Regardless of what the extent of surveillance by either side is, the outcome of this is that end consumers will be left without access to best value products on the market.
BTW- can Huawei phones be used in the USA at all or just not purchased there?

Thomas • November 26, 2025 10:45 PM

The reason why The West has to withdraw investments from and disconnect from China is that China and it’s allies are where Germany and it’s allies were before WW II. It’s as simple as that.

China and it’s allies are a direct threat to The West.

We can go back and forth about proof of this or that, or proof that Huawei reverse engineered the Cisco IOS, but the proof that China is a threat is that they steal $300+ billion in IP every year from the USA, ALONE.

Thomas • November 26, 2025 11:23 PM

@Clive Robonson are you wumao?

Just in case you missed the X post:

China has been waging a full-scale trade war for decades by stealing between $225 and $600 BILLION in technology every year.

Clive Robinson • November 27, 2025 3:07 AM

@ Thomas,

With regards your accusations.

I had to look up wumao and Spencer P Morrison.

These are apparently terms used by those who consider themselves MAGA I intellectuals (an oxymoronic term if ever there was one)

If you were a “long term lurker” here you would know I’ve been making comments here for as long as this blog has existed. Also you would know I can spot a phony very easily and call them out (usually politely).

To answer your “paid shill” question I’m merely pointing out there is no factual evidence being presented. It’s a requirement for reasonable debate not mouth breather attempts at rebel rousing for a filibuster type military action.

Speaking of which I don’t do X or other social media and never have done, it was obvious from the get go what a cesspool they would turn into, and to say they’ve lived down lower than expectation in the hands of bigots and fools and right wing supplicants to neo-con mantras should be of no surprise to anyone who can reason even moderately.

So I’ve never heard of a nobody called Spencer P Morrison and had to look him up on “Muck Rack”,

https://muckrack.com/spencer-p-morrison

Where it say’s,

“As seen in: Substack, The Daily Caller, Blaze Media, RealClear Politics, The Western Journal, American Thinker, Conservative Review, Canada Free Press, RealClear Markets, American Greatness, RealClear Policy, Freedom Bunker”

There is an old saying that,

“A man can be judged by the company he keeps”

Of which in this modern world would include “the places he hangs out” and “the reception he receives there”.

Frankly it says enough to show that reasoned intelligence is not an investment made.

Go back in this blog and you will find I’ve repeatedly warned about “short term” thinking especially in “next quarter” blinkered Corporations for almost as long as the blog has existed and likewise China. I’ve more or less predicted their actions, and contrary to the “accusations of stealing” by idiots, they were somewhat smarter.

They offered the “next quarter” blinkered ways to apparently reduce costs by out-sourcing and off-shoring, a trick they had seen the Japanese do in the 1960’s.

In both cases the results were the same the blinkered and the share holders they tried to please lost business and layed off their customers and so went the way of the dodo.

In the process the blinkered quite voluntarily exported their “trade secrets” to China and the Chinese entities they had no legal control over…

So not theft by China, but stupidity of the Capitalist System running in the US and emulated by other western countries.

The fact that there are people trying desperately “For MAGAs Sake” to re-write history for political advantage is rather sad. Because it shows just how much cognitive bias there is in the US to be milked, and also the dodo like behaviours that caused extinction of various Bovidae genus where Domesticated Ovis appear to be the most terminally inclined.

Thus the question why would people put such characteristics on public display are they hoping to be selected by the slaughter house owner as the “Judas goat”?

Perhaps you could explain from your own perspective.

observer • November 27, 2025 4:45 AM

@Clive

The next infrastructure issue is how fo you get a suitably “fat pipe” back to China without it being noticed. Such infrastructure is very expensive and very obvious, to obvious to easily hide.

You don’t need a ‘fat pipe’ for a DoS attack.
You have repeatedly – ad nauseam I’d add – claimed here that any real-life communication system can have hidden channels that are impossible to detect. That your argumentation for this claim is somewhat shoddy and based on a misinterpretation of Simmons’ paper doesn’t change the fact that this is in contradiction to the quote above. At least try to be consistent.

Clive Robinson • November 27, 2025 5:55 AM

@ observer,

With regards your comments.

Firstly I was not talking about DoS or more correctly DDoS attacks which is what you are badly implying. As should have been quite apparent from what I said about collecting citizens data.

But also you appear not to be cognisant of the fact that DDoS attacks can be handled by current infrastructure if operated in a concerted manner. The current primary reason they are not is that such systems like Lawful Access Back Doors are capable of being taken over by others due to what are seen as security mechanisms that are insufficient secure.

My fat pipe reference is to “collect it all” style “hoover it all up” surveillance techniques that were pioneered and still in progress against US and other nations citizens by US Government agencies. Which is what the environmental disaster of the Utah Bluffdale center is apparently all about.

Also known as the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center it is supposedly where every electronic communication on publicly available networks is stored in one form or another.

The reason being to create a virtual “time machine” for surveillance purposes.

The implication of the noise from various less than reputable sources is that Huawei and Chinese Government Surveillance Agencies were doing the same as in effect a fake news scare tactic to push a political mantra.

I simply pointed out why this was very probably not the case for quite practical reasons.

Now if you disagree with that stop trying strawman arguments and stick to the facts without invention.

With regards my past comments about Shannon Channels and the work of Gus Simmons, you appear not to understand them and the important part redundancy plays in them.

Shannon pointed out and offered proof that communication of information was only possible with redundancy. Gus Simmons later pointed out that where ever there was redundancy available then it could be used to set up another Shannon Channel within an existing Shannon Channel and further it was possible to make it covert or the equivalent of unintelligible by encryption.

The important point to note is that redundancy automatically implies that the covert channel has lesser bandwidth and higher latency.

I’m fairly sure that if your statement of,

“That your argumentation for this claim is somewhat shoddy and based on a misinterpretation of Simmons’ paper”

Is true you you should be capable of giving proof of this within 25Hours on being challenged on it, or be held in others eyes as something you would not wish to be seen as.

Consider yourself challenged at 11AM UTC, with the clock ticking.

Winter • November 27, 2025 6:30 AM

@Clive

You offer no evidence of misbehaviour by Huawei staff, and then say “no records kept”.

You probably missed my second comment
‘https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/huawei-and-chinese-surveillance.html/#comment-450201

In none of the reports in Dutch news media were Huawei accused of illegal or criminal acts. Also, there was no legal action taken against Huawei or KPN.

The actual problem were three aspects of the Huawei deployment which would nowadays be considered “Cardinal Sins”:

There was unlimited access by any Huawei personnel in the Netherlands or China, which should have been only specific access by designated and verified individuals in the Netherlands
No records were kept of sensitive access
There was no oversight by KPN

However, it was very clear that there was no way Dutch subjects or Dutch authorities could verify whether their rights under Dutch law were infringed by Huawei personnel or bad people infiltrated in Huawei. Also, there was no way Huawei could in any form offer information showing bad things had not happened.

Meanwhile, extensive Chinese espionage and cyber-crime, political and economic, has been documented. Activities that were to the detriment of European authorities, citizens, and companies.

In the discussions that followed, it was clear that there was no verifiable way Huawei products could be used without a risk of espionage, nor would there be any way to redress breaches of trust or the law. We can get back at Nokia or Ericson or any other European company, but not at any Chinese company, as the current Nexperia case has shown again.

Hence, the use of Huawei products, and any other Chinese supplier, in such crucial roles were prohibited. This was not a punishment against Huawei, but a strengthening of the security requirements.

We do know we cannot trust any American product either. But we are currently still unable to do without American products.

This would not have to be so. We can work together well with other countries, eg, the UK, Canada, Norway, or Switzerland. But the governments of China, Russia, and the USA are openly hostile to the EU, so we should limit our exposure to their actions where we can.

JS • November 27, 2025 7:49 AM

this was KPN’s Response “KPN commissioned the report as a risk analysis after the Dutch intelligence service (AIVD) issued warnings about the risks of working with Huawei. KPN stated that it used the report’s findings to implement improvements and address risks, and denied that any supplier had “unauthorized, uncontrolled or unlimited access”. KPN maintained that it never detected any customer data being stolen or eavesdropping taking place”

Winter • November 27, 2025 10:40 AM

@JS

KPN maintained that it never detected any customer data being stolen or eavesdropping taking place

Experts told the news media that KPN had no way of knowing whether or not such activities had been taken place. So this was not very assuring.

Again, this is not saying employees of Huawei have done bad things.

The whole point of the affair was that there is no way of stopping employees of Huawei to do bad things, to know whether they are doing bad things, nor to get legal redress when they have done it.

This is yet another example of “With hardware access, all bets are off”.

lurker • November 27, 2025 12:10 PM

@Wintr
“But we are currently still unable to do without American products.”

The list is shrinking and approaching zero, of American products that cannot be substituted by Chinese products of equal or better quality, performance and price. This is part of the “Chinese problem”: American industry has shot itself in the foot, and the Chinese are happy to pick up the bullets and do something more useful with them.

Winter • November 27, 2025 6:11 PM

@lurker

The list is shrinking and approaching zero, of American products that cannot be substituted by Chinese products of equal or better quality, performance and price.

Besides the point that a dependency on China does not look much better than a dependency on the USA, there is currently no alternative for globally available American hyperscalers. And no alternative in sight.

It is true that “the cloud is someone else’s computer”, but it is also someone else doing the procurement, installation, maintenance, administration, fallover, load balancing, and updating. And they do it “on the fly”. There are simply not enough engineers and expertise going around to do all that locally everywhere. It would also be extremely inefficient.

But setting up a new AWS not only means building massive data centers throughout the continent, with all the silicon, power, and connectivity, but also recruiting the 100,000+ people to build and maintain the hard- and software. I don’t see that happening soon.

Thomas • November 27, 2025 6:39 PM

@Clive Robinson

I’m 65 and I’ve been reading and following Schneier, cryptology, and hacking since the late 80’s. I rarely post here. I do not bother reading the peanut gallery comments but when it mentioned CHINA, I decided to respond.

Attacking me politically isn’t going to work. I am not aligned with any political US party.

Your posts definitely fit into the Wumao column. So there’s that. Consider a move to China, it will only cost you a kidney if you get out of line.

KC • November 27, 2025 8:23 PM

@lurker

China has a freedom score of 9 out of 100. New Zealand has a global freedom score of 99 out of 100. (let me know if you want more details.)

I’d like to understand your values. Is there a tide for all boats you want to raise?

lurker • November 27, 2025 8:56 PM

@Thomas

Please can I have an honorary membership of Wumao Gang?

@KC

I’m just sitting on the sideline, wondering why China gets blasted for Salt Typhoon when it was made possible by shoddy US software and shoddy US opsec;
wondering why China gets blasted for fentanyl when the US will not address the demand side of the problem;
observing the greatest per-capita gas-guzzling nation on Earth moaning because China saw a gap in the market and filled it with solar panels, wind turbines and EVs.

KC • November 27, 2025 9:48 PM

@lurker, thanks for your response.

Am I summarizing these values accurately?

1) Espionage is preventable, invest in security

2) In a supply-and-demand situation; manage the situation from the demand side

3) Don’t ‘moan’ about new market developments in other countries

There are also these values to consider: Press freedom, Freedom of speech, an Independent Judiciary, Free and Fair Elections, Academic Freedom, Safeguards against Corruption, Government Transparency, Civil Liberties, Freedom of Movement, Freedom of Assembly

Interestingly, across these categories and more New Zealand scored 90% higher.

Clive Robinson • November 28, 2025 3:32 AM

@ Thomas,

With regards your statements of,

“A wumao (5 Dimes) is a person that posts in support of the CCP and is part of the CCP’s 50 Cent Gang.”

“Your posts definitely fit into the Wumao column. So there’s that.”

Oh dear, all you are showing is your inability to read and comprehend without your political cognitive biases throwing you into a pseudo “loony loop”.

Firstly I have not said anything to support the “Chinese Communist Party”(CCP), and had “in fact” not mentioned them at all.

So both your comments arise because of your self delusions, making you see things that were not there.

What I had pointed out was that two people had made statements apparently supporting an accusation. But that the statements were actually devoid of facts.

Whilst “free speech” allows people to make such statements in certain public places, the people making them need to consider how it effects how others perceive them.

But as I note for both cases they are “opinion not fact” and that has significant consequences legally and diplomatically.

In a court “opinion” is generally not allowed [1], it’s considered along with hearsay to be the equivalent of false testimony.

But worse I can show in both cases the picture the opinions give can be disproved. Not just by me but by a lot of people by simple observation…

As for your,

“and facts are facts. China steals $300+ billion a year from the USA alone”

Realy “steals” or is “given”? and “$300+ billion” I think you will find that is a made up figure at best…

You really should do some basic “independent research” because then you would realise that it’s basically bovine excretion by the container ship full. Dressed up for political point scoring with people who “don’t look behind the curtain”.

As I said to @Winter, the problem is not China, but the USA and it’s ridiculous Corporate and Shareholder behaviours.

China is simply responding to that US collective stupidity. That short term thinking mentality and the other idiocies of the US Capitalist and neo-con systems. And China are winning the game by actually thinking a little further into the future and playing within the rules, which is more than can be said of the US.

The US like the UK started acting moronically back in the 1980’s with Ronnie the Raygun and Mad Maggie Thatcher had their “love in”. Where they thought “financial deregulation” was a wonderful idea, and their countries did not need manufacturing industries just financial and service industries…

Well we can all see how that nonsense turned out with both countries effectively bankrupt and so loaded with debt our great great great grand children will still be in poverty trying to clear it when they “die before they can retire”, if they are lucky enough to have jobs in the first place.

[1] There are a limited number of exceptions, from people who are sufficiently qualified to be a “Domain Expert” when they are quoting accepted doctrine from that Domain.

Unfortunately to many supposed experts give unbalanced representation of what is accepted doctrine in the Domain and this has led to a significant number of miscarriages of justice.

Thomas • November 28, 2025 5:52 AM

There are hundreds of documents regarding IP theft and espionage by China in support of this book:

The IP Commission Report
The Report Of The Commission On The Theft Of American Intellectual Property
http://www.ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_052213.pdf

FBI: The Threat Posed by the Chinese Government and the Chinese Communist Party to the Economic and National Security of the United States

Survey of Chinese Espionage in the United States Since 2000

House of Huawei: The Secret History of China’s Most Powerful Company sounds like another nail in the coffin on China

Solutions: Have the balls to disconnect and cease all trade with China. Stop all immigration from China. Declare China a terrorist state.

Clive Robinson • November 28, 2025 5:54 AM

@ KC, lurker,

With regards,

“China has a freedom score of 9 out of 100. New Zealand has a global freedom score of 99 out of 100.”

In who’s view point? and from what cultural perspective?

The “we’re better than you” scales are usually fraught with political nonsense.

After all if I was to say,

“The US has a prison population per capita that puts it in the top five in the world”[1]

“The US has the most people in prison in the World”[2]

What would you take away from that for a “freedom score”?

How would your thinking change if I then said,

“The Chinese has a prison population per capita that puts it at less than 22% of the US.”[2]

[1] From Statista and[2],

https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-the-most-prisoners-per-100-000-inhabitants/

[2] From World Population Review,

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/incarceration-rates-by-country

For each 100,000 in the US 541 are incarcerated. And in China 119. Puting the US at No5 out of 223 nations where the figures are known. With China being at No 92, less than some European nations…

nobody • November 28, 2025 6:23 AM

@Thomas

Yes, China is not our friend and we should decouple from them as much as possible.
The same can be said of USA.

@Winter is right: “But the governments of China, Russia, and the USA are openly hostile to the EU, so we should limit our exposure to their actions where we can.”

KC • November 28, 2025 8:00 AM

@ nobody, Winter, All

re: “But the governments of China, Russia, and the USA are openly hostile to the EU, so we should limit our exposure to their actions where we can.”

I asked Gemini to evaluate this statement. It gave me slightly different responses each time. In one instance …

Verdict: “The statement is a mix of accurate strategic doctrine and hyperbolic categorization.”

“The statement groups Russia, China, and the USA together as “openly hostile.” This is a significant generalization that requires nuance, as the nature of the EU’s relationship with each nation is fundamentally different.”

Further detail:

https://gemini.google.com/share/fd54b9a2cf7b

If anyone disagrees, of recommends I check out another AI, let me know.

Clive Robinson • November 28, 2025 8:17 AM

@ Thomas, ALL,

Your,

“and facts are facts. China steals $300+ billion a year from the USA alone”

Smelt fishy, so I did a little digging on the Internet where claims were 200-600 billion.

So I followed them back and guess what I found as the probable point of origin,

Mike Orlando, a career FBI agent who has specialized in counterintelligence and was at the time of interview the “Acting Director” of the “National Counterintelligence and Security Center”(NCSC).

Who is quoted as saying,

blockquote>“We believe that there’s no other country than China that poses the most severe intelligence threat to America.”

Thus echoing the political mantra “scary woo woo” from the Executive and State Dept.

But he goes on to say,

“We’re looking at $200 billion to $600 billion dollars a year in losses to intellectual property theft by China. And that’s been going on for the last 20 years. That’s a pretty staggering number of loss to us.”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/foreign-espionage-threats-u-s-intelligence-matters-podcast/

Do the math and the FBI Man is claiming 8 trillion dollars, not “$300+ billion”.

Now even US judges have basically called FBI persons deceitful and dishonest in what they say in court under oath… And most people in ICTsec used to say similar when the FBI made claims against crackers for millions of damages…

In short FBI claims are not based on evidence and thus can not be factual, or in any way believed. Their purpose appears to be for publicity and similar comments made about their “inventing terrorists” all to impress gullible congress critters at appropriations time.

But on a historical note, for well over a century the US stole IP from other countries and their citizens. I’ve gone through this in the past when it’s effected my personally. As have several more famous people doing serious documentaries for Television. One of whom –Jeremy Clarkson– famously commented after debunking many “invented in America” myths that it appeared the only thing the US had ever actually invented was “condensed milk”…

Clive Robinson • November 28, 2025 9:00 AM

@ KC,

With regards,

“I asked Gemini to evaluate this statement.”

You asked a halucinating LLM AI…

With regards the US hating the EU.

It’s a matter of recorded fact, that more than one US Ambassador has said the US wants to destroy europe.

The most recent,

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/lzFra_pOe1c

KC • November 28, 2025 9:32 AM

Clive.

The former US Ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, appears to be petitioning Europe to support Ukraine. Why do you think he seems to support Europe brokering a minerals deal?

Winter • November 28, 2025 11:23 AM

“The statement groups Russia, China, and the USA together as “openly hostile.” This is a significant generalization that requires nuance, as the nature of the EU’s relationship with each nation is fundamentally different.”

Russia’s president motivates his brutal war against Ukraine as a response to evil European policies. The current US president has started a trade war on tariffs and said

that the European Union was formed to “screw” the United States,…

Sounds like the definition of “openly hostile”

The Chinese government has currently blocked the export of crucial components because a European government applied the law to a Chinese CEO of a European company. Their rethoric is not particularly supportive.

That was after having blocked the export of other resources earlier.

The Chinese support to Russia in their open and stealth ward against European countries is not openly hostile, I admit.

Clive Robinson • November 28, 2025 12:29 PM

@ KC,

With regards,

“The former US Ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, appears to be petitioning Europe to support Ukraine.”

Because Trump has sided with Putin for a few million in profit, and the US nolonger supplies arms to Ukraine. Also the 28 point plan from “King Trumper” is basically going to turn the Ukraine into a vassal state of Putin and be run as badly if not worse than Belarus.

As for,

“Why do you think he seems to support Europe brokering a minerals deal?”

Well there are several reasons, the biggest issue is that the EU has a really bad foreign policy arrangement. That is all EU States have to agree not a 2/3rds majority or a simple majority.

For the EU to actually come to the aid of the Ukraine then some EU countries are going to ask

“What’s in it for us?”

A minerals deal that kicks the US one out, would not just teach “King Trumper” a lesson, it would also compensate for the fact the 28 point Trumper plan basically not giving the Ukraine money to rebuild it’s self. That is the Trumper will take and use the Russian money to pay off his buddies etc via “family connections”…

The problem the EU has, is that Putin will see it as a success and will then move on to other ex Soviet Union nations.

In effect WWII will be re-opened…

But it appears I’m not alone in my misgivings about “King Trumper”, “Emperor Putin” and the nonsense they have cooked up,

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/here-s-what-europe-and-ukraine-can-do-with-trump-s-peace-ultimatum/ar-AA1QWCRA

But the one thing you can be certain of it’s a “Peace Plan” that will in no way lead to peace, and has all the hallmarks of swinging over into a broad front Russia v Europe and will probably kick off around Kaliningrad,

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18284828

If you’ve been keeping up with the news the two EU nations have taken a very dim view of Putin’s behaviours and have in effect put the clamps down on the tracks between Russia and Kaliningrad Oblast.

The behaviour being not just Russia attacking the Ukraine. It’s also the fact that Russia has moved long range nuclear capable missiles in and are carrying out GNS jamming and spoofing of the EU and US systems.

lurker • November 28, 2025 12:36 PM

UK, US, two nations separated by a common language. The book subject of this thread has downloadable endnotes ( a common feature nowadays ). There are two distinct sets of endnotes available for each of the US and UK versions of the book. I can’t yet do a diff on them because the US version uses custom encoded fonts with invalid weights.

My copy of the book is still in the post …

KC • November 28, 2025 4:13 PM

@ Winter

that the European Union was formed to “screw” the United States

Oh my. Of the last 14 us presidents, this one has averaged the lowest approval rating.

@ Clive

re: the ‘Peace Plan’

Thanks for your thoughts, and the link to the article. I’m sure the final revised plan will be of interest to many.

@ lurker

I don’t know how you downloaded the ‘Notes’. The Additional Reading list looks phenomenal. Am definitely enjoying Eva Dou’s writing, and narrator Nancy Wu is easy to listen to; I see she teaches meditation which isn’t all together surprising.

lurker • November 28, 2025 5:17 PM

@KC re endnotes

I just used the right search engine looking for background on Eva Dou. I’ve become disillusioned by the slew of books written by female authors with a chip on their shoulder because their well-to-do families were dispossessed when the communists took over China.

https://houseofhuawei.com/

KC • November 28, 2025 6:47 PM

@lurker, oh wow. Thank you.

Clive Robinson • November 29, 2025 12:23 AM

@ lurker,

Re : “UK, US, two nations separated by a common language.”

As well as politics…

On the face of it, it “appears odd” to have two different sets of end notes.

So I downloaded the UK end notes and had a flick through them, –they are almost a book in themselves– and I see there are references to certain “US Government cables” in there…

For legal reasons driven by politics these might have been “tactfully omitted” in the US version.

I’m only part way through the UK end notes so the US version will take a while to get to.

Thomas • November 29, 2025 12:30 AM

@Clive Robinson

YES, more than $8 trillion in IP has been stolen since China joined the WTO. I posted where the information comes from. $300 to $600 billion per year comes out to around $8 trillion total.

I’ll repost the following.

There are hundreds of documents regarding IP theft and espionage by China in support of this book:

The IP Commission Report
The Report Of The Commission On The Theft Of American Intellectual Property
http://www.ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_052213.pdf

ResearcherZero • November 29, 2025 12:31 AM

Foreign spies are targeting Americans and attempting to extract information from them.

Mail any documents to me and in return I’ll send you $1000. (in monopoly money) 😉

‘https://www.govexec.com/defense/2025/11/foreign-spies-are-targeting-army-soldiers-civilians-and-families-official-warns/409753/

Thomas • November 29, 2025 1:13 AM

@Clive Robinson

KC,

With regards,

“The former US Ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, appears to be petitioning Europe to support Ukraine.”

NOPE. This thread is funny. So many misstatements and fallacies. Stop reading the local bird cage news and start to read Trump’s actual statements.

The reason why Trump is telling NATO and EU to build their militaries up and to stop buying Russian oil and gas is because they are feeding the beast and Russia is getting ready to attack them. The US is predicting Russia will attack them within less than a decade.

Trump has said at least two dozen times the reason why NATO and EU must support Ukraine is because the war is in their backyard. The Atlantic is between the US and the war, and nobody here wants to commit any more money and certainly no troops to NATO and EU’s war.

The US wants no part of the war. Has nothing to do with PooTeen, who is a nutjob.

Clive Robinson • November 29, 2025 4:51 AM

@ Thomas, ALL,

With regards the idiocy of US Corporations “giving IP away” then turning around and claiming they’ve had billions stolen.

Have a read of the top link @ResearcherZero gives in,

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/friday-squid-blogging-flying-neon-squid-found-on-israeli-beach.html/#comment-450267

India is and will continue to do what China has done, so will Brazil and I assume Russia as well if anyone is daft enough to get manufacturing done there.

Do you really think Boeing are the only US Corp to be this dumb?

Of course not most of the exhibit the same stupidity.

It’s not illegal for any company to carry on developing and using IP “trade secrets” it has been given.

I’ve been going on about this stupidity for years here and other places, and people in the US just don’t wake up to it. Even though China made it “Nakedly Obvious”.

The funny thing is that many Chinese companies / conglomerates have “taken the ball and run with it” and pushed way ahead on IP.

Huawei for instance has a large number of 5G patents that the “US Boys Club” were nowhere close to as they’ve not really been doing actual leading edge R&D. Thus the US response is “Kill 5G” and make sure the US gets all the 6G Patents. Only it’s not working out as planned.

The claims about US IP value are really very much “over inflated” for tax, lawfare, and political reasons. They have no basis in reality what so ever, which is the point I was making about the supposed $8 trillion. The only way that could be true was if it was “Monopoly Money” printed out in thousand ton lots.

Oh and as for NATO spending, what sparked it off is in fact that the EU is not spending the money on the US Arms Industry. Worse France in particular has been telling EU Ministers to not waste money in the US but keep it in Europe. A view point that has been helped along by the disaster and significantly over priced F35 is.

The thing is US manufacturing due to stupidity of politicians and corporate managers is slow and inefficient, and not going to show signs of improvement in the next couple of decades or so.

Worse Europe is only to aware of what the US has been doing to try and destroy the EU thus has to view the US as a very real and present threat unlike China or even Russia.

Clive Robinson • November 29, 2025 10:10 AM

@ Thomas, ALL,

Someone is always going to invade, just like a thief will invade your home.

What keeps them out is one of four things,

1, The potential invader makes more by trading with you.
2, You have nothing to be invade for.
3, You have sufficient defence to not be the low hanging fruit.
4, You have weapons of total annihilation and the known willingness to use them if attacked.

Obviously the cost of these defences rises as you go from 1 to 4 with position 1 being the most beneficial for all.

If you can not maintain peace by mutual beneficial trade that profits all parties, then the ideal place to be is position 3.

However there is a problem, how much do you spend?

As I’ve indicated a number of times on this blog in the past this is the defence spending paradox…

“You only know it is to little when you get invaded, you never know if it is too much”.

The big problem is there is always a significant delay in “Defence Economics” and part of the equation is how fast can you deter an invader. Which is where intelligence and allies come into play.

NATO is supposedly a “joint effort” not against Russia as such but to,

“Keep Peace in Europe, and thereby stop a third world war starting there.”

Not understanding this is where many people go wrong (mostly so far it’s been US politicians making this mistake)

That is NATO primarily acts as an intelligence and clearing organisation spying as much on it’s members as it does on external threats. Thus hopefully gaining sufficient time to get inside of a potential attackers “Observe, Orient, Decide, Act”(OODA) “Decision-Making loop”(DM-loop).

If you can change the game faster than a potential attacker, you can keep them in either the Observe or Orient stages and out of the Decide or Act stages.

For thousands of years people have been told the way to defeat an opponent is to keep them “unbalanced” direct strength is usually not required. Because when unbalanced the opponent is in effect “fighting themselves”.

Where it has gone wrong is with the US. Coming out of WWII the US had full manufacturing capability, and most of Europe had none, and not even the ability to feed it’s self.

At first US Politicians decided they wanted revenge and compensation thus “blood money”. It was this sort of stupidity that was the primary cause of WWII. We get taught all sorts of nonsense at school for political reasons. But the simple fact was WWII was going to happen due to the Great War (WWI) reparations. And the Great War was not started by Archduke Ferdinand getting shot, that was just the spark. What caused it was the political situation equivalent to the long term pilling up barrels of gun powder. The spark could have been anything, anywhere and not just in Europe.

This is the problem with the 4th position. You get that “god-hood madness” of thinking that not only is “might right” but also “protectionism / tribute” is owed…

The US politicians initially decided to bleed the little that was left in Europe, and if it had happened it would have been an unmitigated disaster. Because as history shows Tribute Empires always end up destroying themselves or being destroyed. Which is why the Soviet Union collapsed (something Putin apparently can not get his head around).

What happened was the Marshall Plan and about 5% of US GDP was given in goods to the west of Europe to enable it to not only get back on it’s feet, be self sufficient in production and most importantly “trading”. Thus bringing the European nations into position 1.

What many do not realise is that the 13billion or so mainly in food and goods was a significant economic push for the US as well and significantly built it’s GDP for the next half decade.

I happen to be one of the people that happened because of the Marshall Plan, and the CARE Packages from US families. Because it’s fairly clear my parents would probably not have survived without it and it’s spin off. Most are aware of Red Cross Parcels and how they are used for prisoners of war and in war torn places. Well outside of the US Government and US Politicians, US Families started sending out food parcels to Europe, and many including my parents would probably not have survived with out them.

Most Americans have heard of “Care Packages” that family and friends send when they go to college (also called Freshman 101 by some). But few know that CARE Package originally stood for “Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe” and were boxes of food sent to Europe to prevent starvation[1].

Clearly the population of the US was at odds with quite a few US politicians of the time (some things apparently stay the same). And in effect CARE is the only US aid to the Ukrainian people currently.

But the Marshall plan not only succeeded, it built the US Economy Post War and one spin off was NATO, which as I indicated kept the various European Nations from starting WWIII.

The thing is though that certain US politicians and especially those in the State Dept have a “sense of grievance” The believe the Europe should not just repay –which they have– but keep paying and paying and paying. The coterie of the cult of Trump believe that Europe should give 5% of European GDP year after year endlessly as well as provide cannon fodder for US initiated military action and wars.

The Europeans mostly do not agree with this view point nor do quite a few Americans.

Because mostly they know that the “tribute” will go in “the select few” back pockets whilst also fund development of US weapons to go and start other wars (China and Iran were the most likely).

But also the US State Department and others have been trying to destroy the EU…

So ask a sensible question,

“If you have good reason to believe that the US is actually your enemy to be, why would you buy your weapons of defence from them?”

It would be stupid at best, a point the French, Italians, Poles, Estonians and more recently even the Germans have been considering.

Especially when other nations produce better weapons for the price.

It’s why Trump is upset, his plan to make big bucks from the EU through the US arms industry has in effect failed. The EU have seen how the US have held the Ukraine back to continue the meat grinder that is the Russian Front. With the plan being to frighten other NATO members into handing over their defence budgets to the US to protect against Russia. Hence the reason Trump want’s Putin to have a victory, so that he will put pressure on the other NATO countries to hand over “tribute” for nothing in return.

It’s one of the reasons some NATO members think it’s time to have an independent “European Defence Force” without the US making trouble for every one else and dragging them in…

[1] You can read more about the original CARE Packages at,

https://www.careinternational.org.uk/about/our-history/

More than 80 years later CARE still exists and gives aid all over the world from all over the world not just where it started in the US.

lurker • November 29, 2025 11:42 AM

@Clive
re endnotes

The US pdf weighs in at 4MB, vs, 1.2MB for the UK version. Some of this will be formatting and the embedded broken fonts, pdftotext gives only a 20k difference. But their value to future researchers and historians is already diminished by printing web urls as references in a hard copy book. The endnotes to the US edition introduce random space characters in the urls, the uk edition only sometimes at linewraps. Even with corrections, a small sample of five urls delivered two pages, two 404s, and a “This Gift URL has expired.”

Clive Robinson • November 29, 2025 8:50 PM

@ lurker,

Such differences as you have found as well as the percentage of errors in such a small sample, does not give any kind of confidence in the whole…

Whilst I personally dislike URLs to the Web as references and I always have done (which is why my dead tree cave has a lot of print outs). It’s not just because URLs are impermanent at best, but also what they point to can be changed or deleted at the source at any time, or censored by outside third parties blocking access, redirecting DNS etc etc.

Then of course there is “access tracking”. It amazes me sometimes why researchers don’t realise just how much information they leak when they go searching for information.

Back last century, as I’ve mentioned before, I worked for a Citation / Abstract database company and as we moved from CD/DVD as the update mechanism to “online” we allowed researchers to “save their searches” on the server. The company got purchased and the organisation that took over had a very non benign attitude to the “customer searches”, and considered the customer searches as the companies property to keep and use… and I don’t just mean for improving customer experience. One downside that became immediately apparent was University Researchers shared a central “Learning Resource Center”(LRC) account thus their searches became available to just about anyone in the University or someone who knew how to use the University Network Cache to fake being on the University IP address range…

However sometimes such URLs are the only way to gain access due to a third parties rules (think journals and their “pay till you bleed” firewalls)…

It’s a problem with “Open Access” that libraries used to give. The old way you could just go in and take a book off the shelf and go to a reading table to use it and in effect nobody would know what you were reading (or particularly care). However with online systems the price you pay for “Open Access” is also the near 100% surveillance by third parties.

It’s something the drugs companies were acutely aware of and they refused to switch from optical media to Online-Access point blank (and for good reason even a sniff of what they were looking at was worth millions if not more to their competitors).

nobody • December 1, 2025 8:24 AM

@Thomas

Are you not going to defend Ukraine, even if the gave up their nukes and nuclear bombers for your promise to defend them if attacked?
Fine, then give then back nukes and nuclear bombers.

Are you not going to defend Europe?
Fine, then take back your bases from there and get out of NATO.

lurker • December 11, 2025 4:03 AM

I’ve read the book. If it were used as a script for a movie. there would be two movies, an American one, and a Chinese one, and they would appear to be about mostly different topics.

My takeaway: the US blocked Huawei* because
1. US spies were unable to find any spyware in Huawei’s systems, which made them afraid of the unknown.
2. Huawei achieved the American Dream (fame and fortune) outside the American socio-political scene;
3. Chinese growth in technology, finance, global trade and diplomacy, caught the US unawares; there can be room for only one hegemon.

By divesting the distracting Honor smart phone division, Huawei was able to concentrate on and succeed in chip manufacture both for 5G and AI , rendering US sanctions pointless. Whether it was the hard graft of focussed R&D, or industrial espionage and IP theft, Huawei have shown they will not be slapped down. They might also have demonstrated the stability of a 5 Year Plan worked better for them than the fickleness of Wall St. This story is not finished.

KC • December 11, 2025 7:46 AM

@lurker

At least one agency ‘was using Huawei’s infrastructure to listen in on targets around the globe.’

What stops any actor from doing the same?

Rontea • December 11, 2025 10:59 AM

Thank you for the book recommendation Professor Schneier.
What impressed me most was the way Dou presents the complexities of Huawei’s journey without oversimplifying. The book is meticulously researched, full of compelling anecdotes, and paints a vivid picture of the personalities and decisions that shaped Huawei’s trajectory.

lurker • December 11, 2025 11:58 AM

@KC

More than one agency has used CALEA backdoors to listen in on targets around the globe.

Nothing stops any actor from doing the same.

It’s Spy vs. Spy out there. Ren Zhengfei was willing to allow concerned govts to examine his code in a secure facility. His worry was that his code might leak to his commercial competitiors.

Clive Robinson • December 11, 2025 12:27 PM

@ lurker,

With regards,

blockquote>“Whether it was the hard graft of focussed R&D, or industrial espionage and IP theft,”

Remember this is refering to areas where Huawei’s expertise was effectively “Open for any to see”.

In two different ways,

1, The 5G technology patents.
2, The technology center in the UK.

Other than the known and provable fact the UK Commercial section of GCHQ broke the agreement with Huawei by repeatedly “backdooring in US NSA personnel” to in effect “steal data” on Huawei’s “processes and other trade secrets”.

The “US Experts found nothing” in the way of even a “cold unloaded pistol” let alone a smoking gun or holes in a target. That they could give to their “Political Masters”.

All they found was a very busy technology company following in effect standard procedures of even US equivalent technology companies. That in short was “rushed and messy”.

Which back then I noted on this blog “was not unsurprising and in effect expected” behaviour. I could say this having worked in two different UK companies and a South Korean company in the same technology discipline.

So all the “NSA Experts” smuggled in by “UK GCHQ staff” had for their “US Politico masters”,

“Come home with a big fat nothing burger.”

I further gave reasons why the US made fools of themselves which was to “kill off 5G” and that way “try and fail” to get out from under the “Huawei Patents” so that the US could make a grab for 6G status.

The thing is the US Companies that had done such things in the past, either nolonger existed or were owned by “other Nations”, such as Israel and China who had put in large sums of investment to US entities to acquire them.

I’ve still to see any argument from the “US NSA Experts” or their “Political Masters” that justify the “dumb ass claims” they’ve made. And to justify the “throwing the toys out of the pram in a fit of conniption and pique” behaviours because they found nothing to even remotely try to claim moral high ground or any actual proof.

Whilst there is a possibility that some might say,

“ah but, they did and did not say anything because they wanted it to spy on others”

It’s not even a “whataboutism” because if that was the case why did they try every trick to kill 5G?

Logically it’s an argument that does not carry any “useful load” for anyone.

However what it does indirectly show just how far “US Corporatism” based on neo-con thinking and gross short sightedness has destroyed “US Industry” since the 1960’s. Which enabled,

1, Japan
2, Taiwan
3, South Korea
4, Europe
5, China

To kill off US Industry and jobs, to the point they can not be brought back in anything much less than the same time period of more than “Three Score Years and Ten”…

As far as “industry” is concerned the US really only has “Defence” as being vaguely viable. Hence the Doh-Gnarled demanding Europe to spend 5% of European GDP “propping it up”.

Unsurprisingly the French have quite bluntly pointed out what that really means which is “selling out European Industry” and having “The US kill Europe off, sell it out to Russia, or both”.

Which is why Nations in Europe are now collaborating with not just each other for Defence Development, but have also started collaborating with others including the first three Far East Nations on the list above.

Without most US Citizens realising it, US Politicians and their neo-con masters,

“Have turned the US into Public Enemy ‘Numero Uno'”

And it’s getting worse as the rest of the Western World sees “the orange little hands” getting played worse than a cheap guitar, and trussed up like a festive turkey at the top of Putin’s wish list.

lurker • December 11, 2025 4:44 PM

@Clive Robinson

It’s the “nothing burger” that’s the problem. The US administration has a hard job believing that other people aren’t all as underhand as them.

My personal experience with Huawei code is limited to disassembling a couple of handset roms. They were “rushed and messy”, full of fiddles to try and improve it, but there was discipline and rigour in the way every fiddle was meticulously commented: who, when, what, why. Was Huawei just being sloppy again in leaving all those comments visible in production code?

And it’s a nothingburger too on the presence or absence of backdoors in Ericsson or Nokia 5G networks. The US turns the other way while the NSA syphons up everybody’s data from any brand network. Then they jump up and down in (mock) surprise when the Chinese take advantage of the invitations given by Cisco, MS, et al.

Huawei and Chinese Surveillance

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