Is it just me, or does it appear that we're okay with selling our cyber-soul to China (and Russia), as long as we can also blow tens of billions on US firms pretending to do cyber-security?
Report: Despite status as U.S. security threat, China's Huawei partnering with Symantec
East-Asia-Intel.com, April 27, 2011
The Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies, which has been linked to the Chinese military, is working with the U.S. software security giant Symantec, which is engaged in securing hundreds of thousands of U.S. computer systems against outside intrusions, according to a report last week in the Diplomat newsletter.
The report said “China and Russia are leveraging U.S. multinational corporations' economic requirements to accomplish strategic goals that could quite plausibly include covert technology transfer of intellectual property, access to source code for use in malware creation and backdoor access to critical infrastructure.”
Huawei was blocked from buying the U.S. telecom 3Leaf last year by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and also was blocked in 2008 from buying 3Com over security concerns. The U.S. National Security Agency also stepped in to dissuade AT&T from buying Huawei telephone equipment.
Despite those actions, Huawei formed a joint venture with Symantec in 2007 called Huawei Symantec Technologies Co. Ltd. (HS), the report said. Huawei is the majority partner with 51 percent ownership, with the entity being headquartered in Chengdu, China.
The report said a 2008 report identified HS as developing “China's first laboratory of attack and defense for networks and applications.”
The result is that Symantec is assisting China's cyber development of computer warfare capability.
The report was produced by cyber security expert Jeffrey Carr, author of Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld (O'Reilly, 2009).
Phi Beta Iota: The US Government compounds its lack of a strategic analytic model and the requisite integrity to actually pay attention to whatever findings might emerge, with an abysmal inattention to the most basic aspects of counter-intelligence, not just within government, but across the private sector, which does not actually take counter-intelligence seriously either. Creating a Smart and Safe Nation is not difficult–it requires only a uniform commitment to intelligence and integrity across all boundaries.
