Department of Homeland Security is advising U.S. companies to cease business with Chinese companies. The D.H.S business advisory published yesterday says that US companies should avoid “data services and equipment” from Chinese companies. The report is 15 pages. Businesses are exposing “themselves and their customers to heightened risks” according to the report.
This includes sharing data flows to servers as well as using devices created by companies. Companies having “an ownership nexus in the People’s Republic of China” pose the most threat. The report repeats the same two major objections US officials raised about Chinese tech companies.
The country’s new legal regime can order people to divulge confidential information to officials. Secondly, that Chinese companies which benefit from the government’s financial and technical support cannot be seen as neutral. The risk that officials can quietly order the inclusion of backdoors or easily exploited vulnerabilities make government surveillance easy.
“Stolen intellectual property,” adds the document, has been “essential” to bolstering the technical knowledge and capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army. And as well as stolen knowledge, the report says that China uses its growing technological footprint to monitor opposition figures and dissidents. It cites the example of a Huawei-built, China-funded data center in Papua New Guinea which, when finished, was described by Data Center Dynamics as being built with “glaring errors that opened the facility up to spying.”
This advisory comes shortly after the FCC officially banned Huawei and ZTE equipment. It also comes after the approval of funds to remove Huawei and ZTE equipment from U.S. carriers’ networks. The U.S. government continues its crusade to completely remove any signs of Chinese technology from the country. With this, it seems to be one step closer to its goal.
