It looks like Huawei versus the USA is getting heated!
The ongoing kerfuffle between China’s leading tech company and “The greatest country in the world” has up till now mostly comprised of the USA throwing accusations that Huawei is a vessel used by the Chinese government to spy on US citizens and Huawei vehemently rejecting those accusations. It’s a pretty petty back and forth.
In a fresh new round of charges, the US Justice Department has charged Huawei and two US subsidiaries with racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to steal trade secrets. Yup. Prosecutors even went as far as to label the Chinese giants as a criminal enterprise. To recap, Huawei are also facing other charges that include racketeering, fraud and fresh allegations of trade theft. I don’t know about you guys but that’s a lot of charges.
The US DoJ allege that Huawei have been running a decades long attempt at stealing the intellectual property of six US companies, who remain unnamed. Apparently, the Chinese tech giants got its hands on sensitive documents such as trade secrets and copyrighted work by making confidentially agreements before breaking them right after. The company also allegedly recruited employees from its competitors using professors as proxies and even went as far at to offer bonuses to employees who could obtain confidential information about its competitors.
And it doesn’t end there!
Huawei also (again apparently) did a bunch of other shady stuff that allowed it to cut its research and development costs to achieve a competitive edge. On top of that, Huawei is also accused of giving misstatements to the US officials investigating the case.
Both the FBI and the DoJ have charged Huawei for breaching sanctions against North Korea by helping its government with domestic surveillance. The Chinese company are already in some hot water with the US as it is, with the first charges against the company filed a year ago on accusations that it stole technology from T-Mobile and breached sanctions on Iran (or iRan if you’re a yank).
In Huawei’s defence..
It’s all one big mess at this point, really. Of course, Huawei rejected Washington’s latest accusations:
“These new charges are without merit and are based largely on recycled civil disputes from the past 20 years that have been previously settled, litigated and, in some cases, rejected by federal judges and juries,”
– Huawei spokesperson.
While the accusations against Huawei are strong worded, it’s hard to place any real basis or legitimacy to it when it’s coming from a country who’s president is someone who’s a permanent clown. It’s just becoming a little too obvious that this is a power move from the Trump administration against China.
Don’t get me wrong, I would gladly call out Huawei on their shit, but all the allegations against the company at this point just seem a little too much, especially since the US have been trying and failing to convince other countries to hop on board this anti Huawei bus. Is American intelligence becoming a joke? Based on the stance of it’s European counterparts, yes. Of course, Huawei could very well be guilty of all those things but until it’s been proven without doubt, it really does seem more like anti China sentiments than actual facts.
