Turnbull’s memoir reveals there was no “smoking gun” to justify banning Huawei 5G
Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash. @rami_alzayat
Huawei a plaything of the communist party? In Turnbull’s memoir, A Bigger Picture, he concedes there was no “smoking gun” to ban Huawei 5G on national security grounds. Huawei lawyers Nick Xenophon and Mark Davis report.
Since Huawei was banned by the Turnbull Government from supplying equipment for the roll-out of Australia’s 5G network in 2018, the company has endured endless abuse, smears and financial damage. The clear innuendo that followed the government’s decision was that Huawei was engaging in activity that was a threat to the national security of Australia and other western nations.
Suspicions that Huawei was a spy front were repeated around the world ad nauseum and given the legitimacy of being based on undisclosed “Australian intelligence”. But in his newly released autobiography, Malcolm Turnbull has let the cat out of the bag on what that Australian intelligence was. Nothing. Zilch. Zip.
According to Turnbull, there was no suspicious behaviour by Huawei in Australia at all. He says there was no “smoking gun”. The decision was based on a hypothetical scenario and that “our approach was a hedge against a future threat”. That future threat was based on nothing but the ethnic origin of the company. It was Chinese. In short, Huawei did nothing wrong in this country at all. Its reputation was trashed for a “hedge”.
Even the unpredictable US President Donald Trump was “impressed and a little surprised” by the former prime minister’s move in what would be the last phone call between the two, according to Turnbull.
Despite a complete lack of evidence, the Government and the intelligence bureaucracy stood by and watched as “Australian intelligence” was referred to reverentially around the world as a basis to damage an honest company.
These slurs were picked up and amplified by ideologically-driven think-tanks such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) that escalated and amplified the innuendo. At one point, ASPI even suggested in an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review June 17, 2019 that garbage trucks in Bendigo could be a risk to national security if fitted with WiFi sensors supplied by Huawei. Garbage indeed.
The baseless attacks that flowed from the Government’s decision and its failure to elaborate on it caused Huawei to suffer billions in financial damage and thousands of people to lose their jobs and careers, including many hundreds in this country. All this from a government that extolled the virtues of the rule of law, free enterprise and a level playing field for business.
There may be legitimate security concerns about foreign companies operating in Australia. That is why we have intelligence agencies to analyse and deal with such threats. But in Huawei’s case the threat assessment came down to nothing more than the nationality of the company.
Imagine the outrage if China banned Qantas because there was a hypothetical risk of the carrier being used – some time in the future – to fly spies in and out of the country. Just hedging, mind you.
Leaving aside the sheer offensiveness of that approach, ethnicity is the poorest basis to make a security decision. It is a simplistic test that is very simply dodged by any hostile agent. Ironically, the Huawei ban will lead to 5G equipment coming from Nokia and Ericsson production facilities in China that are jointly owned by the Chinese state.
Surely the approach of the UK, the Germans and others to have the strongest oversight of all providers, whatever their nationality, is the logical and proper course.
Turnbull in his book offers a hint of the real threat posed by Huawei and its world-leading technology.
“It concerned me that over many years, the United States and its top allies had allowed leadership in wireless technology to shift to China and to Europe. This is arguably the most enabling technology of our time; it seemed absurd that the United States and its closest allies like Australia weren’t leading players.”
Every imaginable anti-Chinese slur has been hurled at Huawei on both social media and mainstream media over the past two years, not the least of which is that it is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. It seems that suave commentators have learnt that every old racist trope can be wheeled out if it masquerades as an attack on the “communists”.
The communist accusation against Huawei could not be more widely off the mark. There are state-owned businesses in China that are highly likely to be heavily influenced and controlled by the government. Huawei is not one of those companies.
Huawei isn’t state owned or a plaything of the communist party. It is a phenomenally successful capitalist enterprise. Perhaps that is its true crime in the trade war that is unfolding around us.
Disclosure:
Nick Xenophon and Mark Davis are partners in law firm Xenophon Davis which acts for Huawei Australia.
———————
Xenophon Davis
Nick Xenophon and Mark Davis are partners in law firm Xenophon Davis which acts for Huawei Australia. Nick has been a civil litigation lawyer for 35 years as well as being one of Australia's most successful independent politicians. Mark is well known as a foreign correspondent and investigative journalist but he has been applying those same forensic skills to the practice of law. You can follow Nick and Mark on Twitter @xenophondavis.
Huawei a plaything of the communist party? In Turnbull’s memoir, A Bigger Picture, he concedes there was no “smoking gun” to ban Huawei 5G on national security grounds. Huawei lawyers Nick Xenophon and Mark Davis report.
Since Huawei was banned by the Turnbull Government from supplying equipment for the roll-out of Australia’s 5G network in 2018, the company has endured endless abuse, smears and financial damage. The clear innuendo that followed the government’s decision was that Huawei was engaging in activity that was a threat to the national security of Australia and other western nations.
Suspicions that Huawei was a spy front were repeated around the world ad nauseum and given the legitimacy of being based on undisclosed “Australian intelligence”. But in his newly released autobiography, Malcolm Turnbull has let the cat out of the bag on what that Australian intelligence was. Nothing. Zilch. Zip.
According to Turnbull, there was no suspicious behaviour by Huawei in Australia at all. He says there was no “smoking gun”. The decision was based on a hypothetical scenario and that “our approach was a hedge against a future threat”. That future threat was based on nothing but the ethnic origin of the company. It was Chinese. In short, Huawei did nothing wrong in this country at all. Its reputation was trashed for a “hedge”.
Even the unpredictable US President Donald Trump was “impressed and a little surprised” by the former prime minister’s move in what would be the last phone call between the two, according to Turnbull.
Despite a complete lack of evidence, the Government and the intelligence bureaucracy stood by and watched as “Australian intelligence” was referred to reverentially around the world as a basis to damage an honest company.
These slurs were picked up and amplified by ideologically-driven think-tanks such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) that escalated and amplified the innuendo. At one point, ASPI even suggested in an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review June 17, 2019 that garbage trucks in Bendigo could be a risk to national security if fitted with WiFi sensors supplied by Huawei. Garbage indeed.
The baseless attacks that flowed from the Government’s decision and its failure to elaborate on it caused Huawei to suffer billions in financial damage and thousands of people to lose their jobs and careers, including many hundreds in this country. All this from a government that extolled the virtues of the rule of law, free enterprise and a level playing field for business.
There may be legitimate security concerns about foreign companies operating in Australia. That is why we have intelligence agencies to analyse and deal with such threats. But in Huawei’s case the threat assessment came down to nothing more than the nationality of the company.
Imagine the outrage if China banned Qantas because there was a hypothetical risk of the carrier being used – some time in the future – to fly spies in and out of the country. Just hedging, mind you.
Leaving aside the sheer offensiveness of that approach, ethnicity is the poorest basis to make a security decision. It is a simplistic test that is very simply dodged by any hostile agent. Ironically, the Huawei ban will lead to 5G equipment coming from Nokia and Ericsson production facilities in China that are jointly owned by the Chinese state.
Surely the approach of the UK, the Germans and others to have the strongest oversight of all providers, whatever their nationality, is the logical and proper course.
Turnbull in his book offers a hint of the real threat posed by Huawei and its world-leading technology.
“It concerned me that over many years, the United States and its top allies had allowed leadership in wireless technology to shift to China and to Europe. This is arguably the most enabling technology of our time; it seemed absurd that the United States and its closest allies like Australia weren’t leading players.”
Every imaginable anti-Chinese slur has been hurled at Huawei on both social media and mainstream media over the past two years, not the least of which is that it is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. It seems that suave commentators have learnt that every old racist trope can be wheeled out if it masquerades as an attack on the “communists”.
The communist accusation against Huawei could not be more widely off the mark. There are state-owned businesses in China that are highly likely to be heavily influenced and controlled by the government. Huawei is not one of those companies.
Huawei isn’t state owned or a plaything of the communist party. It is a phenomenally successful capitalist enterprise. Perhaps that is its true crime in the trade war that is unfolding around us.
Disclosure:
Nick Xenophon and Mark Davis are partners in law firm Xenophon Davis which acts for Huawei Australia.
———————
Xenophon Davis
Nick Xenophon and Mark Davis are partners in law firm Xenophon Davis which acts for Huawei Australia. Nick has been a civil litigation lawyer for 35 years as well as being one of Australia's most successful independent politicians. Mark is well known as a foreign correspondent and investigative journalist but he has been applying those same forensic skills to the practice of law. You can follow Nick and Mark on Twitter @xenophondavis.
As a semi-retired owner of a company that is heavily dependent on mission-critical IT software, I am very well aware of IT security issues and what it takes to keep your data safe.
ReplyDeleteIt would be stupidity and criminal complacency to depend on a Smoking Gun.
By the time a Bad Actor has actually carried out a Cyber Hack on your IT system (the "Smoking Gun"), severe or fatal damage would have been done to your organisation.
In IT security, you assess the threats, the various possible risks and scenarios, and you take necessary steps to guard against the Potential and Actual dangers and risks.
If your Hardware or Software Vendor is potentially untrustworthy, or may work against your interests in future , you change them, or better still, you don't install them in the first place.
Wakakakaka…
DeleteOld moneyed mfer 'playing' mission-critical IT software!
Wakakakaka…
Hope u ain't depending on the Pegasus spyware produced by NSO Group of Israel!
The Yankee version isn't for sale & use only on other friendly world leaders like Merkel!
Mmmm… potentially trustworthy INDEED.
In Malay-sia we have “backdoor gomen”, in Bullyland we have “backdoor spies” ha ha ha…
ReplyDeleteQUOTE
Huawei Reportedly Tried To Install A Data Backdoor In Pakistan Project
By Hamid GanjiAugust 17, 2021
The allegations against Huawei efforts to install backdoor in networks have reached a new case. The US-based contractor Business Efficiency Solutions (BES) has said that the Chinese OEM pushed them to install a data backdoor in a project in Pakistan. Technology theft is another charge of Huawei.
According to Engadget (via WSJ), Huawei was busy with a law enforcement safer-cities project in Lahore, Pakistan. However, Huawei wanted a backdoor to access databases and sensitive citizen and government data.
BES says that Huawei wanted to duplicate the Pakistan network to access data from Suzhou, China. Doing this requires special permissions from Pakistan authorities, and BES insisted on taking the permissions. However, Huawei initially said it did not need permissionsو and later said it had obtained the necessary permissions from Pakistan.
UNQUOTE
Wakakakakaka…
DeleteHuawei is itself a major telecommunication equipment manufacturer. Its equipments r been deployed all-over the world WITH NO PROVEN TROJAN MALWARE BEEN IDENTIFIED!
If push comes to shovel WHY should Huawei requires a third party to do data 'backdoor' encoder which it can do so more inconspicuously - (1) within its own equipments (2) lesser acknowledgement.
Business Efficiency Solutions is obviously BS-ing kaukau for whatsoever reason.
The best part is there r mfers picking up this cesspool concentrate w/o second thought & spreading further!
Todate the proven phone with 'backdoor' are products from USA and the Canada, i.e. the I-phone and the BlackBerry phone, real telecommunication spying scandals crooks confirmed so far are US and Denmark, re : Edward Joseph Snowden - the US Spy Programme.
ReplyDeleteHuawei allegation still remains an allegation, after more than 3 years accusation still cannot prove the claim. We can only conclude that China technologies is more advance than the stupid US and the rest of the world, such that they could not learn how Huawei did it, whether real or imagined!
The quality of a product, whether good or not, the integrity of a company, whether trustworthy or not, just check the track records. They should not be assumed by prejudicial blindness all because China is a communist country.
Not only phones, of any kinds.
DeleteThe Danish has help uncle Sam in doing more in alternate surveillance eavesdrops with US equipments & Israeli SW!
Wakakakakaka…
"...ethnicity is the poorest basis to make a security decision..."....?
ReplyDeleteSo what is all this about AUKUS being Anglo-Saxon...?
Bcoz the WASP by itself is blindly ethnocentric!
Delete"...ethnicity is the poorest basis to make a security decision..."....?
DeleteThat's the words of Malcolm Turnbull, ask him.
AUKUS being Anglo-Saxon, that statement is true isn't it? And it is also a fact they discarded France in favour of A-UK-US which is Anglo-Saxon isn't it?
Did Turnbull write this in his memoirs...? That he refused to listen to Top Spy's warning that Bullyland can order Huawei to shut down Oz's entire 5G network, for any reason it chooses....and by Bully-law Huawei must ikut all Bully-gomen instructions.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.smh.com.au/national/huawei-no-way-why-australia-banned-the-world-s-biggest-telecoms-firm-20210503-p57oc9.html
QUOTE
China could have shut down Australia's 5G network without Huawei ban
May 22, 2021
Much before their diplomatic ties spiraled down, Beijing could have shut down Canberra's 5G network and brought the nation to its knees if Huawei was not banned, a top spy has revealed. The Australian Signals Directorate spent more than eight months trying to find a way to make the Chinese company's telecommunications equipment acceptably safe but ultimately told the Turnbull government the risk could not be contained satisfactorily, as reported by the Sunday Morning Herald. According to the Sunday Morning Herald, "Australia was the first country to ban Huawei from its 5G system in 2018, a decision many more have followed. The government of Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to demand that Canberra reverse the veto. It is number two on a list of 14 demands released by the Chinese embassy in Canberra in November as a prerequisite to improving relations. Number one on the list calls for China's foreign investment to be unrestricted." A senior Australian spy said the main risk was not Chinese spying but that Beijing could order Huawei to disconnect the Australian 5G network altogether. "Here's the thing that most commentators get confused about with 5G, including some of our American friends," the spy told this correspondent for the new book Red Zone, extracted in Saturday's Good Weekend magazine. "It's not about the interception of telephone calls. We've got that problem with 4G, we had it with 3G," as reported by the Sunday Morning Herald. The official said the real problem was that Beijing could order Huawei or the other major Chinese telecoms gear maker, ZTE, "to switch things off, and that disrupts the country - elements of it, or the whole country. That's why you've got to be concerned. "The sewerage pump stops working. Clean water doesn't come to you. You can imagine the social implications of that. Or the public transport network doesn't work. Or electric cars that are self-driving don't work. And that has implications for society, implications for the economy." For these reasons, he said, the 5G network would be "No.1 on our critical infrastructure list" in need of protection once it was fully operational.
...con't
...con't
ReplyDeleteHuawei has always insisted that if so ordered by China's authorities, it would never comply. The prime minister who made the 2018 decision, Malcolm Turnbull, did not believe the company: "One thing you know - if the Chinese Communist Party called on Huawei to act against Australia's interests, it would have to do it," he said in an interview for the book. "Huawei says, 'Oh no, we would refuse.' That's laughable. They would have no option but to comply." Beijing passed a 2017 law that requires all companies, private as well as publicly owned, to co-operate with the Chinese government on any national security matter. But before banning Huawei, Turnbull tried to find a way to make it acceptable: "I went back and forth with Mike Burgess [then head of the ASD and now ASIO's director-general of security], pressing him to find an effective means of mitigating the risk. "I would have preferred to have all vendors available in Australia, but not at the expense of security." Burgess assembled a crack team of the ASD's best hackers, a Red Team tasked to act as Beijing. They were told to use Huawei against Australia. The vulnerabilities they exposed formed the basis for the protection measures the ASD compiled, as reported by the Sunday Morning Herald. Burgess and his staff brought the full list of more than 300 measures to Turnbull on A3 sheets of paper. They included that Australia would need to have full and sole access to the source code, full access to hardware schematics and that updates should only be done in Australia. But even then, ASD advised, the risk of the shutdown could not be fully mitigated.
UNQUOTE
Sound like sci-fi story. The power of propaganda!
DeleteOn one hand you claimed China is a backward country, GDP per capital in 2020 by world bank : Australia - US$51,812 (world No. 15) and China - US$10,500 (world No. 76). Australia is a highly developed nation while China is a developing nation. So much so you alleged China stealing the advance world technologies. But now in this story, Australia is cast as the victim with low/poor standard of technologies so much so they can't figure out how Huawei magical is so powerful, real or imagined! So which is which? Can you make up your mind?
This is Not my story. It is ASIO's.
DeleteR u telling the world that u just c&p trash w/o proper reading & analysis?
DeleteOoop… u r just a mfering genuflecting banana which hates its skin!
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/china-could-have-shut-down-australia-s-5g-network-without-huawei-ban-121052200059_1.html
ReplyDeleteWakakakakakaka…
DeleteWhat a f*cked fear mongering of know nothing!
Ooop… u DONT understand how 5G works except what u have been indoctrinated!
BTW how about applying all our farts to uncle Sam's telecommunication equipments?
DeleteLoop… friendly parties mah!
Then, why eavesdrops on auntie Merkel & god known who else?
Everybody is free to boycott Uncle Sam's equipment, just as they are free to boycott 5,000 yo Bully's.
DeleteThen, WHAT'S yr piece of c&p fart?
DeleteYr free will?
Fine!
But propagating yr twisted lie?
That's only OK for yr f*cked training!