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Clearly, the previous US administration made a big show of "standing up to China" and Huawei was a convenient pressure point. Claims that Huawei bypassed sanctions to Iran, which is the core of the Meng Wanzhou extradition case only added fuel to this.

Clearly, the previous US administration made a big show of "standing up to China" and Huawei was a convenient pressure point. Claims that Huawei bypassed sanctions to Iran, which is the core of the Meng Wanzhou extradition case only added fuel to this. But it's unclear that the substance of treating China as a rival will change much under Biden who is likely to coordinate better with US allies .

GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in the UK did an audit of Huawei's code (and hardware?) and didn't find all that much, except that it didn't seem very well written (all is relative, telecoms people tend to make fun of practices of certain Western network vendors as well).

Additionally, Huawei's CEO has , supposedly, somewhat close ties with the Chinese military and CCP and that was another red flag in this context. Those accusations don't seem all that solid. And you'd expect many people joining the CCP to lubricate dealings with the government.

GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) in the UK did an audit of Huawei's code (and hardware?) and didn't find all that much, except that it didn't seem very well written (all is relative, telecoms people tend to make fun of practices of certain Western network vendors rhyming with a popular shortening brand as well).

Additionally, Huawei's CEO has , supposedly, somewhat close ties with the Chinese military and CCP and that was another red flag in this context. Those accusations don't seem all that solid - of course you'd expect a high tech company to having some dealing with the military and many of the US's companies do as well. And you'd expect many people joining the CCP to lubricate dealings with the government.

GCHQ not finding anything may or may not mean much, but recall that state-sponsored hackers in China are suspected in a number of really high tech computer intrusions.

If we assume we could be moving to a Cold War 2, this puts China in a vastly different light than during Cold War 1 where no Western country would have bothered installing any critical Soviet civilian high tech infrastructure because that was an oxymoron.

Additionally, Huawei's CEO has somewhat close ties with the Chinese military and that was another red flag in this context.

GCHQ not finding anything may or may not mean much, but recall that state-sponsored hackers in China are suspected in a number of computer intrusions and espionage.

If we assume we could be moving to a Cold War 2, this puts China in a very different light than Russia during Cold War 1 where no Western country would have bothered installing any critical Soviet civilian high tech infrastructure because that would have been an oxymoron.

Additionally, Huawei's CEO has , supposedly, somewhat close ties with the Chinese military and CCP and that was another red flag in this context. Those accusations don't seem all that solid. And you'd expect many people joining the CCP to lubricate dealings with the government.

However, China does have a law compelling collaboration with the intelligence services.

Two pieces of legislation are of particular concern to governments — the 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law. Article 7 of the first law states that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law,” adding that the the state “protects” any individual and organization that aids it.

And it appears that organizations and individuals don’t have a choice when it comes to helping the government. The 2014 Counter-Espionage law says that “when the state security organ investigates and understands the situation of espionage and collects relevant evidence, the relevant organizations and individuals shall provide it truthfully and may not refuse.”