During a Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, 6 top Intelligence Agencies Warned American citizens to avoid using mobiles phones and gadgets of Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, according to the report from CNBC.
Intelligence agencies included; FBI, The CIA, The NSA, the director of National Intelligence and others have strongly opposed the use of Chinese company’s products and services by US citizens, as they think that Chinese government is spying over them through these technologies, considering it a potential threat to the US national security.
The US officially banned Huawei products biding for US government contracts in 2014. Despite that, Huawei decided to launch its new Mate 10 pro-flagship in the US through a partnership with AT&T but the deal pulled off at the last minutes due to government’s pressure.
As of now, the intelligence agencies of the US have come into action against the Chinese companies. The director of FBI Chris Wray states;
“The government was deeply concerned about the risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don’t share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunications networks. The capacity to maliciously modify or steal information. And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage.”
Huawei is the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer after Samsung and Apple. While it has also surpassed Apple last year, at least for one month in smartphone shipments.
Meanwhile, one of the US congressmen has recommended the bill to ban government employees from using Chinese smartphone manufacturer company’s Huawei and ZTE phones.
In response to these bans, a spokesperson of Huawei said, “Huawei is aware of a range of U.S. government activities seemingly aimed at inhibiting Huawei’s business in the U.S. market. Huawei is trusted by governments and customers in 170 countries worldwide and poses no greater cybersecurity risk than any ICT vendor, sharing as we do common global supply chains and production capabilities.”
Although, Huawei and ZTE have been successfully selling their products in China and Europe, yet they are unable to earn much in the US market due to the speculations that US government have. The US intelligence Agencies have described Chinese products as “effectively an arm of the Chinese Government”.
