The FBI discovered that Huawei’s Chinese manufacturing equipment could intercept the communications of the US nuclear arsenal

The FBI and other federal agencies have spent years focusing on counterintelligence tasks to curb The dramatic escalation of Chinese espionage in the United States during the last decade.

Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated the purchase of Chinese land near critical infrastructures, closed a high-profile regional consulate that the American government considered a breeding ground for Chinese spies, and blocked what they considered clear efforts to install devices. escucha cerca de instalaciones militares y governamentes sensibles.

Segun detalla la chaina CNN, Una de las cosas más alarmestes que descubrió el FBI tiene que ver con los manufacturación de China de Huawei placed en las torres de telefonía mobile near a las military bases estudiantes en la zona rural del Mido Oeste.

Según multiples fuentes familiaridas con el asunto, el FBI determinó que esos equipments were capable of capturing and interrupting the highly restricted communications of the Department of Defense, including those used by the Strategic Command of the United States, which oversees the country’s nuclear weapons.

Although the general concern for the Huawei equipment around the US military installations is well known, it has never been informed of the existence of this investigation or its conclusions. Its origins are traced back at least to the Obama administration and it was detailed to the North American chain by more than a dozen sources, including actual and previous national security officials, all of whom spoke under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

According to the multiple sources familiar with the research, There is no doubt that the Huawei team has the capacity to intercept not only commercial cellular traffic, but also the highly restricted waves used by the military and interrupting the critical communications of the United States Strategic Command. giving the Chinese government a window of potential for the nuclear arsenal of the United States.

This investigation was so secret and sensitive, affirms CNN, that some high-level political officials of the White House and other government agencies were not informed of its existence until 2019. In September of that year, the Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones put on marcha una norm que prohibía effectively a las pequeñas de telecomunicaciones el use de Huawei y algunas otras marcas de equipos de fabricationa china. “La existencia de la investigation en los niveles más altos conviró a algunas dolomas en falcones”, ironicó un ex funcionario estadounidense consultado por ña cadena.

In 2020, the Congress approved 1.900 million dollars to eliminate the cellular technology of Chinese manufacturing of Huawei and ZTE in wide swaths of the country. Sin embargo, dos años después, ninguno de esos equipos ha sido retired y las empresas de telecomunicaciones rurales siguen esperando el dinero del reimbursement federal.

Tras su llegada a la Casa Blanca, Biden ordered the Department of Commerce to open its own investigation into Huawei para determinar si era necesario tomar medidas más urgentes para expulsar al provider de tecnologia chino de las redes de telecomunicaciones de EEUU.

Among the concerns that the national security officials pointed out is the external communication of Huawei equipment that occurs when the software is updated. Creen que esa brecha es aprovechada por el gobierno chino.

Depending on what the Department of Commerce discovers, the American telecommunications companies could be forced to quickly withdraw Huawei equipment or face fines or other sanctions.

The threat is such that this month, El Centro Nacional de Counterintelligencia y Seguridad de EEUU issued a warning to American companies and local and state governments about what it says are China’s hidden efforts to manipulate them in order to influence them. la política estadounidense.

And the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, has just traveled to London to celebrate a joint meeting with high-ranking officials of the British order to call attention to the Chinese threats.

El FBI, de hecho, abre una nueva investigación de contrainteligencia de China cada 12 horas. “Eso es probabilitate unas 2.000 investigations más o menos”, dijo Wray a la CNN. “Y eso sin hablar de sus robos cibernéticos, donde tienen un programa de hacking más grande que el de cualquier otra nación importante combineda, y han robado más personales y corporatives de los estudiantes que cualquier nación combinada”.

Tecnología china sembrada en EEUU

En su investigation, el FBI halló un patrón inquietante a lo largo de tramos de la Interstate 25 en Colorado y Montana, y en arteries hacia Nebraska. This corridor, very transited, connects some of the most secret military installations of the United States, including an archipelago of nuclear silos.

Durante años, los pequeños rural telecommunications providers have installed cheaper routers, made in China, and other technologies on mobile phone towers along I-25. and elsewhere in the region. In large part of these sparsely populated areas of the west, these small operators are the only option of cellular coverage. Y Many of them have resorted to Huawei in search of cheaper and reliable equipment.

At the end of 2011, Viaero, the major regional provider of the area, signed a contract with Huawei to provide equipment for its 3G upgrade. A decade later, Huawei technology has been installed in all of its tower fleet, with 1,000 distributed across five western states.

When the Huawei equipment began to proliferate near the US military bases, the federal investigators began to take note, according to the CNN fuentes familiaridas con el asunto.Lo que más preoccupada was that Huawei estaba vendiniendo habitualmente equipos baratos a providos rurales en casos que parécican no ser rentables para Huawei, pero que situaban sus equipos cerca de actives militares.

Con ese dato en relieve, They began to “examine Huawei more from a commercial/financial point of view”. explicó John Lenkart, former principal agent of the FBI focused on issues of counterintelligence related to China. The officials studied where Huawei’s sales efforts were concentrated and sought agreements that “didn’t make sense from the perspective of the return of investment”, said Lenkart.

“Se descubrieron muchas preoccupaciones de contrainteligencia basadas en” esas búsquedas, dijo Lenkart.

When examining Huawei’s own equipment, FBI investigators determined that they could recognize and intercept communications from the Department of Defensa’s spectrum, even though they had been certified by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“It is not technically difficult to make a device that complies with the FCC and that listens to non-public bands, but that then quietly waits for an activation trigger to listen to other bands,” said Eduardo Rojas, who directs the radio spectrum laboratory of the Universidad Aeronáutica Embry-Riddle en Florida. “Técnicamente, es feasible”.

Pero, además, they found another great concern along Interstate 25: in 2014, Viaero began installing high-definition surveillance cameras on its towers to transmit live weather and traffic.a public service that shared with local noticias organizations.

With dozens of cameras placed along I-25, The cameras provide a 24-hour bird’s-eye view of incoming traffic and climateincluso providante una warninga anticipada de los tornados.But they also inadvertently captured the movement of the United States military team and personnel, giving Beijing – or anyone else – the possibility of following the pattern of activity between a series of closely guarded military installations.

La comunidad de inteligenia determined that the transmissions en directo publicadas estaban siendo vistas y probabilidad captadas desde China

Es más, creen que It is possible that the intelligence service of Beijing “directs” the cameras, that is, it hacks the network and controls where it points.. At least some of the cameras in question functioned with Huawei networks.

At the moment the I-25 investigation was reported to the White House in 2019, counterintelligence officials began looking for other places where Chinese companies could be buying land and offering to develop a piece of municipal property, such as a park. o una antigua fábrica, a veces como parte de un acuerdo de “ciudad hermana”.

Federal officials were also alarmed by what the sources described as a series of espionage and influence activities in Houston and, in 2020, they closed the Chinese consulate there.

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