Ex-CIA Director Hayden: Huawei spied for the Chinese government

In a (calculatedly?) sensational interview with the Australian Financial Review, former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden has gone well beyond current claims lodged against Huawei, the PRC telecoms giant, and stated that western intelligence has hard evidence that the company has spied for the Chinese government. Pressed for time and heading out for week away, I want only to make several preliminary points — based on reading the actual transcript of the interview.

1. As both NSA director from 1999-2005 and CIA director from 2005-2009, Hayden clearly had access at the deepest level to cyber intelligence — and thus his statements must be given great weight.

2. That said, his most telling, widely quoted point that Huawei “at a minimum shared with the Chinese state intimate and extensive knowledge of the foreign communications systems it is involved with,” is based on a techno-nationalist view that all foreign telecoms companies share such information with their home governments. While the press has understandably picked up on the specifics relating to Huawei, Hayden in effect warned governments against allowing any foreign company to design or service its infrastructure: “But if you’ve got a foreign company supplying you with essential communications infrastructure and/or helping build your network, the detailed knowledge that company obtains can be a powerful intelligence tool for foreign security services to leverage off to map out and target your telecommunications network for espionage and other malicious purposes.” It follows then that each country should allow only domestic corporations to build out and service the network. But here Hayden wimps out, merely stating that while we “want our firms to compete globally,” “governments also have to bear some accountability and responsibility for their on self-defense.” Later in the interview, though, he comes back to this theme, after being asked about specific dangers of backdoors and malicious implants: “Just a foreign firm gaining the intimate knowledge it would get by helping build a a telecommunications network is a sufficient ‘first principles’ national security problem to give you serious pause before you even consider the presence of backdoors.” So what does this also mean for multinationals Cisco, Ericsson, and Alcatel-Lucent — are they condemned to compete only in their home markets?

3. Hayden argues that he believes “hard evidence” exists to prove that Huawei engaged in espionage, but declines to give specifics himself: “Yes. I have no reason to question the belief that that’s the case. That’s my professional judgment. But as a former director of the NSA, I cannot comment on specific instances of espionage or any operation matters.” Hayden then attempts to turn the tables on Huawei, arguing that the burden of proof is not on the government but on Huawei to prove that it is not a security risk. He holds that the company has failed in this task. But his proof is based upon a weak foundation — citation of the 2012 House Intelligence Committee report and a public hearing that preceded it. Whatever the debate as to whether Huawei was responsive to the committee’s queries, there is little debate — contrary to Hayden’s effusive praise — that the subsequent committee report advanced little credible evidence to support the conclusion that Huawei constituted a security risk and that US telecoms companies should avoid dealing with it. This view is summed up by the oft-quoted, derisive comment by the Economist newspaper that the report seems to have been written for vegetarians: it has “little meat in it.”

There are other elements of the interview that I will write about later. At this point, it is too early to tell how all of this will play out. But it is quite likely that now the “fat is in the fire.” Whether Huawei has indeed spied for the Chinese government remains an unanswered question. But I do have a good deal of sympathy with John Suffolk, Huawei’s security chief, who stated that after Hayden direct claims, it’s “time to put up or shut up” when it comes to allegations of espionage. Maybe as a start, the Obama administration could release the conclusion of its own 18-month probe of the security risks posed by Huawei — or at least rebut claims that the probe found no instances of security malpractice by the firm.