National Security Or Competition Threat?

There’s a lot of stuff on the news lately about Huawei. Accusations from mostly what appears to be ‘western’ countries of ‘spying’ and ‘national security’ threat from China using Huawei.  There is of course, no proof of this. What we do have proof of however, is the Western spying intel and to what extent. We know PRISM exists, we know 5 eyes, 10 eyes and 15 eyes  are all real because of the Snowden Leaks. We know that the NSA is literally watching and recording everything you do, from your searches on Google to your texts- yeah those nudes you sent, also with the NSA.

All US based companies have a legal obligation to collect data for the US government- that is a fact, there is no debate. Google, Microsoft, Iphone, Android, the list goes on. They are spying on you, on a level that should make you nervous. Using a VPN service from the US or western location? You can be sure they’re legally obligated to hand over their clients data at any point, even if encrypted, and the VPN company cannot tell you. That is the level of privacy you have. Secure yourself with a proper VPN and don’t fall into the social media trap of following and posting on a VPN companies social media- that’s just idiotic.

Do you see the hypocrisy here? No? Let me go a bit deeper. China has been using Windows for almost all their banking, ATM’s around their country, even different government services run on Windows. Infact, up until 2016, China was still using unsupported Windows XP (living on the edge of absolute craziness is China).

They have Iphone and Androids in China and worked with many Western companies to set up business- all the while knowing fully, that all these companies were spying on Chinese citizens and their government, by default for the US. Did they ban Iphone? Did they ban Windows? Did they bark about national security while banning any of these? Nope they didn’t. And now you understand the hypocrisy.

Does the US really mean to be an ‘Open Market’ when they try to sabotage any competition from another country or ethnicity. It’s not only the trade war, there is really no other country that threatens the technical dominance of the US, except for China.

Now the US is laying charges against Huawei on criminal grounds – of course Huawei denied them.

“Huawei is disappointed to learn of the charges brought against the company today. company  After Ms. Meng’s arrest, the Company sought an opportunity to discuss the Eastern District of New York investigation with the Justice Department, but the request was rejected without explanation. The allegations in the Western District of Washington trade secret indictment were already the subject of a civil suit that was settled by the parties after a Seattle jury found neither damages nor willful and malicious conduct on the trade secret claim. The Company denies that it or its subsidiary or affiliate have committed any of the asserted violations of U.S. law set forth in each of the indictments, is not aware of any wrongdoing by Ms. Meng, and believes the U.S. courts will ultimately reach the same conclusion.”

I believe it’s competition and now I feel it has racist undertones- and this is why I started to form an opinion.

“For some time now, the United States has deployed its state power to smear and crack down on targeted Chinese companies in an attempt to kill their normal and legal business operations,” Geng Shuang, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. “We strongly urge the US to stop its unreasonable crackdown on Chinese companies, including Huawei, and treat Chinese companies objectively and fairly.”

I have been doing business in China and Hong Kong for a decade now. Not once has a Chinese official or Chinese authority come to my data centers asking to see my servers. They had concerns over one customer, I refused to give them access. They left and gave the client of mine a warning. It turned out that client was hosting porn, which is against the law in China. The client removed the content, the Chinese officials did nothing else and left me and my client alone. They didn’t even bother to check up, I had to contact them to let them know that the client made right on their promise to remove that banned material.

In the US, the FBI breaks down your door, there are no second chances, there is no warning, there is no conversation. There is only ‘hand the server rack over’. Not just the affected or suspected server, but the whole damn rack. Companies have actually gone bankrupt over this.

I haven’t even provided a customer list to the Chinese gov’t nor have they ever asked me for one. In the US, that’s different. They could ask me and I won’t have a choice, it’s a demand and it has to be done.

This is why the excuse of ‘national security’ isn’t sitting with me, I’m just not believing it. The lack of privacy and security and sheer spying is the reason why I don’t own an Iphone, and another reason why I don’t use Windows or even Google.

The US and many countries like Australia are just scared of the competition Huawei is bringing. They’re big, they’re technical and they can literally take over the market. The Chinese are taking over and you have the “Western governments” to blame for it. By trying to make China the boogeyman we should fear, they actually made the opposite happen. They helped them to get angry enough to grow insanely big. The world cannot ignore China, and that’s the reason why Elite families are pushing their kids to learn Mandarin, they are not stupid, they know where the money is. It’s in China and as a side effect, all of Asia if you do well with China.

When people talk about China, they think 3rd world scary super power who’s growing insane with power….no that’s not what’s happening and if you ever been to China you know they are not flexing power, they are standing up. For decades they have taken the brunt of the world’s blame and criticism. Rightly so, with human rights violations, it’s relationship with South Korea, it’s position with Russia (and their contracts in the Middle East). However, China has always had a simple way of government and governing- ying and yang, keep the balance, limit the chaos. That is why former Presidents of China haven’t been aggressive in dealing with US and the world’s hypocrisy. But this new President of China isn’t like the past presidents.

President Xi Jinping is is not taking s*** anymore and he’s not playing around.  The world and especially the West have become accustomed to seeing China reasonably just play things off. That’s not happening here. President Xi Jinping is standing up and in a big way.

It’s not national security, it’s competition. We have an arrest of a CFO of Huawei the daughter of the CEO and founder, who was arrested in Vancouver late last year. We also know that Trump wants her extradited to the US to use as bargaining chip with China.

In this article by CBC states:

“[Trump has] implied that the United States can use her as a bargaining chip — and that is precisely what the treaty says is an exception to the extradition process,” Botting said. “A person will not be extradited if it is for a political purpose or if the person is deemed to be part of that political purpose.”

So we know for a fact it’s not national security or because a US backed ‘sanction against Iran’ was broken, or some kind of fraud occurred. This was a kidnapping by the US that Canada played right into. Even right now, the Canadian ambassador to China is saying we know it’s political and we have the right to let Meng go. Instead of letting her go and following our own laws, Justin Trudeau’s response was to fire our Ambassador to China for calling out our role in this US led political sham- which is why I’m worried for Canadian sovereignty here on top of the unfavorable NAFTA deal.

We are letting another country dictate what we should be doing, and giving them the power to veto any deal with China, and now we’re arresting an innocent Chinese citizen to be used as a pawn…this isn’t the right thing to do. Canadian national security is at risk here. Our cyber security is also at risk here. Our alley is the US, but we should be seen as an alley, not a chess piece that gets toppled down for the ‘good’ of another country.

I would like Huawei to be in Canada, I see competition, but I also see opportunity and jobs and better economy. It will make us competitive again and connect us to the bigger pie that is ALL OF ASIA through China. That’s 1 billion people in China that have a bad impression of Canada right now. And that large amount can make an impact, take for example Canada Goose. We have a citizen on death row now, and more is to come unless we fix this- tourism and the toppling of our housing market is next and as a side effect, our economy.

It’s not just China now that will feel ‘irked’ by us, all of Asia is irked. Honor and trustworthiness means a lot in Asia, and we haven’t shown that we will do right or do justice. So for now, we can lay to rest these claims of ‘national security’ to bed. It’s not about national security, or fear of the ‘Chinese spying’, this is competition, purely and simply fear of the competition and now without a doubt there are racist undertones here and this is where I felt compelled to form an opinion.

What do you think?

Cheers,
A.Yasir