Technology giant and suspected Chinese-government spy enterprise...

Technology giant and suspected Chinese-government spy enterprise Huawei is so deeply embedded in Australia’s critical infrastructure and mobile networks it could bring the country to its knees in the event of a conflict.

Huawei carries crucial data for NSW and WA railways, along with ambulance services, universities and mining projects — as well as half the smartphone calls, texts, and internet usage in Australia on any day.

With Huawei believed by Australia and key allies to harvest information for the Communist Party of China, Telstra has stopped selling its smartphones and Defence has phased out smartphones made by Huawei and fellow Chinese manufacturer ZTE due to security concerns.

In order to cull its dominance and to stop granting China backdoor access, the federal government has banned Huawei — “wah-way” — from participating in the 5G network, which rolls out in 2020.

But Fergus Hanson, head of cyber policy at the Australian Security Policy Institute, says Huawei is already entrenched in our infrastructure.

“Having sold the product, if they have inserted vulnerabilities, and if they know how the networks are set up, they’re easier to take down,” Mr Hanson said.

Huawei installed upgraded technology to NSW RailCorp’s entire electrified network, which controls signalling, shunting and communications between crews. Just before the 5G ban was announced in August, the WA Government announced Huawei had won a contract for similar upgrades to its rail.

In Brisbane, the soon-to-be-completed luxury 90-storey Skytower will rely on Huawei for its smart technology fit-out, potentially exposing residents to risk.

Earlier this year, Le Monde reported that massive data dumps were occurring from the African Union’s skyscraper headquarters in Addis Ababa each night between midnight and 2am, and heading to Shanghai.

Danielle Cave, from ASPI’s cyber centre, wrote that it was not reported at the time which carrier had moved the stolen information. “It was Huawei,” she said.

As China signals more aggressive intent globally, there are persistent claims that Huawei, its flagship worldwide communications success story, has engineered a “kill switch” which could instantly plunge its networks into darkness.

Its existence has been denied by Huawei and it is thought improbable.

But it is suspected China, through Huawei, has already been granted an intimate look at our most critical infrastructure and has done the same in 170 other countries where it operates.

As Australia’s largest telecommunications technology supplier, Huawei provides 60 per cent of all Optus base stations and antennas for its 3G and 4G mobile network and delivers 100 per cent of Vodafone’s base stations and antennas.

Optus and Vodafone are the second and third biggest national carriers respectively.

Mr Hanson said owning a Huawei phone was not the problem — even though Defence departments in Australia and the US have banned them.

“It’s the network,” he said. “It’s about hospitals, electricity, gas networks, solar grids — everything.”

Japan this week banned Huawei and ZTE from competing for official contracts, which follows Britain’s largest mobile phone provider, BT Group, removing Huawei equipment from its 4G and 3G networks — and the UK is putting Huawei under heavy scrutiny as 5G approaches.

New Zealand has banned Huawei products in Spark’s 5G network and India blocked it from its 5G trials.


Huawei denies links to China’s People’s Liberation Army and its Australian chairman, former Royal Australian Navy rear-admiral John Lord, along with director and former Victorian premier John Brumby, have been running an intense PR campaign arguing Huawei is “good and safe” for Australia.

A company representative told News Corp Mr Lord was no longer doing interviews after spending most of the year trying to persuade the federal government that Huawei presented no risk.

Clive Hamilton, author of Silent Invasion, on the growing influence of China in Australia, disagreed and said Mr Lord and Mr Brumby were wrong to claim it was a “myth” that Huawei was benign.

“Huawei is now being rejected around the western world because of the serious risk of espionage.”

Huawei has offered its equipment for inspection and in the UK, where Huawei is a major supplier of critical infrastructure, there is a government lab that solely studies Huawei products for Trojan Horses. It even files an annual report.

This year, it reported that “shortcomings in Huawei’s engineering processes have exposed new risks in the UK telecommunication networks”.

Mr Hanson said this referred to software “errors” and vulnerabilities that might be deliberate placed to allow remote access. “You basically try to make a call whether they inserted them on purpose or is it a coding error,” he said.

In 2017, the CPC passed a law requiring any state-owned company to carry out any instruction given by the state. Said Mr Hanson: “If the Ministry of State Security says to Huawei, ‘We want you to intercept communications in Australia,’ they are obliged to do it.”

Mr Lord has argued, to deaf ears, that Huawei is an independently owned company, free of the clutches of the CPC. A number of western nations see otherwise and this has been bolstered by China’s outrage at the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou.

Ms Wanzhou was detained in Canada at the request of the US Justice Department on suspicion she had used a Huawei subsidiary to evade sanctions with Iran.


Mr Hanson warned China was not the mercantile coloniser of times past.

“We work under the old assumption China would rise peacefully, and it’s turned the other way,” he said. “You can’t walk away from Chinese technology, but you can gradually wind back on the critical and sensitive areas.”