Cyber espionage is an activity where a person or organization attempt to retrieve information illegally. Whereas, the information itself often confidential for an organization to publish. Cyber espionage is as same as cyber attack because it related to spying crime by using proxy servers as their backdoors in obtaining the information. Moreover, this issue often happens between nations in the aspect of military services and political matters. For instance, there was a cyber espionage issue in 2012 where China was successfully bribed the information of UK’s F-35 Joint Strike Jet military plan (O’Flaherty, 2019). This issue has shaken some of countries towards Chinese tech companies, and United States began the investigation in 2012. As a result, United States government and Chinese companies were in conflict on this issue, which resulting to the trade banning of ZTE and Huawei telecom companies.

The first banned Chinese telecom company was ZTE Corp. The company was accused for illegally sold the United State-made technology to North Korea and Iran (Villas-Boas, 2019). As we know that both Iran and United States are not in a good relationship and the potential of cyber-attack from Iran since the nation is known for its cyber espionage group called APT39. Thus, this action was considered as violation of economy trusts yet the fact that ZTE is a Chinese company. Afterwards, United States government decided to ban the sales of ZTE products and United States-made components to ZTE (Villas-Boas, 2019). As a result, ZTE lost their United States’ component partners and continued struggling from the banning sanction.

The second Chinese telecom companies who got banned after ZTE was Huawei. The United States intelligence such as FBI and CIA claimed that the company has a potential of undetected espionage attempt (Chiacu & Zengerie, 2018). Hence, United States also claimed that the CEO of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei has close relationship with the Chinese government. Whereas, the CEO was an ex-engineer of China’s military along with one of its software engineers who once lecturing at the China’s National Defense University (Kawakami, 2019). However, the company stated that the past background of Huawei’s employees is not related to their present actions. In doing so, the company denied all allegations from United State’s government of the cyber espionage attempt.

Besides, the suspicion become bigger when Meng, the CFO of Huawei was arrested in Canada. Meng was accused for the obstruction of the United States’ sanctions towards Iran (O’Flaherty, 2019). Some technology analysts also believe that there is a high possibilities of Chinese government intervention to its tech companies. Chinese government has an authority to access the database of its telecom companies (O’Flaherty, 2019). It is also supported by the new generation of 5G networks in Huawei’s smartphones that works faster yet its security is still questionable. In fact, 5G network is so powerful where it can connect to many devices other than smartphones, such as driveless vehicles, electricity, and web-connected manufacturing system. By these facts, the United States government continue to claim that both Huawei has a big opportunity to bribe national intellectual properties by their advanced technology equipment. As a result, Huawei lost its partneship with Android (Google), AT&T, and Pentagon.   

Despite of United States and these two giant Chinese telecoms company controversy, it is important for us to acknowledge that cyber espionage is the biggest issue that the world is facing on. Cyber espionage could attack manufacturing industries, education systems, national archives, and public administration information. The “spies” behind the cyber espionage crime could misuse the information and threatening the international security. In doing so, we should pay attention to technology updates in order to prevent any cyber espionage attempt to our privacy.  

Works cited

Chiacu, D., & Zengerie, P. (2018, February 14). US intelligence officials all say they wouldn’t use a Chinese-made Huawei or ZTE phone for fear of spying. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from Business Insider: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-officials-say-chinese-made-huawei-zte-maybe-not-secure-2018-2?IR=T

Kawakami, T. (2019, July 9). Huawei staff has close ties to China’s military, new reports say. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from Nikkei Asian Review: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Huawei-crackdown/Huawei-staff-has-close-ties-to-China-s-military-new-reports-say

O’Flaherty, K. (2019, February 26). Huawei Security Scandal: Everything You Need to Know. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateoflahertyuk/2019/02/26/huawei-security-scandal-everything-you-need-to-know/#4ca2129973a5

Villas-Boas, A. (2019, May 20). Huawei has been blacklisted by the US government. Here’s what happened to the last Chinese tech company that got the ‘death penalty.’. Retrieved February 6, 2020, from Business Insider Singapore: https://www.businessinsider.sg/huawei-us-ban-similar-to-zte-us-ban-2019-5/?r=US&IR=T

   

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

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