US warns Germany it will end intelligence sharing if Huawei is given 5G contract

 

The United States has warned Germany that intelligence sharing between the two countries will be threatened if the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is awarded a contract to build Germany’s 5G network. The company, Huawei Technologies, is a private Chinese venture and one of the world’s leading telecommunications hardware manufacturers. In recent years, however, it has come under scrutiny by some Western intelligence agencies, who view it as being too close to the Communist Party of China. More recently, Washington has intensified an international campaign to limit Huawei’s ability to build the infrastructure for 5G, the world’s next-generation wireless network. Along with Britain, Australia and Canada, the US is concerned that the Chinese telecommunications giant may facilitate global wiretapping on behalf of Beijing’s spy agencies.

Niall Ferguson: This is what happens if China wins the new cold war

Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping. AP

 

The winter of a new cold war is coming between the US and China, renowned Hoover Institution and Harvard historian Niall Ferguson warned The Australian Financial Review Business Summit this week.

Winning it might decide the 2020 US election. Losing it might be the end of a US dollar-dominated global financial system, if not worse. That’s very scary coming from the man who called the scale of the Soviet communist collapse in 1989 and the US mortgage implosion two years early in 2006.

5G Espionage (II)

 

BERLIN/BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Own report) – An opening is emerging for Berlin to be able to include Huawei in Germany’s 5G grid installation – contrary to the massive US campaign. The President of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) Arne Schönbohm declared that “an anti-espionage treaty” between Germany and China could help, open the possibility of Huawei’s participation in setting up the grid. Chancellor Angela Merkel is currently seeking to conclude such an agreement. The industry is in favor of using Huawei Technology, because it promises to be the fastest and most cost-effective construction of the strategically important 5G grid. Experts warn that without Huawei, Germany could lag at least two years behind in the development. Meanwhile it has become known that for years, the NSA has been eavesdropping not only on China’s president but on Huawei as well. Allegedly, US spies cannot show any evidence of Huawei being involved in espionage operations – even after having read the emails of numerous employees and those of the company’s board chair.

Europe’s “Geopolitical Identity”

 

MUNICH (Own report) – At the Munich Security Conference last weekend, the power struggle between Berlin and Washington openly escalated to an unprecedented level. US Vice President Mike Pence reiterated his ultimatum that Berlin and the EU immediately renounce their political and economic projects, which are not fully in accord with US policy, pertaining particularly to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and the Iran nuclear deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected the US demands. In view of the dispute with Washington, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas declared at the Security Conference that “Europe” faces the “crucial question” whether it will be “the subject or the object of global policy in the future.” It must, therefore, “transform geo-economic capital into geopolitical capital” to become “a cornerstone of the international order” and “develop its own geopolitical identity.” Maas is expressing his demands, at a time, when the EU’s Iran policy is about to fall apart and the European power base needed for Berlin’s ambitions is crumbling.

With China Attempting to Take 5G Lead, Trump Weighs Telecom Equipment Ban

(Photo Credit: PxHere)

 

Congress was told this week that the U.S. stands to lose millions of jobs and its competitiveness if China is allowed to take the lead on next-generation technology.

Following a congressional hearing in which it was warned that the U.S. could lose millions of jobs if China gains the lead in 5G mobile technology development, President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing an executive order to ban all Chinese telecom equipment.

Huawei Is Being Targeted Because Of The “Tech Arms Race”, Not The “Trade War”

Acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker answers questions from reporters as he stands in front of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, right, at the Justice Department in Washington on Jan. 28.

 

Huawei is the only company capable of competing with Apple, and it’s also the global leader in the 5G technology that’s expected to take the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” to its next phase. The US fears losing its global monopoly on the internet in general and wireless technologies in particular, especially in what it had previously regarded as its lucrative “captive markets” in the West, so it has an incentive to fearmonger about Huawei’s intentions in order to deter others from doing business with them. It also shouldn’t be seen as coincidental that American ally Poland recently cracked down against an alleged Huawei conspiracy as well, since this sends a trans-Atlantic signal of what the US is after.

Five Eyes

BERLIN/WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Own report) – In the dispute over boycotting the Chinese Huawei corporation, the German government is considering joining a campaign of the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing network, it was reported in Canada and Australia. According to the media, intelligence chiefs of the five English-speaking “Five Eyes” countries launched a boycott campaign last July under US leadership. The campaign seeks not only to put pressure on the governments of Five Eyes members Great Britain and Canada, which – for economic reasons – have initially been reluctant to boycott Huawei, but also to increase the pressure on the Germany and Japan. Experts in Australia speculate that, in return for its participation in the boycott, Berlin could become an accepted FIVE Eyes member, something Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) has been striving to do for years. To “maintain their own technology competence,” EU companies should develop 5G, according to Berlin. German managers, however, are up in arms, fearing falling far behind and never catching up with China.

Reuters Exposes Huawei’s Deep Ties To Iran And Syria

 

Reuters reporters have been covering Huawei’s business dealings in Iran for years, with reports about Huawei’s illegal sales of US-made equipment to an Iranian telecoms firm dating back to 2012. Some of these reports have been cited in the US case against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Canada on Dec. 1 on allegations she knowingly misled banks about Huawei’s relationship with its Hong Kong-based “partner” Skycom, which Reuters exposed for facilitating sales to Iranian companies in violation of US sanctions.

And in its latest report on Huawei’s dealings in the Islamic Republic, Reuters examined corporate filings and other documents in Iran and Syria which proved that Huawei’s relationship with Skycom and another firm – Syria-based shell company Canicula Holdings – is even deeper than had previously been reported. These revelations show that Huawei’s business dealings in both countries are even more extensive than previously believed.

China Could “Weaponize Cities” If Allowed To Dominate 5G Networks

 

China’s push to dominate new wireless technology will give Beijing advanced capabilities for “mayhem and mass surveillance” if they are allowed to cominate [sic] 5G networks linking billions of devices, according to retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding.

Spalding was fired from the National Security Council last February after a memo leaked in which he argued for a government takeover of the nation’s 5G mobile network – an idea lawmakers and wireless companies flatly rejected.

How arrest of Chinese ‘princess’ exposes regime’s world domination plot

Getty Images; Shutterstock

 

Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver on Dec. 6 led to immediate blowback.

Furious Chinese Communists have begun arresting innocent Canadians in retaliation. So far, three of these “revenge hostages” have been taken and are being held in secret jails on vague charges. Beijing hints that the hostage count may grow if Meng is not freed and fast.

Even for a thuggish regime like China’s, this kind of action is almost unprecedented.

So who is Meng Wanzhou?

Is U.S. Geopolitical Strategy Experiencing a Monumental Shift?

 

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

– From Graham Allison’s article: The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?

For the past two years, my geopolitical assumption has been that the Trump administration would more or less continue along with the reckless, shortsighted, and disastrous neocon/neoliberal interventionist foreign policy of the past two decades focused on undeclared regime change and proxy wars across the world, especially the Middle East. Given his strange obsession with Iran, I figured he’d start a conflict there and that this conflict would end up a bigger disaster than Iraq.

China Accused Of “Huge Hack” Of Thousands Of European Diplomatic Cables

Step side Russia: the new global hacking bogeyman is now officially China.

Just days after the US accused Beijing of hacking hundreds of millions of Marriott accounts and extracting the private data of countless Americans, even as the ongoing diplomatic feud over Chinese “intermediation” in western communications via the likes of Huawei escalates, moments ago the EU unveiled that China was now also the new Wikileaks, accusing hacker tied to China’s People’s Liberation Army of a “huge hack” of its diplomatic cables and reviving fears about vulnerabilities in the 28-country bloc’s data systems.

China Press Warns To “Prepare For Escalation Of Conflict With Canada”

 

Days after revealing that businessman Michael Spavor – who became the second Canadian citizen detained in China since Beijing warned it would retaliate against Canada for the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver earlier this month – had been arrested for “threatening national security”, the Communist Party made clear that this is only the beginning, and that Canada should expect “further escalation” as Beijing has no intentions of backing down – and every intention of sending a message to US allies that they should stay out of the still-simmering dispute between the world’s two largest economies.

China Hacks America—and ‘None Goes to Battle’

Gary Dorning/Trumpet

 

A tiny Chinese microchip may have infiltrated numerous American governmental and military systems, giving insight into how several specific Bible prophecies could come to pass.

It isn’t hard to imagine a time in the near future when great numbers of Americans take to the streets. Maybe the trigger would be another divisive presidential election, with half the nation refusing to accept four more years of an administration they loathe. Maybe the trigger would be impeachment hearings or a particularly controversial decision by “Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court,” such as restricting abortion.

Whatever the spark, it isn’t hard to imagine America’s intensifying domestic tensions exploding into mass riots.

Canada installs Chinese underwater monitoring devices next to US nuclear submarine base

One of the Chinese undersea devices off Canada. Photo: Handout

 

• Ocean Network Canada confirms addition of hi-tech sensors built by Chinese scientists to its marine observatories in Pacific Ocean
• US state department has ‘nothing to say’ on matter

While the eyes of the world have been on the strategic tussle between Beijing and Washington in the South China Sea, Chinese scientists, with the help of the Canadian authorities, have succeeded in positioning four monitoring devices in waters just 300km (186 miles) off the United States’ Pacific coast.