ANI | NewsTrack

A global Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the United States, which is already doing limited business in the nation, is posing threat to national and corporate security, American intelligence officials have said.

Huawei, known as world’s largest maker of telecommunications equipment, has been under investigation for the past year by the members of U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which will be issuing its report on the firm by next week.

“If I were an American company today…and you are looking at Huawei, I would find another vendor if you care about your intellectual property, if you care about your consumers’ privacy, and you care about the national security of the United States of America,” committee’s chairman, Mike Rogers told CBS, during an interview with Steve Kroft on ’60 minutes’.

“One of the main reasons we are having this investigation is to educate the citizens in business…in the telecommunications world,” he added.

According to the report, the committee believes allowing Huawei to build and maintain large swaths of America’s telecommunications infrastructure opens a door for the Chinese government to spy on the U.S. government and engage in industrial espionage.

When asked by Kroft that if Huawei were to be approached by the Chinese government and asked to spy on the U.S., could they refuse, Jim Lewis, a former U.S. government foreign technology analyst, said that it would difficult for the firm to say ‘no’.

“It would be very difficult for them. The state tells them what to do and they do it,” Lewis said.

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