Researchers studied 25,000 leaked Huawei resumes and found troubling links to the government and spies
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REUTERS/Aly Song
Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei.
New research analyzing the resumes of Huawei employees suggests links between the company and the Chinese military and intelligence agencies could run deeper than previously thought.
Researcher Christopher Balding, of the Fulbright University Vietnam, processed data from a trove of more than 590 million Chinese resumes that leaked online last year to unearth the ties.Taking a subset of some 65,000 resumes, the researchers found roughly 25,000 belonging to current or former Huawei employees.
The researchers then searched for key terms, such as the People's Liberation Army. From this, they narrowed down the list to just over 100 individuals who had experience in national security.According to Balding, this engineer "engaged in behavior that describes planting information capture technology or software on Huawei products." He also worked on "building lawful interception capability into Huawei equipment" on projects both domestic and international.
His study is not exhaustive and, in a blog post responding to criticism of his work, Balding said it was not designed to be an academic paper. In the post, Balding said he didn't undertake a more comprehensive study because public policy decision makers need information about Huawei now.
"In an ideal world, we would take 6-12 months and turn out an in depth and comprehensive study. The reality is that countries are making crucial decisions right now involving Huawei," he wrote.The study comes just over a week after US President Donald Trump announced he was relaxing the government ban on Huawei. Even though Balding's work doesn't constitute concrete proof that Huawei is a proxy for the Chinese government, it is likely to rekindle anxieties in the White House and beyond.
Business Insider has contacted Huawei for comment. It told the Financial Times that it was not able to verify the "so-called Huawei Employee CVs," adding: "We hope that any further research papers will contain less conjecture when drawing their conclusions." In a statement to The Telegraph, Huawei said it does "not work on military or intelligence projects for the Chinese Government."
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