US companies should avoid doing business with China’s Huawei (華為), the world’s No. 2 maker of telecommunications gear, for fear its equipment could open doors for spying, the head of the US House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee said.
“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 US,” chairman Mike Rogers said.
The Michigan Republican, a former FBI special agent, made his comments to the CBS television program 60 Minutes to be broadcast today. Excerpts provided by the program on Friday did not spell out any evidence to back up Rogers’ concerns.
Tomorrow, the Intelligence panel will release the findings of a nearly year-long investigation of the alleged security risk, both from Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and China’s ZTE Corp (中興).
ZTE is also a Shenzhen, China-based telecommunications gear maker, the world’s fifth-ranking. The excerpts released by 60 Minutes did not include specific references to ZTE. It was not immediately clear whether Rogers and the committee were blackballing ZTE as well.
“One of the main reasons we are having this investigation is to educate the citizens in business ... in the telecommunications world,” Representative C.A. Ruppersberger of Maryland, the panel’s top Democrat, told the program.
The committee believes allowing Huawei to build and maintain large swaths of the US’ telecommunications infrastructure opens a door for the Chinese government to spy on the US government and engage in industrial espionage, 60 Minutes said.
Huawei said in response that it was “globally trusted and respected,” doing business in almost 150 markets with more than 500 operator customers, including nationwide carriers across every continent except Antarctica.
“The security and integrity of our products are world proven,” William Plummer, a company spokesman in Washington, said in an email. “Those are the facts today. Those will be the facts next week, political agendas aside.”
The efforts of Huawei and ZTE in the US have been stymied by US concerns over allegedly mounting Chinese economic espionage, especially in cyberspace.
Huawei has marketed its network equipment in the US since last year and has sold to a range of small to medium-sized carriers nationwide, particularly in rural areas. It has marketed mobile phones through a broader range of US carriers, for the last four years.
Both Huawei and ZTE have rejected charges that their expansion in the US poses a security risk and argue they operate independently of the Chinese authorities.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”