National Security Bureau (NSB) Director Tsai Der-sheng (蔡得勝) yesterday said that his bureau does not support government agencies using China’s Huawei Technologies Co’s (華為) products and said the company should be barred from government bids.
Tsai made the remarks during a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee in the morning.
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Tsai Huang-liang (蔡煌瑯) asked Tsai Der-sheng whether government agencies, including the Presidential Office and the Ministry of Justice’s Investigation Bureau, had used Huawei’s network cards in their work cellphones.
Photo: CNA
He said that the government should be more alert to the possibility that confidential information could “very easily” be obtained by China via Huawei products.
Saying that Huawei is linked to the People’s Liberation Army, Tsai Huang-liang said that the government should ban the company from participating in public bids.
If the government itself is the biggest buyers of Huawei products, how could the government restrict private companies from buying Huawei products for national security concerns, he added.
“This is our policy now. The NSB has banned using Huawei’s products and thinks other government bureaus should not use the company’s products,” the NSB official added.
Tsai Huang-liang cited government statistics showing that the Investigation Bureau bought 124 sets of Huawei network cards, while the Presidential Office six sets and the Ministry of Transportation and Communications bought 20 Huawei cellphones.
The Mainland Affairs Council bought one set of Huawei’s network cards, but stopped using them after discovering they were produced by Huawei, he added.
The Investigation Bureau responded in a press statement that last year, it applied for a number of cellphone numbers from Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信) for agents’ internal communications, but Chunghwa offered network cards produced by Huawei with the numbers.
The Investigation Bureau added that those cellphones were closed-system cellphones used in inner network and could not be connected with the Internet or other networks.
The bureau is not concerned that confidential information could have been leaked by using those public phones, it added.
The Investigation Bureau said that it had no knowledge that the wireless network sticks it acquired from Chunghwa Telecom were manufactured by Huawei at the time of purchase.
“As the products have only been connected to the bureau’s closed internal network, there is no possibility that [confidential national security information] has been leaked,” the bureau said.
At a legislative session earlier yesterday, Tsai Huang-liang presented statistics regarding government agencies’ procurement of communication devices from Huawei in the past year.
The statistics showed that the Investigation Bureau had purchased 124 of Huawei’s E173 multi-mode wireless terminals, the largest number bought by any government agency.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
‘WORLD’S LOSS’: Taiwan’s exclusion robs the world of the benefits it could get from one of the foremost practitioners of disease prevention and public health, Minister Chiu said Taiwan should be allowed to join the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an irreplaceable contributor to global health and disease prevention efforts, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. He made the comment at a news conference in Taipei, hours before a Taiwanese delegation was to depart for Geneva, Switzerland, seeking to meet with foreign representatives for a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the WHA, the WHO’s annual decisionmaking meeting, which would be held from Monday next week to May 27. As of yesterday, Taiwan had yet to receive an invitation. Taiwan has much to offer to the international community’s
RSS