That is a terrible deal, because it amounts to letting them clone your technology in depth.
On the other hand, until the US kicked over the table, the UK had a national security oversight centre for Huawei where people with UK security clearances performed code review ..
Yeah but they don't pretend that it is foolproof. It's the typical government "we have to do something" answer to a fundamental problem. Software defined networks are not secure from state level interference and everybody in tech that is honest knows it. And since they are not secure, and not easily monitored with strong encryption they're the perfect delivery vector for targeted malware. I wish we had the political will in the liberal alliance to say no to networking gear originating from countries like China.
There are two questions about the CCP and spyware: is it technically possible and do they have the political will to do it?
I don't think the CCP is putting spyware into the iPhone because it's only barely technically possible and they don't have the will to risk it. Getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar there would be the end of their whole economic strategy.
Would the CCP put spyware into Tik Tok? It's trivially possible, and the will is absolutely there. I would be more surprised if it were somehow proved that they weren't interfering with Tik Tok on some level.
Would the CCP put spyware into 5G? AFAICT, it would be technically possible, and the payoff from it would be so huge that they might have the will for it, but it's a close thing. Hard to say definitively either way. I think the industrialized nations should make their own 5G, just so they're not shut out of a growth industry, but the spy thing is sort of a wild card that could be something or nothing.
What I've learned over the years is that the lines always get tapped. The just do. Whether it's the telegraph, the telephone, or fiberoptic cables under the sea. The lines get tapped if at all possible.
I don't believe for one second that the CCP doesn't leverage Chinese made networking gear for intelligence. They probably even leverage third party gear too. This stuff is all so insecure everyone is in everything anyway.
