How China Is Using Huawei-Made Cameras to Spy on the African Union Headquarters | Hacker News Reader

How China Is Using Huawei-Made Cameras to Spy on the African Union Headquarters

nationalinterest.org

56 pointsknown11 comments

This is the cost of doing business with China. More and more African governments continue to look to the Big Red for development loans. These intertwined interests lead to compromised decisions like these. Favour the recommended Chinese corp for your tech at the behest of your nation's security. It also doesn't help that Huawei's tech is considerably cheaper than other market offerings.

Isn't that how capitalism works in any part of the world anyways? I hate to sound pro China but some stuff I read around is just hypocritical.

My point was about how business interests between China and Africa lead to situations that put African states in compromised positions. You simply cannot put your trust esp in networking equipment in the Chinese government. Business or not. It's a terrible recipe for disaster as the AU discovered.

Manure is infinitely more valuable than the AU. Not to mention its current president/chair.

African politics is almost child-like which makes Europe and any country worth its salt giggle with glee. The expression -"like taking candy from a baby" - is apt. Therefore what china is doing is nothing new or special. US and EU do the same thing with heads of state that dont agree with their policies suddenly have civil wars with farmer's sons and military coups or the famous yet tragic "accident"

Its tiring.

Although every country does have factions that want to screw everyone else the moment they get the chance, thankfully every country also has people, often in substantial positions, with longer ranging foresight than that. Though of course the proportions varies with time, culture, level of development, norms, history, dogma, politics, etc., across the globe.

In China’s case where there are thousands of people in positions of substantial authority due to its size, with hundreds joining those ranks every year, it is credible that a few would seek short term advantages over all other considerations. The variability of human nature all but guarantees it. Hopefully the proportion will decline in the future, at the very least the long term self interest of the other folks will be a countervailing force.

what everyone wants hacker news to turn into : Chinese political spam.

it scrubs fairly well that kind of topic, positive or negative.

> AU technicians discovered that the building’s Huawei-provided servers were daily exporting their data to Shanghai, and that the walls of the Chinese-built headquarters were peppered with listening devices.

> Chinese companies—many of which are state-owned, all of which are legally obliged to cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party on intelligence matters—have built at least 186 government buildings in Africa, including presidential residences, ministries of foreign affairs, and parliament buildings. Huawei has built more than 70 percent of the continent’s 4G networks and at least fourteen intra-governmental ICT networks, including a data center in Zambia that houses the entirety of the government’s records.

> the walls of the Chinese-built headquarters were peppered with listening devices.

Like what the USA and Australia did to China in the 80's in this one story -

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-08/the-chinese-embassy-b...

Or when Australia did it to rip of one of the worlds poorest countries -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93East_Timor_s...

The problem really is that Africa isn’t in a position to do it to anyone else.

Very useful for blackmail when there are cameras everywhere.

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