Chinese Peril

NATO countries need to stop China from winning the 5G race
By David A. Andelman

Fears that Huawei and its 5G wireless equipment could be exploited by the Chinese government to spy on other countries have been growing, spurring some countries — like the United States — to ban the company's products altogether.
A recent report from NATO suggests that banning the company's products would be shortsighted from a strategic standpoint.
While measures need to be put in place to ensure Chinese officials aren't exploiting Huawei's equipment, rejecting Huawei and its products could prevent many prospective customers in the West from using the company's state-of-the-art technology to develop their own advanced 5G downstream services.
Indeed, Huawei has managed to position itself on the cutting edge of a number of innovations in recent years — integrating western technology with its own secret sauce.
These efforts are only likely to intensify.
What's essential for users in the United States and other countries is that they carefully monitor how every product is operating and how it is being integrated into their systems.
At the same time, NATO's researchers advise that telecommunications companies in western countries establish viable alternatives to Huawei's 5G technology.
Indeed, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson are Huawei's biggest competitors, but they've still lagged behind.
There would be severe consequences should the world depend on a single supplier, especially from a nation like China.
Allowing Huawei to develop a global supplier monopoly with 5G technology could enable China to quickly leapfrog the West in developing the next generation space-based 6G networks that are already beginning to appear on some drawing boards, at least in academia.
Researchers in Finland, for example, are suggesting 6G will make possible such innovations as clothes that can monitor your health in real-time as part of a fully AI-enabled world.
And one can only imagine the military capabilities that 6G would provide.
It's clear the competition between China and the United States is only just beginning.
NATO — a collection of 29 distinct nations, each with its own approach to technological development and open vs. closed markets — has not adopted, and seems unlikely to adopt, any uniform approach to Huawei and whatever challenges it might pose.
So in addition to encouraging other nations to develop their own 5G technology to compete with Huawei, NATO should adopt a uniform series of responses to threats from external military or strategic challenges. 
And if Huawei is found to be facilitating Chinese cyber espionage or military operations, these countries should replace Huawei technology with a host of other alternatives — from providers like Nokia, Samsung, Qualcomm and Intel.
Indeed, governments in western nations should provide subsidies for advanced 5G and 6G research to prevent any one player from achieving utter dominance.
In January 2018, Canada provided some $40 million to Nokia for research and development of 5G equipment.
The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCE), author of this report, should use Canada as a model and coordinate NATO-wide public-private partnerships of this sort.
Raising its funding to a level that would allow such joint NATO-wide operations would be an important first step.
The arrival of 5G and the anticipation of 6G, with all the extraordinary global advances they hold, will quickly overshadow any latent fears over the misuse or abuse of these new technologies.
Nor should any such concerns restrain innovations that are inevitable at every stage in their development.
But vigilance is equally appropriate and NATO is itself uniquely positioned to take the leading role here.

Rogue University

Tsinghua University linked to Chinese cyber espionage
Targeting of Daimler, state of Alaska and Tibetan groups traced to college computer 
By Yuan Yang in Beijing

Cyberwar: An IP address at China's Tsinghua University is the origin of numerous recent cyber-attacks on targets around the world.

China’s top engineering university, Tsinghua University, was the origin of multiple recent cyber-espionage campaigns targeting groups such as the Tibetan community in India and the Alaskan state government, new research has found.
 Attacks originating from Tsinghua University's infrastructure also targeted the German carmaker Daimler a day after it issued a profit warning blaming the US-China trade war, according to cyber security company Recorded Future.
 Chinese cyber espionage against the US is increasing, US security firms say, giving credence to Washington’s fears that Beijing is stealing technology from US companies — fears that have in part pushed both countries into a global trade war.
 Although cyber security firms had previously seen a lull in attacks following a 2015 bilateral agreement to end government-sponsored hacking for commercial purposes, attacks are now back at or above the pre-accord level, experts say.
 Recorded Future found that from March this year, a series of attacks emanated from an IP address — an identification number given to every computer connecting to the internet — that belongs to Tsinghua University.
Tsinghua is among the world’s best computer science universities, and owns companies and projects tied to Beijing’s industrial policies, which pursue technological upgrading.
 Tsinghua was not immediately available for comment due to the university holiday season.
 The IP address in question had engaged in “aggressive scanning” of networks including the government of the US state of Alaska and the Kenyan Ports Authority.
 It also attempted to attack a server used by the Tibetan community in India, which had previously been the target of Chinese surveillance as a result of Beijing’s attempts to undermine supporters of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader reviled by the Communist party leadership as “a wolf in monk’s clothing”.
 Recorded Future said that the activity was “conducted by Chinese state-sponsored actors in support of China’s economic development goals”.
 Scanning the ports on a network is usually the first step in an attempt to penetrate the network by seeing what openings there are. 
However Recorded Future did not find evidence the attacker had successfully obtained sensitive information.
 “It makes sense that spy activities are more common now, given the tense economic situation,” said one Chinese security professional, who wished to remain anonymous.
However, he questioned why the attackers did not cover their tracks at all.
 Public “Whois” records show the IP address in question was first registered in 1993 as part of a block of IP addresses belonging to the domain tsinghua.edu.cn, with a street address belonging to Tsinghua University.