Huawei staff CVs linked to Chinese military
Record leak
LONDON • Huawei staff admitted to having worked with Chinese intelligence agencies in a “mass trove” of employment records leaked online.
Analysis of CV s of Huawei employees appear to show “far closer links” between the telecommunications company and military-backed cyber agencies than previously thought, a think-tank claims.
The employment files suggest that some Huawei staff have also worked as agents within China’s Ministry of State Security; worked on joint projects with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA); were educated at China’s leading military academy; and have been employed by a military unit accused of a cyber attack on U.S. corporations.
Analysis of the CV s found 11 Huawei staff graduated from the PLA’s Information Engineering University, a military academy reputed to be China’s centre for “information warfare research”.
The claims will strengthen demands for the telecoms operator to be frozen out of a deal to build part of Britain’s new 5G mobile phone network. The Daily Telegraph disclosed in April that Theresa May had given the green light to Huawei to build parts of the network despite national security concerns. Huawei said it does not work on military projects for China’s regime.
The CV s of up to 25,000 Huawei employees were uncovered by Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the Fulbright University Vietnam, while investigating Huawei’s ownership structure. The CV s were uploaded on Chinese recruitment platforms in the past year and began to appear online and on publicly accessible sites. Prof. Balding, in conjunction with the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think-tank, concluded that about 100 Huawei staff had connections with the Chinese military or intelligence agencies and their “backgrounds indicated experience in matters of national security”.
The study claims that one Huawei project team leader refers on his CV to work on joint projects between the telecoms company and the Chinese Army’s National University of Defence Technology, one of China’s leading military academies and was put on a U.S. list, banning American firms from selling it technology in 2015, under Barack Obama’s presidency.
Another Huawei employee’s CV says she works both at the telecoms giant as a software engineer and also at the Radar Academy of the Chinese Army. The academy, says Prof. Balding, “matches closely her work for Huawei”.
Ed Brewster, of Huawei, said: “Huawei does not work on military or intelligence projects for the Chinese Government. This information is not new and is not secret, being freely available on career websites. It is not unusual that Huawei employs people from public service and government. We are proud of their backgrounds and we are open about them.”