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When the US State Department’s purchase of 16,000 desktop PCs from Chinese manufacturer Lenovo ran into a chorus of naysayers in the Congress, Shanghaiist chimed in.
Today, the New York Times, in its online edition, brought us an update: The result is hardly surprising, but nonetheless extremely disappointing.
It was a drama that reached a conclusion late last week, when the State Department, responding to fears that its security might be breached by a secretly placed device or hidden software, agreed to keep personal computers made by Lenovo of China off its networks that handle classified government messages and documents.
Futhermore:
... the State Department was "initiating changes in its procurement processes in light of the changing ownership" of computer equipment suppliers. A spokesman said that "to allay any possible fears and any possible concerns, this is where we came out."
Fears and concerns that exist only in the minds of a deluded few (or many?) on Capitol Hill, as most industry watchers agree that the placement of any malicious hardware/software is extremely unlikely. But, that didn’t stop House members from patting each other on the back.
Frank R. Wolf, the chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees the budget appropriations for the State Department, Commerce Department and Justice Department said the security concerns about the State Department's use of Lenovo computers had been brought to his attention by two members of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan group appointed by Congress. "They deserve the credit for this."
Credit for what? For showing zero faith in the State Department’s IT security staff in detecting possible implanted “mal-ware”. Or was it for further cementing America’s reputation abroad as an overly paranoid, increasingly xenophobic and completely out of touch nation in disarray? If so, thanks guys! A job well done indeed!
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While I'll agree that in this particular instance America might be acting rather paranoid, you'd have to agree that a certain amount of wariness is warrented. After all, it seems like every six months or so a Chinese spy is arrested in the States trying to smuggle cutting edge technology back to the motherland - just recently it was the fellow trying to buy ballistic missiles, and a while back it was the chap with discs containing schematics for advanced submarine engines. I don't think there is any question China is envious of America's technology and would stop at nothing to try and obtain it.
Agreed. but that falls under the purview of the CIA/FBI, I'm all for nailing every last one of them spying Mofos.
This move, put it simply is just bad PR, gives a lot of lip fodder to the Chinese while gaining zippo for America.
I couldn't agree more. I'm sure we must be looking real intelligent outside the States right about now. This reminds me of the fact that my Mom doesn't want to setup a wireless network in her house because of "security concerns". Mind you, she lives out in the country and there are no houses within hundreds of yards.
If we're worried about malware, how about wiping the hard drives clean and rebuilding them ourselves? Or are they worried about a secret chip installed in the computer that will transmit the data to a sattelite and over to China? Please. If they are worried about putting such "classified" information on these computers, then don't outsource the freakin hardware. Build your own high tech secure computers.
Frankly, we ought to be a laughing stock to the rest of the world with this kind of nonsense. Nice going Congress.
Hey,that was a conservative decision.
These are people money and they should be invested back in local industry if possible, not in some foreign places.
Otherwise you dude...you are history....What if they start empoying chinese staff instead of some lousy unproductive guys.
Is all about pride...if you don't get it,then move out of here in a place than people don t gie a sh** about anything
I'm glad Congress caught on to this. Luckily, we've managed to slip the "secret backdoor" in Windows by the rest of the world, who apparently do not have governments that are so on the ball. Oh crap, should I not have said anything about the secret backdoor? Oh well.
On a more serious note, they could have at least thought of a better excuse, like saying they wanted to buy the machines from a US company like Dell or something, which would be a much more defensible position. (And yes, I know most Dell stuff is made here ...)
I'm sure the State Department has a corporate license for Windows. There would be no need to "wipe the hard drives clean" before installing. As the computer probably wouldn't show up with anything to wipe.
There is a legimate concern with firmware. A motherboard could easily have an implanted key stroke logger that could, for instance, record a couple million keystrokes (about .25 MB). It would then send it out as an encrypted email message to a random email address.
With all of the Chinese spy issues in the USA it would seem fair for them to be cautious of outsourcing. The biggest problem, as mentioned in an earlier post, is that the US handled the issue with no tact.
I also believe that the US State Department can easily test and confirm that the hardware is secure. Lenovo is probably more then willing to be as transparent as possible to gain the US's trust.
Is it really that hard to see that America should be concerned about Chinese companies spying.
Do you think that maybe a lot of this stems from the spying that goes on multinational firms, their employees, their suppliers and their customers here in China?
Lenovo is 25% owned by the Chinese gov't. Yes the same gov't that has set up the largest filtering and censorship of the internet anywhere in the world. The same gov't that has a file on each and every person reading this site (i know a little dramatic but true none the less).
How much technology has been stolen from the USA in the last 15 years? How many Chinese are involved in spying on USA, Canadian and European countries at the moment.
Recently (6 months ago) a chinese diplomat in Australia came out and released the information that over 1000 Chinese people living and working in Australia were involved in spying on Aussie gov't, companies and other chinese within the country. A nation of 20 million people.
What would be the number in the USA, 10,000 or 20,000.
The US gov't doesn't own its countries companies. Most are privately held or publicly traded. They could even be owned by Chinese.
People need to start realizing that China is not a free country, not free enterprise and that doing work within large Chinese companies always involves working with communist party officials and its network. How many communist party officials sit on the board of lenova? I don't have an answer, but any large chinese company i have delt with has had several, what do you think made them so large.
Tact is one thing, and yes the USA had no tact in this approach. But to think Lenova should be free to operate in USA soil is just silly to me.
Do you
Roger
If the Congress is truly concerned with Chinese espionage, the best course of action is to significantly increase funding for the FBI/CIA/NSA and other related agencies.
The whole Lenovo spiel has nothing to do with national security. It stinks of election year politics, with a bunch of congressmen on the bubble wanting to act tough/patriotic in front of their constituencies. What better way than to publicly lynch a company from Red China? This isn’t anything new. China did exactly the same thing(and DPRK still does) back in the days by demonizing anything and everything associated with America, then public enemy #1.
And just to play devil’s advocate for a second. Do you think our friends at Langley don’t have a few dozen field agents working undercover here in China? Don’t even tell me, just because a company isn’t gov’t owned, that the CIA can’t place whomever they want and wherever they want all across China in offices of “private” enterprises. Should Beijing then ban Intel powered servers? Windows driven PCs? Xerox copy machine? GE light bulbs? Quaker Oatmeals(ya never know, they might put a nano-chip in there). Sounds silly, no?
I don’t pretend to be an expert in international politics, or much of anything else really. But to me, the Lenovo episode is wholly unnecessary and has made the US look awfully petty.
Jay, this is a common problem i have arguing with people that understand the Chinese gov't system of spying and reporting on people, companies and activities for whatever reasons.
It is virtually impossible for a company like Microsoft to spy on the Chinese gov't through its operating system. Microsoft is a publicly held company, that does not answer to the US gov't, it answers to its shareholders, wherever they may be. Microsoft would have zero interest in spying for the US gov't as it would gain no shareholder value from doing so, in fact, it could only limit its chances of success in potentially the largest PC market in the world.
Hu Jin Tao visited Bill Gates first on his visit to the USA last month, not GWB. GWB got second place. Do you understand the power in that message. It would not make sense for a free enterprise company to spy on other nations, that is the separation of gov't and companies in a capitalistic society.
Now, could the CIA and FBI plant people in companies to spy on China. Of course it is a possibility but a very slim one as it would put the companies and the organizations at a huge risk. So they find much more savvy forms of spying.
The Russian Communistic system, and the Mao system were great a planting moles into other organizations operations. Mao himself was always very concerned about other political organizations doing this to his party. Hence the years of torture (mental, emotional and physical) through self criticisms (and other means) and the naming of anyone who may have had even the slightest connections to opposing parties.
Now i am not defending the US gov't and saying it doesn't spy on other countries, obviously it does and in large and concerted programs for doing so. But i don't feel it has at its disposal the vast network of corporations to do its spying like the Chinese system does with all its former communist officials seated on the boards of this massive companies.
I hardly think it is a surprise for congress to make this decision, and i don't feel it is politicing to do so in an election year. Until China can step up and be less corrupt, more truthful and provide the same systems of corporate governance to protect shareholders (be they local or foreign) I can see more of these decisions being made not just by the USA (the leader knowledge of Chinese spy tactics and theft of information and technology) but i think the norm would be to see more and more nations protecting themselves from this type of activity of state owned or partically state owned Chinese companies.
Roger
You argue with great clarity and soundness on behalf of Microsoft, yet for some reason you turn around and refuse to afford Lenovo the same type of logic. It too is a public company(73% NOT owned by the Chinese gov’t) What does Lenovo stand to gain by being a PRC spy accomplice in the largest corporate market in the world?
Like wise, you argue the CIA/FBI wouldn’t want to jeopardize US firms by planting moles within the organization(I’m not so sure that they care), but you think China wouldn’t mind risking the reputation of Chinese companies overseas by having the entire management and the corporate entity itself be complicit in the spying?
I’m not sure where you’re going with the whole “Mao” stuff. Do you honestly believe that the Chinese intelligence network is governed by Maoist principles?
Lastly, yes, China is corrupt, untruthful, has a shitty record of corporate governance, but again what does that have to do with the issue at hand?
Roger, China has a lot of problems and does pose a meaningful threat to the US, and America is right to be concerned and vigilante, but in this case, the Congress made a mistake and acted inappropriately.
The Mao stuff was inserted to educate people on the single largest spy tactic of the communist regimes, these being the presence of moles.
In addition, it was mentioned in my example of the Chinese diplomat in Australia who revealed the same information of over 1000 moles working within Australila. It is not unknown in the west, the Chinese gov't is not fooling anyone with this. In my country we were instucted on ways to hire Chinese employees to minimize the risk of hiring a mole who might steal our new technologies. This has always been the preferred method of spying in communist regimes because all people must report to the party. We do not have this system in the west, we do not report to the Party or the gov't when it comes to business. They are 98% seperate from each other.
This is not the case in China. In fact, it is very important to have members of the communist party within your company. And in many cases the gov't will place these people there. 25% or 27% of the company is owned by the gov't...how on earth can you say that they are not serving the gov't. A large shareholder in a major US corporation would be one that had 3% to 4% of shares in that company.
Now, let's remember here that Lenovo is not restricted from selling in the USA, or even the USA govt. They are restricted from having installations in security sensitive areas of the USA gov't. They were also not restricted from buying the laptop division of the largest PC company in the USA.
Now, how many foreign companies have access into selling into the Chinese gov't or military? I can tell you the answer is basically none except on very specialized products. The reason being the nature of how these sales are made on relationship basis and decision made adhoc by powers that be within the gov't and its departments.
The two systems are very different. And you cannot take the experience of Chinese companies and apply it to the economy of western countries. Our countries have worked for 100s of years to eliminate the corruption and lies that are unfortunately too common here. When worldcom and enron happened, changes were instantly made which affected every public company in the USA. China is nowhere near stopping corruption, graft and inefficiencies of selling through relationships.
Then to just risk having this fall apart within sensitive US security installations within the US gov't because we should supposedly give China a fair go is rediculous.
Congress may have acted inappropriately, but i honestly do not think so, i honest believe China is going to see more and more of these restrictions being placed on it for years to come. And not just from the USA but from all western economies.
China is getting better, we all agree, but it is not close yet, and it still has a long way to go to clean up its act (in so many areas). More and more pressure is going to be put on democratic gov'ts to do something about it for the forseeable future i am afraid.