Rebel News Podcast - Telus building 5G networks with China's Huawei despite revelation of “back doors” in their tech

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, I tell you about a bizarre decision by TELUS, the phone and

00:00:06.360 internet company, to go full China, full Huawei, just days after the Wall Street Journal revealed

00:00:13.200 that Huawei built secret backdoor hacking entrances for the company that TELUS wouldn't

00:00:21.200 even know about. Just incredible. I'll take you through it. But before I do, can I invite you to

00:00:24.940 become a premium subscriber? It's eight bucks a month. You get the video version of this podcast.

00:00:29.480 Go to premium.rebelnews.com.

00:00:39.220 Tonight, days after it's revealed that Huawei has secret backdoors in its communications hardware,

00:00:54.620 TELUS announced they're going to build their 5G network with Huawei. Are they taking secret

00:01:00.260 bribes from China? It's February 14th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:24.120 The Wall Street Journal broke a big story this week. U.S. officials say Huawei can covertly

00:01:35.120 access telecom networks. Trump administration ramps up push for allies to block Chinese

00:01:40.980 company. Yeah, well, that's the thing. I'm not sure if Justin Trudeau's government is really acting like

00:01:45.860 a U.S. ally these days on everything from taking Omar Khadr off the no-fly list to palling around

00:01:52.660 with Iran's terrorist regime to being chummy with China, despite the fact that China is holding two

00:01:58.680 Canadians hostage and has for over a year now. Anyways, back to Huawei. Huawei, according to U.S.

00:02:04.280 officials, has secret backdoors to their technology that allows the company to get into your private

00:02:09.920 communications. Now, most telecommunications companies allow, let's call them front doors,

00:02:17.220 that let law enforcement listen in to communications if they have a search warrant. I guess in the olden

00:02:23.700 days they'd call that a wiretap, and that's normal. If a policeman goes to court and asks for a search

00:02:31.100 warrant from a judge to listen in or copy a criminal's phone calls or emails, and if the judge agrees,

00:02:37.860 the policeman can take that warrant and show it to the phone company and get that info. That's part

00:02:43.400 of our system. There are checks and balances on that. I've described some of them, the judge. But what

00:02:49.080 if the phone company itself uses that same door to snoop around on its own? No police, no judge,

00:02:58.260 just the phone company. That's what U.S. officials told the Wall Street Journal that Huawei can do.

00:03:04.320 Huawei can do its own wiretaps using those law enforcement doors, and they can do it without

00:03:12.420 the phone companies even knowing. Let me quote from the story, Huawei does not disclose this covert

00:03:19.540 access to its local customers or the host nation national security agency. So Huawei builds a country's

00:03:28.240 phone networks. Sells networks to companies like Bell or TELUS or Rogers for internet and cell phones.

00:03:36.420 Police can search by getting a search warrant to tap into those phones, but they have to go through

00:03:41.740 rigorous legal processes. A judge has to say, yeah, makes sense. But Huawei, who built the network,

00:03:50.260 they can secretly just pop in and do the same thing, and no one notices. Oh, and they're controlled by

00:03:55.960 the Communist Party of China, no big deal. Now, Huawei put out a really weird video yesterday,

00:04:01.640 which was a mix of Western-style media, social media chit-chat, and Chinese-style Soviet awkward

00:04:09.760 talking points. I was riveted, like watching a car crash. I watched the whole video. This Huawei

00:04:15.640 spokesman wandering through doors, talking about doors, back doors, front doors, said the Wall Street

00:04:22.080 Journal story could not be true. And he said, it's obviously not true, because if anyone ever

00:04:28.760 discovered that Huawei really was using back doors this way, well, everyone would immediately stop

00:04:35.860 using Huawei gear. Take a listen. Edward Snowden blew the whistle on this type of back door back in 2013

00:04:42.440 when he revealed that the U.S. National Security Agency pressures some companies to install vulnerabilities

00:04:48.520 in their products. These back doors allow the NSA to circumvent security protocols and get access

00:04:54.420 to otherwise private information. So, does Huawei install these? Hell no. Take all that noise that

00:05:04.960 you hear in the news and put it aside for a second. Think about this. The security of our products is our

00:05:11.200 bread and butter. If anyone ever found a malicious back door in our equipment, every single carrier in the

00:05:17.620 world would drop us in a heartbeat. Really? Is that how it would work? If you own a Huawei cell phone,

00:05:26.040 which are sold in Canada. Let's say you spent $500 on a little handphone. Would you really throw it

00:05:31.700 away, $500 worth of phone away? Because you heard something about internet security? Would you really?

00:05:39.780 Or, let me make that a bigger question. If you're a cell phone company like TELUS,

00:05:44.680 that spends billions of dollars on network hardware, would you really throw that away because you

00:05:53.660 discovered China spying? Would you? Or would you more likely be embarrassed and ashamed of it and

00:05:59.960 terrified that you'd lose your company and your customers, that maybe you'd even be tempted to

00:06:06.460 cover it up and hide the fact that China was spying on your customers in your country because

00:06:10.760 your foolish decision to let Huawei build your national phone company is what let the spying

00:06:16.760 happen. And you don't want to lose your customers or lose your money or write off billions of dollars

00:06:21.420 worth of equipment. So is it really true what that dramatic actor says? That if a phone company

00:06:27.840 discovered that China was spying on their customers, that they'd drop Huawei and never use it again?

00:06:32.740 Yeah, no. And I can say this with certainty because it has already happened, obviously.

00:06:39.540 There's a European cell phone company called Vodafone. And would you look at this? Vodafone

00:06:45.900 found hidden backdoors in Huawei equipment while the carrier says the issues found in 2011-2012

00:06:52.720 were resolved at the time the revelation may further damage the reputation of a Chinese powerhouse.

00:06:58.220 got it. The issues were resolved as in no one was fired. No one stopped using Huawei. What were

00:07:06.840 they going to throw out a billion dollars for the hardware and face international embarrassment?

00:07:10.800 Maybe even a class action lawsuit from their customers if they admitted something was wrong?

00:07:14.580 Or would they just have a private, quiet little meeting at the Chinese embassy maybe over a nice

00:07:20.020 meal maybe and just resolve it? That's the thing. As we've learned recently, Huawei

00:07:26.120 bribes Canadians all the time. Now, sometimes the bribes are legal. Like when Huawei gives millions of

00:07:35.740 dollars to the University of British Columbia and we've learned that this was enough to make

00:07:40.940 the university administration take China's side in the hostage crisis. That's all it takes to make

00:07:46.900 a mighty institution like UBC shill for communist China. Just give them a few million bucks. 0.63

00:07:53.560 At least we know about that, though. Unlike, say, the Trudeau Foundation, whose foreign funding

00:07:59.760 skyrocketed after Trudeau became prime minister, but they haven't disclosed who paid that money.

00:08:05.100 Gee, I wonder who. This kind of bribery is massive. I mean, China has what? Two, three trillion

00:08:11.320 dollars worth of foreign currency reserves. What's a few million here or there? What's even a few

00:08:15.340 billion to corrupt the West? And look at this news from a Hong Kong newspaper called the South

00:08:21.060 China Morning Post. Prestigious U.S. schools, including Harvard and Yale, under U.S. investigation

00:08:29.100 over foreign funding gifts from China. And look at this. Yale may not have disclosed at least

00:08:35.900 three hundred and seventy five million dollars in contributions, while Harvard may lack appropriate

00:08:40.160 controls to track money it receives. Gee, I wonder if that's on purpose or by accident that they don't

00:08:46.160 track their money. Authorities have requested records of gifts from foreign sources, including Huawei and

00:08:51.880 ZTE, as well as documents related to China's Thousand Talents plan. Let me read a few paragraphs from

00:08:59.360 this story. The U.S. Education Department announced that it has launched an investigation into Harvard and

00:09:05.320 Yale universities on suspicion of failing to report hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign gifts

00:09:09.960 and contracts from China and other countries. The agency said Yale may have failed to report at

00:09:15.620 least three hundred and seventy five million dollars in foreign gifts and contracts, choosing not to

00:09:19.860 report any gifts and contracts over the last four years. Harvard, it added, may lack appropriate

00:09:25.800 institutional controls over foreign money and fail to fully report all foreign gifts and contracts as

00:09:30.360 required by law. This is about transparency, said U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVoe in a statement.

00:09:37.080 Unfortunately, the more we dig, the more we find that too many are underreporting or not reporting at

00:09:41.280 all. We will continue to hold universities and colleges accountable. You know the thing about

00:09:46.840 universities? When was the last time you've been on a university? It's sort of incredible these days.

00:09:52.080 They sell naming rights for everything. It's like a Formula One car driver with all these patches on his

00:09:59.160 outfit. They name buildings. They name rooms in buildings. Entire schools on a university campuses

00:10:07.120 are named and they're named after the generous donors. I mean donors like the recognition and

00:10:13.780 universities like creating a culture of philanthropists outdoing each other, sort of a competition of who

00:10:19.920 can out donate each other, who gets to name the school after them. It's very healthy, I think.

00:10:25.600 Billionaires buying hospital wings to be named after themselves. We all win when that happens,

00:10:32.360 don't we? I like naming things. I love it. And so do universities. So how weird is it? How odd

00:10:41.320 that these donors don't want to be known. They want to be secret and the universities are helping

00:10:47.440 them keep a secret. That's sort of opposite land, isn't it? Why would you keep it a secret?

00:10:53.940 Unless there's something about it that you're shy about, that you're embarrassed about.

00:10:57.900 Like taking Chinese money for reasons you don't really want to have to explain to the public.

00:11:03.340 Which brings us to Telus. Just an awful, awful phone company. They're all terrible, but I think

00:11:11.200 Telus is the worst. First of all, they're so leftist. It's gross. They recently announced some

00:11:16.240 weird plan that they brag. They're a neutral company, but they're saying they're inspired by

00:11:22.820 the Liberal Party of Canada. What? Are you a company or a political party? What are you doing

00:11:29.180 with shareholder money? Well, look, they're heavily regulated by Trudeau's CRTC, so what do you think

00:11:34.240 they are? They've always been anti-oil sands too, which is when they first irritated me. They're super

00:11:39.900 gross when you remember that Telus was born from AGT, Alberta Government Telephones. They actually

00:11:46.340 come from Alberta, but they hate Alberta now, or at least the oil sands. But boy, do they love China! 0.91

00:11:52.580 Take a look at this. Canada's Telus to launch 5G network with Huawei soon. CFO. Canadian telecom

00:12:02.120 operator Telescorp will soon begin rolling out its 5G network, and its initial module will be with

00:12:07.300 Huawei Technologies Company limited its equipment, the company's chief financial officer Doug French

00:12:12.420 said on Thursday. It's important for us to launch our network where the time is right,

00:12:17.460 French said in a statement, adding that the company will continue to collaborate with the

00:12:21.420 Canadian government in building the ecosystem. Gee, I wonder what discussions Doug French has had with

00:12:27.300 the Chinese government. I wonder if there are any undisclosed payments to tell us, any secrets like Yale

00:12:33.480 and Harvard have kept, like Vodafone has covered up. Do you trust Telus? I can't trust them as far as I

00:12:42.820 can throw their phones. Look, this is not a right-wing criticism. This is a Canadian criticism. It's a

00:12:48.800 democracy thing. Here, listen to Barack Obama's National Security Advisor if you think this is just a

00:12:54.920 right-wing thing. Here's Susan Rice. It gives the Chinese the ability, if they choose to use it, 0.91

00:13:02.540 to access all kinds of information, civilian intelligence, military, that could be very,

00:13:10.280 very compromising. So I, much as I disagree with the Trump administration on a number of things,

00:13:16.080 on this, their concern about Huawei, I believe they're right. As a matter of protection,

00:13:21.260 would the United States have to have a slightly different security relationship with Canada?

00:13:25.220 Yes. And that will throw the Five Eyes collaboration, which is, serves the security

00:13:31.660 interests of every Canadian and every American into jeopardy. It, we just, it, it can't be done.

00:13:39.360 Can't share. I don't see how we can share in the way we have. It's not a joke. It's truly serious.

00:13:45.660 Yeah, Huawei is really just the corporatizing of China's cyber warfare agency. And now TELUS

00:13:54.440 wants to be their Canadian base of operations. If you use TELUS, if you have a TELUS phone or TELUS

00:14:02.480 internet account or cable, time to switch. How do you feel about being a guinea pig for Huawei? How do

00:14:10.740 you feel about Huawei being able to snoop on your calls and emails and what you watch on the internet

00:14:16.300 without anyone even knowing? So who does want this? Well, Trudeau seems to, he admires China's basic

00:14:24.540 dictatorship.

00:14:25.080 There's a level of, of, uh, admiration I actually have for China. Um, because their, you know, basic 0.99

00:14:34.620 dictatorship is allowing them, uh, to actually turn their economy around on a dime.

00:14:39.920 Yeah, that's a bad thing. Um, and our U.S. allies say if we go ahead and build our communication

00:14:47.040 networks with Chinese spyware, like TELUS says they're going to do, the U.S. will cut us off as

00:14:53.520 allies in sharing secrets with us. But maybe, maybe Trudeau sort of wants that. Stay with

00:15:03.280 us for more.

00:15:15.500 Well, there's one man who I think knows more about the perils, uh, of allowing Huawei into

00:15:23.340 our communications life. And that's our friend, Gordon G. Chang, who joins us now via Skype.

00:15:30.140 Gordon, I have to say the timing of this announcement by TELUS and their CFO. So this

00:15:36.380 is a very senior executive is just awful to me. I mean, it's right after the Wall Street

00:15:43.140 Journal reveals, uh, what U.S. officials called a secret backdoor that Huawei can get into the

00:15:49.120 networks. It's right after the U.S. Department of Education announces investigations into secret

00:15:54.700 payments to Harvard and Yale by China. The timing is awful, but they seem confident. What's going on?

00:16:04.380 I wish I knew, Ezra, because clearly Huawei is a danger. Um, if you allow Huawei into your 5G network,

00:16:12.400 whether it's a core or non-core equipment, um, it is going to be able to take data. And by the way,

00:16:19.700 that distinction between core and non-core probably is meaningless, um, in reality. So I think that,

00:16:26.400 uh, clearly TELUS is making a grave mistake. Remember, Canada is a five eyes partner of the United

00:16:34.360 States. Uh, this is the United States is going to have to reconsider its relationships with Canada.

00:16:40.740 And so I, I think that, uh, Justin Trudeau, your prime minister needs to have a conversation with

00:16:47.100 that company. Gordon, I watched the official response by Huawei to the Wall Street Journal

00:16:53.460 article about the secret backdoor that Huawei can get in. And they had an actor, uh,

00:17:00.620 make about a six minute video. And we played an excerpt of it earlier. The actor said this,

00:17:07.260 he said, Huawei would never spy on our customers because the first time we did that, all our

00:17:14.160 customers would immediately abandon us. And I thought, well, that makes some logical sense. But then I

00:17:19.880 discovered that Vodafone discovered just this sort of backdoor in 2011, 2012. They didn't dump

00:17:30.180 Huawei. They claim they made a few patches, but if you're a company that's invested billions in

00:17:36.020 Huawei infrastructure, you're locked in. You don't want to write it off. You don't want the

00:17:41.980 embarrassment. You don't want a lawsuit from your customers. You have a lot of incentives to paper

00:17:47.640 it over to actually become an apologist for Huawei. I don't think that, uh, PR line by Huawei holds

00:17:55.600 water. I think, um, they have been caught and there's a, there's a lot of moral hazard by companies

00:18:03.580 to go along with it because otherwise they're in trouble too.

00:18:08.400 Yeah. Well, uh, Huawei servers were used by Beijing to surreptitiously download data from the

00:18:15.480 headquarters of the African union in Addis Ababa from 2012 to 2017. Also, um, two points, uh, Ezra,

00:18:24.640 first of all, China's 2017 national intelligence law requires every Chinese entity to spy if demanded.

00:18:32.840 So that's Chinese law. And the second thing is in the communist party's top down system,

00:18:38.280 nobody can have, can refuse a request from the party to do something. So those conditions by Huawei

00:18:45.940 just don't hold water as a matter of law. They are under a compulsion to spy.

00:18:51.360 Yeah. Let me shift gears a little bit because, uh, Huawei is very much on our minds here.

00:18:57.720 It feels imminent. Like Canada has to make a decision soon. That's just how it feels. I don't

00:19:02.260 know how long Trudeau can kick the can down the road, but I'd like to talk about something else.

00:19:07.060 I see you very active on, on Twitter. And I'd like to remind our viewers to follow, uh, Gordon on

00:19:13.200 Twitter at Gordon G Chang. And we'll put that on the screen. Gordon, one of the things you've been

00:19:18.920 talking about a lot is the coronavirus and how China isn't, well, I mean, like any authoritarian

00:19:25.540 regime, we can't trust what they say. It's probably infused with propaganda and, and, you know,

00:19:33.140 scapegoating or avoiding responsibility. It reminds me of Chernobyl in this former Soviet Union. Let me

00:19:41.460 ask you this. Donald Trump has had China on the back foot because of his massive tariffs. China's

00:19:49.220 growth rate has fallen to the lowest in a generation. Economically, I think it was hurting a bit. Now,

00:19:54.960 on top of that, you have this coronavirus, the actual costs of trying to deal with it, the, the worry,

00:20:03.220 the demoralization, foreign countries stepping away, flight bans, quarantines. I wonder if like

00:20:12.540 Chernobyl, this is something that could cause the unraveling of China just through cost and stress 0.99

00:20:21.880 and exposing the brittleness of the communist system. I, I watched the mini series on HBO of, of

00:20:28.260 Chernobyl. And it, although it was, you know, a, an interpretation of history, it convinced me how,

00:20:34.900 how big of a shock to the authoritarian system Chernobyl was. Do you think the coronavirus is

00:20:40.540 the same? Well, it could very well be as a matter of fact, in China, you have a number of people saying

00:20:47.500 the same thing. So for instance, right after the coronavirus outbreak, you had Chinese dissidents

00:20:54.400 actually start to write reviews of the HBO show, Chernobyl, and they didn't mention China because

00:21:00.880 they didn't want to be censored. Um, that didn't work of course, because the censors took it down,

00:21:06.280 but people are discussing this. Also, um, the virus outbreak is have, wreaking havoc on the Chinese

00:21:13.280 economy. So we know that oil demand is now down 20% year on year. All sorts of events that were, um,

00:21:21.240 planned are being canceled, including the Canton fair. And that was scheduled for April and shows

00:21:27.500 that Chinese leaders, um, think that this virus is going to continue for quite some time. So that's

00:21:32.960 a real hit exporters. You have all the cancellations that you talked about of the flights. Um, so I think

00:21:39.920 the Chinese economy is in red territory and that's important because the communist party, one of their

00:21:45.880 two main bases of legitimacy is the continual delivery of prosperity. And you now have an

00:21:51.240 economy that is contracting. Yeah. You know, uh, I, I suppose in some ways it's not important how the

00:21:59.220 virus began. If it came from, as some people allege eating, uh, bats, as some have alleged, I understand

00:22:08.660 that Wuhan is also the location of a, uh, high security biological, uh, research center,

00:22:16.520 Ebola, things of that source that many have said is also a military facility for weapons research.

00:22:24.220 I, I suppose it doesn't matter how it started because it started. Um, do you have any thoughts? I mean,

00:22:30.320 I don't, I want to debunk disinformation and conspiracy theories. We don't want to engage in that,

00:22:37.460 but it is interesting because at the end of the day, Chernobyl was caused because the Soviet system,

00:22:43.880 they cut corners because they wanted to save costs and it was the Soviet way and there was no public

00:22:50.240 interest. So at the end of the day, why Chernobyl went wrong actually was, um, an expression of Soviet 0.89

00:22:57.980 communism. Do you have any, uh, conclusions about how this started or is it still too sketchy to be firm

00:23:05.760 on that? Yeah, we don't know how this started. And, uh, China is not helping because, uh, it has not

00:23:12.760 allowed, uh, U S CDC personnel, the centers for disease control and prevention. They haven't allowed

00:23:19.120 U S CDC personnel into China and there is a W H O delegation there, but they're not allowed anywhere near

00:23:26.380 the outbreak. So they're sitting, cooling their heels. Um, so Beijing has been doing its best to try

00:23:31.900 to prevent the world from learning how this started. There are a number of theories, how this

00:23:37.260 started. Uh, you mentioned one of them, it just naturally mutated from bats. Other people are

00:23:42.100 saying that there was a release from that, uh, Wuhan Institute of Virology, that P4 lab that you 0.99

00:23:47.680 mentioned. Uh, we really don't know the, the Lancet, which is the authoritative British medical journal,

00:23:54.700 ran an article on January 24, which said that, um, most of the initial cases of coronavirus had

00:24:02.840 nothing to do with the wet market that people point the finger at. Right. Well, Ezra, if that's the case,

00:24:08.760 it means that there's got to be another source and that other source, one of those other sources could

00:24:14.200 very well be the lab. And I actually do think it matters how it started because if the Chinese people 1.00

00:24:19.840 believe, as some of them do, that this virus was started, um, from the lab, then there's hell to

00:24:27.400 pay for the communist party because there'll be no forgiving the party. People are already white hot

00:24:32.180 over this. This would make it even worse. Yeah. Very interesting. Well, listen, we're always grateful

00:24:37.840 for your time, Gordon. Uh, and China is certainly in the news, uh, for Canada and will be for, uh, a long

00:24:44.260 time to come. It's great to see you. And once again, I'd like to encourage our viewers to follow

00:24:48.260 Gordon in real time, he's constantly showing news articles that I personally would not have

00:24:54.340 otherwise come across. I recommend his Twitter feed at Gordon G Chang. It's an outstanding education.

00:25:01.000 Thank you, my friend. It's good to see you again. Thank you so much, Ezra. All right. Stay with us

00:25:06.660 more ahead on the rebel. Hey, welcome back. What do you think of the fact that

00:25:18.240 Telus is announcing it's going to proceed with Huawei as part of their cell phone company? I think

00:25:24.980 that is so tone deaf. Remember I told you that Pew Research, which is a liberal, but fairly reputable,

00:25:32.400 uh, research and polling company. They surveyed people all around the world for attitudes about

00:25:39.060 China. And did you know that the country in the world that is most hostile to China, number one is

00:25:47.500 Sweden, believe it or not. Number two is Canada. More than the United States, more than Japan or Korea,

00:25:53.740 Canadians have turned against China because China has turned against Canada. China has seized Canadian,

00:25:59.640 uh, hostages. China has abused us with, uh, barriers against our agricultural exports.

00:26:08.240 Canadians hate China, not the Chinese people, not the Chinese ethnicity, but the Chinese

00:26:13.240 communist government. And now with the Wuhan coronavirus, I can only imagine those numbers

00:26:17.680 are worse. Imagine that's the political context. And you're an executive at Telus and you say,

00:26:24.260 now's a good time to announce we're going with Huawei. How can you not beg the question,

00:26:31.100 are you taking a bribe? Oh, this makes me so mad. What do you think? If you agree with me,

00:26:36.220 go to banhuawei.ca. That's our petition on the subject. I would ask you to sign that petition. We've

00:26:44.300 got to get that stuff out of our system. All right, folks, that's the show for today. Until next time,

00:26:49.360 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:27:06.220 you

Rebel News Podcast - February 15, 2020

Telus building 5G networks with China's Huawei despite revelation of “back doors” in their tech

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