Bright and Shiny Objects: Really Chairman Rogers?

Yesterday, July 8, 2013, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the second program in a three part series on cyber security.  Among others, BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera interviewed Mike Rogers, Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).

In 2012, Rogers and HPSCI conducted a year-long “investigation” of my employer Huawei Technologies, concluding with a Report which, in redefining the word vapid (“for vegetarians,” per The Economist), suggested - without a whit of substance - that Huawei represents a threat to U.S. national security.

Rogers’ motivation for his unfounded corporate slander seemed a combination of misguided protectionism, Sinophobic jingoism, and cyber-scaremongering, the latter to drive support for his cyber information-sharing legislation which, we have recently learned, would legalize practices seemingly already well-underway in the context of the U.S. Government’s PRISM and related programs.

In the wake of the public unveiling of deep and broad U.S. espionage and surveillance activities - at home and abroad - it seems that the Chairman has extended his maligning of Huawei (one of many distracting “bright and shiny objects” being deployed) in attempts to draw attention away from those programs.

In yesterday’s BBC interview, Rogers broke new and libelous grounds.  Rather than hints, suggestions and innuendo, the Chairman graduated to out-and-out, um, lies.  To wit:

“I can tell you sitting here that I have a high degree of confidence that Huawei is connected to the Chinese Government, it uses it to exfiltrate information from wherever it’s operating back to China for illicit purposes.”

Asked “Is there actually any evidence of Huawei doing anything,” Rogers replied: “I have no doubt and no qualms about saying that Huawei is using its equipment to exfiltrate information that they have no right to have and they're using that in furtherance of their economic espionage activities.”

Asked “What's your view of the U.K. allowing Huawei into Britain's telecoms infrastructure?,” Rogers demonstrated either utter ignorance or remarkable disingenuity (given that as HPSCI Chairman he has full understanding of how PRISM works agnostic to infrastructure pipes), responding “…it allows them to control the pipes basically, where that information flows through.”

Someone other than me want to call this guy out?  

He’s got nothing.  He is a thoroughly naked would-be emperor (HCA reference).  There is, in short, absolutely no “there” there, and he knows it.  Ask him.  C’mon.  He’s got squat.  Could be fun…