[the_third_wave]

O you sweet summer child, think of why there is no public evidence on Chinese espionage while you can easily rattle off a laundry list of Western espionage programs and you'll realise your mistake: China is a closed society without public inquiry while most of the West hangs its dirty laundry out for all to see and comment upon. Look under the cover of that Xiongmai camera, that Huawei base station or those Chinese inverters and you'll find plenty of remote access and control facilities which no doubt were left there purely by accident.

[supermatt]

That sounds clever, but it dodges the core issue. You're treating suspicion as proof. Yes, China is less open, but that doesn't justify assuming guilt without evidence. Both Western and Chinese tech have had security flaws - whether truly accidental or not is up for debate. As you mentioned, Xiongmai cameras had hardcoded credentials and poor default security, and Huawei routers have had vulnerabilities - like many western alternatives. But none of these have been proven to be intentional or used for state spying.

In contrast, the West has been caught with INTENTIONAL backdoors - many of which have been directly linked to government and intelligence services. Juniper firewalls had a secret access mechanism tied to compromised cryptography. Trustwave issuing subordinate certificates to facilitate MitM snooping on all TLS traffic. Netgear and Cisco devices including undocumented public-facing remote access features. These were not speculative or theoretical. They were discovered, documented, and in some cases quietly patched without disclosure.

None of these were revealed out of transparency. They were found by researchers or whistleblowers. If there is no public evidence against Chinese devices, there is no case. Assuming intent without proof is not analysis. It is projection.

And let’s not ignore the obvious: many of these devices are manufactured in the same Chinese factories. But once a US brand name is stamped on the box, the fear seems to vanish. Somehow, they stop being a threat...