^ no worse than CNN, MSNBC or time magazine. carl bernstein wrote a long article in rolling stone all the way back in the 1977 about all the CIA assets in the US media & how they were proud to serve their country & they were all on the same side
the NYT story mentioned above
The White House’s focus on Huawei coincides with the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on China, which has involved sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods, investment restrictions and the indictments of several Chinese nationals accused of hacking and cyberespionage. President Trump has accused China of “ripping off our country” and plotting to grow stronger at America’s expense.
Mr. Trump’s views, combined with a lack of hard evidence implicating Huawei in any espionage, have prompted some countries to question whether America’s campaign is really about national security or if it is aimed at preventing China from gaining a competitive edge.
Administration officials see little distinction in those goals.
“President Trump has identified overcoming this economic problem as critical, not simply to right the balance economically, to make China play by the rules everybody else plays by, but to prevent an imbalance in political/military power in the future as well,” John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, told The Washington Times on Friday. “The two aspects are very closely tied together in his mind.”
The administration is warning allies that the next six months are critical. Countries are beginning to auction off radio spectrum for new, 5G cellphone networks and decide on multibillion-dollar contracts to build the underlying switching systems. This past week, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it had concluded its first high-band 5G spectrum auction.
The Chinese government sees this moment as its chance to wire the world — especially European, Asian and African nations that find themselves increasingly beholden to Chinese economic power.
“This will be almost more important than electricity,” said Chris Lane, a telecom analyst in Hong Kong for Sanford C. Bernstein. “Everything will be connected, and the central nervous system of these smart cities will be your 5G network.”
*snip*
While American officials refuse to discuss it, the government snooping was a two-way street. As early as 2010, the N.S.A. secretly broke into Huawei’s headquarters, in an operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” a discovery revealed by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor now living in exile in Moscow.
Documents show that the N.S.A. was looking to prove suspicions that Huawei was secretly controlled by the People’s Liberation Army — and that Mr. Ren never really left the powerful army unit. It never found the evidence, according to former officials. But the Snowden documents also show that the N.S.A. had another goal: to better understand Huawei’s technology and look for potential back doors. This way, when the company sold equipment to American adversaries, the N.S.A. would be able to target those nations’ computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if necessary, offensive cyberoperations.
In other words, the Americans were trying to do to Huawei the exact thing they are now worried Huawei will do to the United States.
https://www.nytimes....technology.html