Cutting corners on telecom infrastructure with Huawei

In January 2013, I wrote a Quora blog post about Huawei’s twisty, winding path to prominence. There were plenty of oddities, e.g. Huawei was supplier to the Taliban, and later, was nearly acquired by GOP presidential Mitt Romney… but not at the same time!

Huawei is back in the limelight. Curiously, the problem is not one of Chinese state interference but of sloppy software development. I’ll get to that, but first, let’s take an illustrated tour of the Huawei story.

A casual Huawei timeline

2001 – Huawei India faces allegations that it had developed telecommunications equipment used by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Huawei greeters at ITU World Telecom 2007 but probably not for the Taliban

2010 – Reuters reports that a partner of Huawei tried to sell embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran‘s largest mobile-phone operator.

Huawei at mobile device trade show convention in Iran

2011 – The Australian government excludes Huawei from tendering contracts with a government-owned corporation constructing a broadband network.

2012 – The Canadian government excludes Huawei from plans to build a secure government communications network.

Huawei phone Pegasus, Barcelona 2012

2013 – The U.S.- China Economic & Security Review Commission advised Congress about Chinese government influence on Huawei.

2013 – Reuters investigative report following receipt of a letter from a concerned Los Alamos National Labs (LANL) employee:

[LANL] had installed devices made by H3C Technologies Co [which] raises questions about procurement practices by U.S. departments responsible for national security.

The devices were Chinese-made switches used for managing data traffic on LANL computer networks. Huawei’s relationship with Chinese military was mentioned.

Economic Models for Turbulent Times Part 2

A new research study has already received unusual attention. The Network of Global Corporate Control [PDF] discovers a relatively small group of multinational companies with disproportionate influence over the global economy. The authors, a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, are supposedly the first to empirically identify such a network.

The problem is approached using mathematical models designed for capturing behavior of complex natural systems. The study applies this methodology to a large data set of corporate information, to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs). Previous studies reported that a few TNCs drive much of the global economy. However, they analyzed fewer companies. Due to limited data availability and computing resources, past studies did not consider the effect of indirect ownership.

Methodology

Orbis 2007, a repository of over 30 million private and public companies, published by Bureau van Dijk, was the data source. The study sample used the 43,060 largest TNCs, and derived the associated ownership linkages. The network structure was based on the relationships between shareholding interests, then weighted by each company’s operating revenue. This yielded a directional map of global economic power.

Quantitative results

The model revealed a core group with networked ownership, see image below. These 1,318 companies:

• all had ties to at least two other companies in the core group
• on average, were each connected to 20 other core group companies
• represented 20% of all global operating revenues,
• collectively owned the majority of the world’s largest blue chip and manufacturing firms:
• in total, generated 60% of all global revenues.