Some key officials from the Biden administration were present at an elite security conference, but they may have been outsmarted by one of America’s major international rivals.
According to Politico, Vice President Kamala Harris was one of several heads of state and government dignitaries that attended the Munich Security Conference, which acts as a massive negotiating and relations opportunity for world leaders.
However, Politico noted that several telecommunications antennas in the city of Munich, including the one on the roof of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the conference was being held, were equipped with gear from the controversial Chinese tech company Huawei.
This is the same Huawei that has been under investigation for years by the U.S. government for ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and in 2019, it was revealed to have cooperated closely with the Chinese military on projects.
As the world’s security elites gather at the @MunSecConf this Friday, their mobile phones will be connecting to Chinese telecoms equipment surrounding the venue.
Read our investigative story!
w/@AntoanetaRoussi @laurenscerulus#Huaweihttps://t.co/2Mia48hy4z
— Louis Westendarp (@lwestendarp) February 14, 2023
This means that while several world leaders, including our own vice president, were meeting to discuss international security concerns, they were potentially connecting their phones to Chinese telecom equipment.
The national security risk posed by this is huge. This means that China, which is probably America’s biggest international rival, was potentially using the occasion to spy on the dignitaries of other nations, including America.
Did anyone even notice this? All they had to do was look up, and they would have realized that their privacy and security were at risk.
Again, it really is hard to overstate just how dangerous of a situation this is, when a hostile foreign power potentially has access to the data and information of hundreds of world governments.
But, at this point, it is hard to believe that the Biden administration will take the threat of China seriously, as past actions have shown it to be rather limp-wristed when it comes to the CCP.
The Biden administration has refused to take action against TikTok despite mounting evidence and bipartisan concerns that the app is stealing the data of millions of Americans and selling it to the CCP.
If Biden is not willing to take strong measures to protect American citizens from a potentially dangerous social media app, then it is highly unlikely that he will be willing to make the Chinese government itself face consequences for spying on U.S. government officials.
This matter becomes all the more urgent when one considers the current state of relations with China.
While U.S.-China relations have always been frosty, the tension between the two nations has mounted significantly in recent years as the Chinese government has taken an increasingly aggressive stance towards Taiwan.
This has led many American officials to warn that a major war with China is just around the corner.
This is also not helped by the fact that there is already a war going on between Russia and Ukraine, and the U.S. has come out fully in support of Ukraine. This means that the data collected by the Chinese government through these devices could be sold to Russia as well.
We have tolerated this threat from China for far too long, and it is long past time that the Biden administration took action to ensure that the privacy of both U.S. citizens and government officials is protected from hostile powers.
If Biden shows himself unwilling to do that, then we can expect the Chinese to take even more aggressive measures.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
