U.S. officials are concerned that Beijing has potentially compromised American defense agencies via banned video surveillance equipment sold in disguise to government suppliers, according to the recently leaked Pentagon documents.
One of the leaked documents (written by the Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA) names the Chinese video surveillance camera producer Hikvision, which has been banned in the U.S. under the National Defense Authorization Act since 2019, purporting that the company frequently engages in “white-labeling”—a process in which their products are being rebranded by resellers in order to access markets that are restricted for the original brand.
In 2019, Hikvision was banned in the U.S. for the same reason defense officials worry about its presence now. According to the leaked document, the company allegedly
partners with Chinese intelligence entities, is using relationships with resellers to disguise its products for sale to government suppliers, which probably is creating vectors for Beijing to compromise DoD [Department of Defense] networks.
Furthermore, the document mentions that these suspicions are consistent with a previous risk assessment done right after banning the brand, which stated that Hikvision products “probably would persist in DoD supply chains because of the company’s efforts to mask its exports to retain access to U.S. and allies’ markets.”
Indeed, following the United States’ example, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Denmark also moved to ban or remove Hikvision cameras, primarily from their government buildings, citing security concerns. Later, in 2021, the European Parliament voted to do so as well, but primarily because of human rights abuses associated with the Chinese company (as Hikvision was behind producing China’s facial recognition cameras used in Xinjiang province to identify ethnic Uyghurs for detention in mass internment camps).
Just months after Hikvision was ousted from Brussels, anonymous security researchers found a glitch in its products that “permits an attacker to gain full control of the device,” meaning “the highest level of a critical vulnerability.” The revelation prompted even more Western governments to consider banning Hikvision products around their most sensitive infrastructure.
In response to the leaked documents, a Hikvision spokesman denied all allegations of white-labeling, telling the BBC that the Chinese company
has not, does not and will not violate the law in order to conduct its business, [having] very clear and long-standing policies in place to prevent the improper labeling of its products by anyone for any reason.
Furthermore, Hikvision stated that it has been working closely with the U.S. government for years “to keep its products off their supply chains” and to “make sure our cameras are never sold improperly” to U.S. government agencies.
This claim completely contradicts the DIA’s leaked assessment, which states that “as of January 2023, white-labeled Hikvision products were still available to U.S. Government customers.”
Hikvision was not the only Chinese cybersecurity threat mentioned in the leaked Pentagon dossier. In another document, the CIA warned that
China is developing cyber-attack capabilities to deny, exploit, and hijack satellite links and networks as part of its strategy to control information, which it considers a key warfighting domain.
However, this information has become public even before the leaks appeared online. Last month, the U.S. Space Force chief said that Beijing was developing a range of anti-satellite weapons aimed at destroying U.S. space capabilities (including its ability to communicate with its allies, such as Taiwan), which potentially involves ground-to-orbit missiles, orbital engagement systems, and even directed energy lasers and high-power microwave weapons.
