The NBN - and national security !

One of the greatest threats to our national security will be the task of keeping foreign agencies from penetrating our National Broadband Network ( NBN ) to gather information on everything from our defence posture to the  trade secrets that are important to our commercial success.

There are howls of protest because we have excluded one of the world's biggest manufacturers of electronic equipment from even tendering to supply NBN componentry.

Huawei Technologies is a Chinese firm - and there is no such thing as a truly independent, privately owned company in China.    The Chinese Communist party has permitted a degree of capitalism to serve it's expansionist aims, but all and every enterprise in that country is rigidly controlled - and does exactly what it's government orders.

China is aware of the rewards to be gained by eavesdropping on the communication systems of other countries and it maintains a huge establishment of it's best and brightest to constantly carry out cyber attacks in search of information.   Defence planners agree that in both trade wars and shooting wars of the future, the first line of attack will be a cyber attack to disable things like NBN systems - to create communication paralysis in the enemy country.

Why then- would we even consider putting the design and construction of the very core of our NBN in the hands of our most likely future enemy ?

The problem will be to create an NBN system that can withstand the sort of cyber attack  that even clever hackers can mount.   We have seen the damage that can be done by small groups of independents.  Just imagine how more sophisticated the methods constructed by armies of cyber engineers funded by a hostile government.

It is suggested that Huawei Technologies is free of Chinese government control because it has an Australian board and two prominent Australians - Alexander Downer and John Brumby - sit on that board.    Nothing could be further from the truth.    The big decisions are still made in China - and at the highest levels of the Communist party government.

It may prove to be impossible to create an NBN that is secure from hacking by government professionals, but at least we are not going to let a possibly future hostile government have the benefit of creating the very equipment that will be subjected to their future attack.

To do that would not be a particularly bright move !