Congress Accuses Chinese Telecoms of Enabling Cyber Attacks

Key Takeaways

• The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party has subpoenaed three state-owned Chinese telecom firms.
• While barred from operating American telecommunications infrastructure, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom maintain “points of presence” in the U.S., lawmakers claimed.
• Beijing has accused the U.S. government of overstretching the concept of national security to unfairly suppress Chinese firms.

Since 2022, China’s three major state-owned telecom operators have been effectively barred from operating American infrastructure.

But according to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom have maintained a presence in the U.S. that they used to enable cyber attacks.

House Committee Subpoenas Chinese Telecom Firms

In letters dated Wednesday, April 23, the House China committee moved to subpoena China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, Reuters reported on Thursday.

The subpoenas are part of an investigation into the firms’ ties to the Chinese military and government.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has revoked or denied licenses for all three companies in recent years.

However, in previous letters, Representatives John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi requested information from the telecom firms regarding their remaining operations in the U.S. that don’t require an FCC permit.

“The Committee has received information indicating that China Mobile may continue to maintain network Points of Presence (PoPs), data center access, and cloud-related offerings in the United States,” one letter stated .

“China Mobile’s ongoing U.S. operations—particularly in internet backbone exchanges and cloud computing environments—could therefore allow unauthorized data access, espionage, or sabotage by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” it added.

U.S. Infrastructure Attacks Linked to China

In their letter to China Mobile, Representatives Moolenaar and Krishnamoorthi flagged what they described as “increasingly aggressive attacks on U.S. telecommunications networks” orchestrated by hacker groups like Salt Typhoon.

The group, widely believed to be backed by Beijing, compromised at least eight American telecommunications companies and gained access to critical national infrastructure.

The House committee argues that the continued presence of state-owned Chinese companies in the American telecommunications stack makes it especially vulnerable to such threats.

The committee has also accused the three telecoms of contracting hackers to access sensitive U.S. data and fostering “illicit relationships with cyber threat actors.”

Beijing Obstinate in Face of U.S. Probes

The move to escalate the investigation with subpoenas suggests that the affected Chinese companies didn’t respond to the committee’s initial requests.

Beijing has also pushed back against the argument that Chinese firms operating in the U.S. pose a national security threat.

“China opposes the U.S. overstretching the concept of national security” has become a maxim for Chinese officials as they respond to mounting American restrictions on Chinese businesses.

The phrase was used most recently by a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, who accused the House Select Committee on the CCP of using “long-arm jurisdiction to bring down Chinese companies.”