Day: December 15, 2021

The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has consistently claimed it does not actively partner with the Chinese government in gathering intelligence on individuals within China, but a report by The Washington Post this week showing the company appears to have marketed surveillance technology to government customers calls the company’s assertions into question.

The report comes as major parts of the large company’s operations remain severely restricted by sanctions imposed by the United States under former President Donald Trump, which were renewed, and in some cases tightened, by President Joe Biden.

The newspaper obtained more than 100 PowerPoint presentations that were briefly posted to a public page of the company’s website. The trove of documents suggests the company was marketing various surveillance-related services, including voice recognition technology, location tracking and facial-recognition-based area surveillance.

The presentations indicate the company also marketed systems meant to monitor prisons, like those in which China is currently believed to be holding an untold number of Uyghurs in the Western province of Xinjiang. The system tracked prisoners’ labor productivity, as well as their time spent in reeducation classes and data that might indicate the effectiveness of those classes.

Additionally, the materials appeared to market workplace surveillance tools, meant to monitor employees’ workplace performance and to spot workers who spend time resting or using personal electronics on the clock.

Huawei denial

In a statement provided to VOA, a Huawei spokesperson said, “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in The Washington Post report.”

It continued, “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards. Huawei does not develop or sell systems that target any specific group of people and we require our partners comply with all applicable laws, regulations and business ethics. Privacy protection is our top priority and we require that all parts of our business comply with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate.”

The Post, in its article, noted the company’s official watermark appeared on the pages of the PowerPoint presentation, and that several included a page noting a “Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.” copyright.

Electronic security experts said the revelation of the PowerPoint presentations linking Huawei to state security wasn’t surprising, despite the company’s denials.

“Huawei has been closely linked to the security services from the start,” Jim Lewis, senior vice president and director of the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

Lewis said the warnings about the company have been coming from American officials since George W. Bush was president but had not been taken seriously until the past few years, when China became more aggressive about asserting itself on the world stage.

“What’s changed is the audience,” Lewis said. Between China’s and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s behavior, people are willing to hear now about the problems with Huawei in a way they weren’t before.”

Punishing sanctions

The United States has, for several years, been warning that Huawei represents a security risk to the interests of the U.S. and its allies. Despite the company’s claims to the contrary, U.S. officials say they believe the company has close ties to Chinese state security agencies and that its telecommunications products could be used to gather information on, or disrupt the activities of, China’s rivals.

Officials also point to a law in China that obligates private companies to cooperate with government agencies in the collection of data deemed important to state security.

In 2019 and 2020, the U.S. began aggressively moving against Huawei on a number of fronts.

The Trump administration fought against the company’s effort to market the networking equipment necessary to roll out 5G wireless technology. 5G is the next generation of mobile connectivity and is expected to greatly enhance the ability of internet-connected devices to communicate, facilitating everything from self-driving vehicles to remote surgery.

The U.S. declared, among other things, it would cease sharing intelligence with allies who allow Huawei to supply critical pieces of their nations’ telecommunications infrastructure, arguing the company presented too much of a security risk.

As a result, a number of countries have barred the company’s technology from their 5G systems and others, including Britain, have begun the expensive process of removing Huawei equipment that already had been installed.

Smartphone setback

Until recently, Huawei was one of the biggest sellers of smartphones in the world and enjoyed near-complete dominance in the Chinese market. Other sanctions levied against the company, however, have severely damaged that business.

The U.S. barred firms from licensing or selling the company technology critical to some of its products. That included Google, which in 2019 said it would no longer license its Android operating system — the world’s most popular — for use in new phones made by the company.

Intel and Qualcomm, two major makers of microchips, were banned from selling their most advanced technology to Huawei. The ban extended to contract chipmakers, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., the world’s largest.

The result has been a drastic decline in the sale of Huawei smartphones, both globally and within China.

“The core of their devices business was smartphones, and their market share has just continued to decline,” Ryan Reith, a vice president with International Data Corporation, told VOA.

Reith said the prospects for recovery do not look good for the company’s smartphone business.

“We don’t see any way that the brand itself turns around,” he said. “So, it’s probably on its way out.”
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The U.S. space agency NASA says its Parker Solar Probe this week became the first spacecraft to enter the Sun’s atmosphere, also known as the corona. 

The space agency announced the news Tuesday at a press conference during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. 

In a statement, NASA scientists said the probe actually entered the Sun’s corona April 18, but it took until now to get the data and examine it to confirm it had accomplished its mission. 

NASA said while the Sun doesn’t have a solid surface, it does have a superheated corona made of solar material bound to the Sun by gravity and magnetic forces. The point at which those forces are too weak to contain material ejected from the sun is considered the edge of the corona, an area scientists call the Alfvén critical surface. 

NASA says the Parker probe crossed this boundry about 13 million kilometers above the surface of the sun. Until they were able to examine the data from the probe, scientists were not exactly sure where the area was. 

The scientists say during the flyby, which lasted only a few hours, the solar probe passed into and out of the corona several times. The data it gathered in doing so proved what some had predicted — that the Alfvén critical surface isn’t shaped like a smooth ball, but has it has spikes and valleys that wrinkle the surface. 

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and was intended to exactly what it is doing: flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft has done before. NASA scientists compare what the probe has accomplished to landing on the moon. As the mission continues, the agency says, it will help scientists uncover critical information about Earth’s closest star and its influence on the solar system. 

A paper on the achievement was also published Tuesday in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters. 

Some information for this report was provided by the Associated Press.
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The head of the South African Medical Association says there is a major difference between the delta and omicron variants of the coronavirus and warns politicians against hyping the threat from the new strain.

Dr. Angelique Coetzee criticized Tuesday what she described as the “over-reaction” to the heavily mutated omicron variant by some European governments and cited Britain’s Boris Johnson, who she accused of creating “hysteria” about the new strain.

On Tuesday, the House of Commons approved the reimposition of pandemic restrictions, and the introduction of some new ones, because of rising omicron cases in the country, although Johnson faced a major rebellion by a third of his parliamentary party and relied on opposition parties for the vote.

Coetzee was one of the first medical practitioners in the world to raise the alarm about the new variant. Its genomic data was sequenced last month by scientists in Hong Kong, Botswana as well as South Africa. The emergence has contributed to pandemic alarm in Europe, where governments are already battling the delta strain and are racing to reimpose restrictions.

Coetzee told Britain’s Sky News that delta was heart-breaking and that her patients who contracted it were “extremely, extremely sick” and when opening the door to them “you just knew they were in trouble,” she explained.

But nearly a month into the omicron wave in South Africa, she says she has not seen similar grim scenes and that her omicron patients are suffering much milder symptoms. Apart from one, who had HIV and other comorbidities, none have died.

The British government’s medical advisers are predicting one million omicron infections by the end of the month, and although South Africa is seeing tens of thousands of new cases daily.

Coetzee cautions calm, saying Britain and other European countries are much better vaccinated than South Africa and in a better position to battle it. “Even if you get breakthrough infections, it’s mild cases,” she added, saying she understands the need to take precautionary measures but says, “don’t hype it up.”

Some scientists disagree with Coetzee.

The chief executive of Britain’s Health Security Agency told lawmakers Wednesday that omicron “is probably the most significant threat since the start of the pandemic.”

Dr. Jenny Harries said the new variant was much more transmissible than delta and the rapid spread of omicron would lead to a “staggering” number of COVID cases over the next few days. She delivered a series of dire warnings about the country’s health care system, although she added it was probably too early to tell how serious the scale of increasing infections across the world would turn out to be.

“The difficulty is that the growth of this virus, it has a doubling time which is shortening, i.e., it’s doubling faster, growing faster,” she said.

Governments across Europe are closely observing events unfolding in Britain for a sense of what may lie ahead for them as omicron spreads, and they are worried that reinfection rates from omicron are much higher than has been seen with earlier variants.

Restrictions and penalties 

More countries are adopting restrictions. Italy this week required negative tests from vaccinated visitors to the country. Portugal has a similar measure in place. Many European countries have a virtual lockdown for the unvaccinated and are scrambling to increase vaccine booster programs. And more governments, including Germany’s, are proposing or considering mandatory vaccines.

Austria and Italy already plan to impose hefty fines on eligible people who do not get vaccinated. 

People over 65 years old in France will be under effective lockdown from Wednesday, if they have not received a third vaccine booster dose.

France’s health pass will no longer be valid for the elderly who have not received a third dose, barring those who have not been boosted from visiting restaurants or cafes or taking intercity trains. They will also be prohibited from visiting cultural venues like cinemas or museums.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned Wednesday the European Union faces a double challenge, with a massive increase of delta cases in recent weeks and the threat of omicron looming. “We’re seeing an increasing number of people falling ill, a greater burden on hospitals and unfortunately, an increase in the number of deaths,” she told European Parliament lawmakers. 

“And what I’m concerned about is that we now [are] seeing the new variant omicron on the horizon, which is apparently even more infectious,” she added.

But as governments go into overdrive, some epidemiologists and virologists are echoing Angelique Coetzee. Professor Tim Spector, the head of Genetic Epidemiology at King’s College, London, says the “majority of symptoms are just like a common cold, so we’re talking about headaches, sore throat, runny nose, fatigue, and things like sneezing.” He added: “So, things like fever and cough and loss of smell are now actually in the minority of the symptoms that we’re seeing.”

Earlier this week, the first major study published into the new variant also suggested illness from omicron is less severe than from delta. The study of 78,000 omicron cases in South Africa found the risk of hospitalization is 29% lower compared with the Wuhan strain, and 23% lower than with delta. Far fewer people have been needing intensive care. Just 5% of omicron cases have been admitted to intensive care units compared to 22% of delta patients, the study shows.

The data for the study was compiled by Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest private health insurer, and the South Africa Medical Research Council. It noted omicron can evade vaccines more than earlier strains, but the study found vaccines are still holding up well, although there were high numbers of breakthrough infections in people who had been vaccinated.

Vaccine effectiveness against infection dropped from 80% to 33%, according to the study, but offered 70% protection against hospital admission. Boosters may also mitigate the reduction in vaccine effectiveness, according to the study. Some European scientists have cautioned, though, against reading too much into the South African study, saying that South Africa’s population is much younger and that demographic differences could alter medical outcomes.
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African leaders have called on governments across the continent to invest more in healthcare to fight the coronavirus and future pandemics. The appeal came as the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the African Union this week held the first Conference on Public Health in Africa.

Addressing the virtual meeting of African health workers and experts, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said governments could no longer ignore public health investment as the continent grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“There needs to be renewed commitment by government and national parliaments to increase domestic financing for health in Africa. This has been a priority for the African Union for several years but progress has not been fast enough. We cannot continue to rely on external funding for something so important for our future,” he said.

Twenty years ago in Abuja, Nigeria, African governments agreed to allocate 15% of their budgets to health care. Only two countries, Rwanda and South Africa, met the target. 

Africa has seen economic growth in the past few years but spending by governments on health has rarely increased. 

Health experts blame the lack of healthcare spending on low GDP growth, tax collections, and competing priorities. 

An Afrobarometer survey showed 46% of African citizens across 36 countries opposed paying more taxes to be used to improve healthcare. 

Across Africa, most health facilities are concentrated in urban areas, effectively cutting off millions from accessing advanced medical assistance. 

John Nkengasong, the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the continent needs a new approach to raise health investment. 

“You all heard from our various leaders, political leaders, call for a new public health order that hinges on four things: strengthening public health institutions, workforce, expanding manufacturing on both vaccines, diagnostic and therapeutic, a respectful action-oriented partnership, which is all underpinned by the need to invest ourselves in supporting this domestic financing so that we can achieve these four goals,” he said.

African Union Commission Chairman Mousa Faki Mahamat pledged to support the development of health care systems that can deal with future challenges. 

“I would like to assure you today that African Union Commission stands firm in our resolve to bolster manufacturing capacity for the vaccine, diagnostic and therapeutics to build resilient health systems capable of detecting future health threats, and to build a finance mechanism that allows member states to respond efficiently and effectively to health needs of the continent,” he said.

According to the Brookings Institute, Africa needs funding models that encourage domestic resource mobilization and prioritization of health. 

For example, in 2019 Nigeria signed a $75 million financing agreement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to strengthen the country’s primary health care provision fund. 

Africa’s virtual conference on public health ends Thursday. 

 
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The disfiguring disease Noma, found mainly in poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa that lack health care, kills 90% of victims, most of them children, when left untreated. Noma is preventable with awareness, and to that end, aid groups are urging the World Health Organization to add Noma to its list of neglected tropical diseases. Henry Wilkins reports from Kongoussi, Burkina Faso.
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COVID-19 was first discovered in China, which became the first country to produce a vaccine. Sinovac and Sinopharm are China’s leading vaccine makers, and both manufacture World Health Organization-approved COVID-19 vaccines.  

What’s the difference between the two companies?  

Sinovac is a privately owned company, while Sinopharm is government-run. Scientists at both companies use the same method to make both vaccines.  

How are the vaccines made? 

Dr. Andrea Cox, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with a special interest in immunization, has provided expert advice to VOA about COVID-19 vaccines. Cox told VOA that scientists take a type of bacteria — or in this case, a virus — and inactivate or kill it. They then inject it into people. Because the virus is dead, it can’t infect anyone. Then, if a vaccinated person is exposed to the live virus, that person’s body recognizes it and fights it off.  

Are these vaccines effective?  

According to Cox, the Chinese vaccines are not as effective as the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, so they aren’t the preferred jabs in countries that have access to the others. The  hnsays the Sinovac vaccine is about 50% effective, while Sinopharm’s effectiveness is higher, at 78%, WHO reported. Two doses are needed for both vaccines. 

Vaccines are often mixed with an adjuvant, a harmless ingredient such as aluminum salts or a bubble of fat, to make them more effective. On its website, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says “aluminum is one of the most common metals found in nature and is present in air, food, and water,” so it’s not a foreign or dangerous ingredient, although anti-vax groups claim it is. For example, Sinovac uses aluminum hydroxide, an ingredient also used to treat an upset stomach. Sinopharm also uses an adjuvant in its vaccine. 

Do the vaccines have advantages?  

The Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines have a major advantage over other COVID-19 vaccines: They are easy to store and need only normal refrigeration. That’s a huge plus in getting a COVID-19 vaccine to people in areas where there is little or no refrigeration. 

“In an ideal world,” Cox said, “we wouldn’t need them. But at this point, we need a way to get the world vaccinated as rapidly and effectively as possible, and it may require a use of vaccines that we know are not as good but are better than not being vaccinated.” 

What will end the pandemic? 

WHO says safe and effective vaccines are a game-changing tool, but for now and the foreseeable future, it recommends continued mask wearing, frequent hand-washing, good indoor ventilation, physical distancing, avoiding crowds and, above all, getting vaccinated when you can with whatever vaccine is available.  

“Having the world’s best scientists — and I do really mean the world’s best scientists — thinking about how to make effective vaccines and deliver them to a global population is critical,” Cox said. “And the more data we get on these vaccines, the more we will be able to select out vaccines that do protect the largest number of the world’s population.” 

As WHO says: “It’s not vaccines that will stop the pandemic, it’s vaccination.”
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China’s advances in quantum computing will give a new advantage to its armed forces, already the world’s third strongest, analysts say.

Quantum refers to a type of computing that lets high-powered machines make calculations that are too complex for ordinary devices. 

The concept discovered by American physicist Richard Feynman in 1980 has two key military uses, the think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies said in a 2019 paper. It can decrypt encoded messages and send cryptographic keys that intercept otherwise secure communication chains, the study says.

“I think the challenge is basically in the dual civilian-military strategy of China where the government will enlist the private sector into its military modernization program,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii. “Also, the government of China spends a lot of money in research and development.”

China’s name surfaced last month when IT consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton said that within a decade Chinese “threat groups will likely collect data that enables quantum simulators to discover new economically valuable materials, pharmaceuticals, and chemicals.” 

China on the move

It’s unclear how far Chinese researchers have advanced quantum computing, but the Pentagon’s 2021 report to Congress on China says the Asian superpower “continues its pursuit of leadership in key technologies with significant military potential.”

China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, an economic blueprint, prioritizes quantum technology among other new fields, the report to Congress adds, and it intends to install satellite-enabled, global “quantum-encrypted communications capability” by 2030.

Quantum could help detect submarines and stealth aircraft among other “military vehicles,” said Heather West, a senior research analyst with market research firm IDC in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. Quantum computing can break “classical algorithms” to check on another country’s military, she told VOA.

The University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei last year made the first “definitive demonstration” of exploiting quantum mechanics for computations that would be “prohibitively slow on classical computers,” the science journal Nature reported. Google and NASA had claimed “quantum supremacy” in 2019. 

The state-run China Daily news website said in September the country had “achieved a series of breakthroughs in quantum technology including the world’s first quantum satellite, a 2,000-km quantum communication line between Beijing and Shanghai, and the world’s first optical quantum computing machine prototype.” China Daily did not mention military use.

China has alarmed other countries in the past by merging civilian and military infrastructure, part of a Military-Civil Fusion Development Strategy that makes it hard for the outside world to judge when academic research will become an asset of the People’s Liberation Army.

Although quantum computing worldwide remains at a “nascent stage,” multiple countries are in a race to develop it, Vuving said. He points to the United States, India, Japan and Germany, in addition to China. Any frontrunners are unlikely to last long, he said, as rivals would quickly copy their breakthroughs.

Multiple countries at risk?

The Booz Allen Hamilton report says many organization leaders and chief information security officers “lack insight into the practical importance of quantum computing and how to manage related risks.”

“They don’t know how and when the technology might become useful — and how it might shape the behavior of threat actors such as China, a persistent cyber adversary of government and commercial organizations globally and a major developer of quantum-computing technology,” the report says.

The People’s Liberation Army maintains the world’s third-strongest armed forces after the United States and Russia, according to the GlobalFirePower.com database. Japan, Taiwan and other Southeast Asian countries fret particularly over the expansion of the PLA Navy in disputed tracts of sea. Washington has stepped up military movement in the same seas since 2019 to monitor China’s activities.

“Taiwan, the United States or the European Union are all likely targets for China to launch quantum computing attacks as long as countries do not have robust quantum cryptography to defend,” said Chen Yi-fan, assistant professor of diplomacy and international relations at Tamkang University in Taiwan.

China is already suspected of using cyberattacks against Taiwan, a self-ruled island that Beijing says is part of its territory.

In the military realm outside China, quantum computing forms part of the AUKUS military technology sharing deal among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. announced in September over Beijing’s objections.

In August 2020, the White House, National Science Foundation and Department of Energy announced it would award $625 million over five years for quantum R&D, the National Defense Industrial Association says.

“We’re seeing a lot of research and development going into the Department of Defense in the U.S.,” West said. “I don’t think they would be pouring the money into it if they didn’t think there was that potential.”

Researchers in Singapore, a well-off city-state, and Taiwan, a world tech hub, are exploring quantum technology as well. 

Smaller countries couldn’t compete with China’s quantum computing resources, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales in Australia. They would need engineers, technicians and money, he said.

“That’s for the big boys, for the people with money, sophistication, knowledge. Other countries could toy around, but they wouldn’t have the ability to go very far with it, I think,” Thayer said.

 
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