A senior security officer at Huawei, a US branch, said of the Chinese company's crisis with the United States that any telecommunications company could be hacked and that "everyone should be suspects."
Andy Purdy, the chief US cybersecurity team in Huawei, told Recode that the US government should scrutinize foreign telecommunications companies and should do so with everyone.
He called for "objective and transparent" standards by which the government could assess the security of telecommunication products.
America spied on the world
"When Edward Snowden published information about the Prism program that allowed the US government to spy around the world, the information was that the US government was using Cisco equipment to spy on countries elsewhere in the world," Purdy said.
"Here's the question: Has Cisco, as a telecommunications company, allowed this espionage, or has the US government hacked Cisco products?"
"China and other countries, like the United States, can penetrate everyone's products around the world. They can penetrate Nokia and Ericsson. We were only concerned about China, which means you don't have a comprehensive program to evaluate all products to make sure we are safe."
The United States bases its theory against Huawei on the company's relationship with the Chinese government, which it fears will affect the company's decision to allow China to spy on US networks.
"Protecting US telecommunications networks is vital to our national, economic and personal security," FCC Chairman Ajit Bay said in May.
Burdy, who served in the White House under President George W. Bush and the Department of Homeland Security, believes everyone should be under suspicion, not just China, and says programs are needed to make sure that "bad guys" - as he described them - have not penetrated any Person, regardless of their nationality.