The apparent absence of evidence gave birth to “Shotgiant.” That was the name of a covert program, approved by the Bush White House, to bore a way deep into Huawei’s hermetically sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart. And while American officials would not describe it this way, the essential idea was to do to Huawei exactly what Americans feared the Chinese were doing to the United States: crawl through the company’s networks, understand its vulnerabilities, and tap the communications of its top executives. But the plan went further: to exploit Huawai’s technology so that
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