The US government has made statements about Chinese telecommunications company Huawei and that their networking equipment posed a national security risk. This caused the company to largely retreat from operating in the US market.

According to New York Times NSA created their own “back doors” directly into Huawei’s telecommunications networks for the purpose of collecting information on a multitude that connects a third of the global population.

The NSA also monitored communications of the company’s top executives and also searched for links between Huawei and the People’s Liberation Army. According to the documents obtained by The New York Times and Der Spiegel from Edward Snowden, the NSA even wanted to have access to networking equipment that Huawei was selling to other countries so that it could monitor and search through both computer and telephone networks.

“Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products,” the leaked NSA document reportedly says. “We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products to gain access to networks of interest” including networks of countries around the world. “The irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us,” a Huawei US senior executive told the Times. It’s just the latest in an ongoing cybersecurity battle between the US and China at large.