Huawei-Linked Obama Official Addressed U.S. Army Association Conference
Tony Scott, a former chief information officer for the U.S. government, has received funds from the firm linked to Chinese intelligence.
Tony Scott, a former chief information officer for the U.S. government, has received funds from the firm linked to Chinese intelligence.
A n Obama-era cybersecurity official who became a paid advocate for Huawei spoke at an event hosted by the Association for the U.S. Army (AUSA) in October.
Tony Scott, who served as chief information officer in the Obama administration, appeared on a panel alongside top Army officers and Senator Mike Rounds (R., S.D.), and gave a separate keynote address at the conference. The episode demonstrates the degree to which Chinese tech companies deemed a threat to national security by top U.S. officials have entrenched themselves in powerful political and defense-oriented circles — and the difficulty of preventing the people affiliated with those companies from influencing sensitive national-security decisions.
On the October 12 panel, titled “Evolution of Cyber and Information Advantage,” Scott addressed a range of critical topics, including U.S. government efforts to secure networks from cyberattacks, how the Pentagon should use artificial intelligence, and the Army’s cybersecurity capabilities. In addition to Rounds, the panel included Lieutenant General Maria Barrett, the head of U.S. Army Cyber Command; Michael Sulmeyer, who serves as principal cyber adviser to the secretary of the Army; Gregg Potter, a Northrop Grumman executive; and others. While Scott’s biography posted to the AUSA website detailed his government service and various roles in the private sector, including for Microsoft and Disney, it did not list his affiliations with Huawei.
Although Scott didn’t address topics specifically related to Huawei, or to China more generally, his appearance at an event alongside a lawmaker and several senior military officers was nonetheless jarring. Top U.S. national-security officials have warned for several years that Huawei’s mobile devices and telecom equipment pose a significant national-security threat. Several days after Scott’s appearance at the AUSA conference, the Justice Department alleged in a court filing that Huawei had collaborated with China’s ministry of state security, an espionage service, to interfere in a U.S. prosecution.
Evidence of these ties has been publicly known for years, though they have not stopped some Americans from going on to work for the company and others like it. Outright lobbying for Chinese tech firms is commonplace in Washington, where Huawei has spent $7.2 million since 2018 and Hikvision, a Chinese surveillance firm, has spent a whopping $17 million during the same period, according to the surveillance research group IPVM.
In Scott’s capacity as a senior adviser for privacy and security at Squire Patton Boggs — the law firm registered to lobby for Huawei and for China’s embassy in Washington — he has appeared on Huawei-sponsored panels and in webinars posted to the Chinese telecom giant’s social-media pages, and he authored reports sponsored by the firm.
Scott’s role as a Huawei mascot stretches back to at least 2019, and he has appeared in Huawei social-media posts as recently as June 19 of this year. In a video posted to Twitter that day, Scott predicted an “arms race” surrounding various countries’ efforts to protect themselves from cyberattacks. The description of the video, which was also posted to Huawei’s website, reads: “Obama’s former CIO tells us how to improve reliability in a digital world.” Some Huawei communications have cited his affiliation with Squire Patton Boggs.
Scott has also spoken out against U.S. government actions targeting Huawei over its alleged connections to Chinese spy agencies.
During a podcast interview with SC Media in 2020, Scott called the Trump administration’s efforts to ban Huawei telecom equipment “malaligned,” also saying that they “don’t make any sense to me.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to focus on just Huawei and say because it’s Chinese it’s bad,” Scott said.
Scott took a similar line in a white paper he produced the same year, titled “Supply Chain Security.” That report does not make any mention of Huawei, but Scott alluded to the debate surrounding the U.S. campaign against the firm in an interview about the paper with Security Week, a tech-industry publication: “Much of the current conversation in Washington is focusing on individual foreign companies as a proxy for other issues.”
Scott did not state the source of funding for his study, but Huawei USA chief security officer Andy Purdy told Security Week that Huawei had paid him for the report.
Representative Mike Waltz (R., Fla.), a former Green Beret who now serves on the House Armed Services Committee, expressed concern about Scott’s appearance on the panel.
“The Pentagon has for a few years now banned the sale of Huawei phones on military bases because they know there is a clear national-security risk in using its technology,” Waltz told National Review. “Seeing AUSA and the Army elevating voices like Tony Scott who are peddling CCP-compromised technology to Americans is very concerning.”
The Army declined to comment. However, a representative for AUSA defended the decision to invite Scott, telling NR that the group chooses panelists “based on their expertise on the topic.”
“He’s certainly qualified to talk about the future of military cyber and information programs,” said the spokesperson. “His appearance at AUSA’s Annual Meeting and Exposition doesn’t equate to endorsement of everything he’s ever said or thought.”
Huawei, Scott’s cybersecurity firm, and Rounds’s office did not respond to requests for comment.