Earlier yesterday, The New York Times reported that President Trump almost exclusively uses an unencrypted, unsecure personal iPhone as his communication tool, over a more secure White House-sanctioned device. The President refuted this report shortly after via a tweet, a quick look at whose metadata would reveal that it was evidently sent from his iPhone.
Much of the concern from the White House staff - echoed in the NYT piece - is that interested parties such as Russia and China could be privy to any confidential information shared by Trump via his personal phone by tapping into it. This could, for instance, further harm America"s ongoing trade conflict with China, which includes locking out major Chinese device manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE out of the U.S. government, and generally pressuring these companies out of business in the U.S..
China wasn"t going to take these concerns from the White House sitting down: Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry"s information department, had quite the statement to offer on this matter, reports the South China Morning Post. As part of a regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday, she said:
"If Trump is concerned about the security of his iPhone, he can consider switching over to a Huawei, or cut off communications altogether. Seeing this report, I feel there are those in America who are working all-out to win the Oscar for best screenplay.”
As it stands, it"d be quite difficult for a U.S. resident (not so much if you"ve got presidential resources) to get their hands on a top-tier Huawei device in the country: the company doesn"t intend to sell any of its new flagship handsets in the U.S.. It"s another matter altogether if the President ends up a MateBook user, though.
Source: South China Morning Post | Image via Wikimedia Commons
