Oliver Haslam on October 26, 2018, 6:32 am

China Denies Spying On Trump’s iPhone, Suggests He Should Switch To Huawei

It seems that US President Donald Trump’s use of smartphones just won’t stay out of the news, with the latest being that a New York Times report has the president using three iPhones, one of which is a personal, unsecured device. While the other two iPhones are presumably provided by the government and are considered secure, Trump’s calls are still apparently being listened to by both Russian and Chinese spies.

The report claims that American agencies have become aware that both Russian and Chinese counterparts have access to phone calls made by the president, with China apparently using the information it is able to glean as a tool to help stave off the potential escalation of the trade war between the United States and China.

American spy agencies, the officials said, had learned that China and Russia were eavesdropping on the president’s cellphone calls from human sources inside foreign governments and intercepting communications between foreign officials.

Predictably, everyone is denying any of this is true, with Trump taking to Twitter to claim that the article is “long and boring.” Trump claims that he only uses government phones, although we do know that there have been problems with his wish to use his own phone in the past.

China is also claiming that the story is false, with Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying even taking the opportunity to suggest that Trump should ditch the iPhone and try out something made by Chinese company Huawei.

If Trump is concerned about the security of his iPhone, he can consider switching over to a Huawei, or cut off communications altogether, Hua Chunying, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, said in response to a question about the Times report. She dismissed the report as another example of “fake news”.

“Seeing this report, I feel there are those in America who are working all-out to win the Oscar for best screenplay,” Hua said at the ministry’s regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday.

That’s probably not going to happen given the distrust the US has of all things Huawei at the moment.

(Sources: New York Times, SCMP)