Are the Spooks and Cons winning the fear factor war on Canadians?

The emergence of the CNOOC bid for Nexen Inc. has opened the door for a plethora of warnings from all corners of North America. Canadians are battered daily by negative reports of espionage and corruption of the various state owned companies from China that are emerging as major players in our telecommunications and oil fields.

Even I have spoken out against these state owned corporations and although I still have reservations about their motives I have been reflecting back to the fifties, shortly after the Second World War, when my parents refused to buy anything made in Germany or Japan. I wonder if we are suffering from the same fears as our parents were and if the propaganda is well founded.

Industrial espionage is not limited to the Chinese and has been going on for decades. North Americans have opened the door to the copying and stealing of ideas by looking for cheaper sources of manufacturing and outsourcing their intellectual property in the name of the "almighty dollar"

Brian Shields, who was the senior systems security adviser at failed Canadian telecommunications company Nortel, says working with Huawei is too big a risk. In an interview with CBC Radio's As It Happens, Shields alleges Huawei spent 10 years hacking into Nortel's system. He's now advising Canadian companies not to work with the Chinese company.

Apparently Mr. Shields was not very good at his job if Huawei managed to hack Nortel's system and steal their intellectual property.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/former-nortel-exec-warns-against-working-huawei-212948053.html

The world’s second-largest telecommunications equipment supplier, Huawei is already providing high-speed networks for Bell Canada, Telus, SaskTel and Wind Mobile – deals that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has openly applauded.

The problem goes beyond industrial espionage, after all if you want to copy a product all you need to do is purchase a sample and reverse engineer it, but for state owned companies who from time to time are not profit driven but are acquisition oriented it becomes a critical problem. All one needs to do is look at how CNOOC sweetened the initial offer to entice shareholders weakness for money and close the deal pending Harper approval.

It begs the question... is it propaganda, poor loser or fact?