"House of Huawei" is the product of Eva Dou's investigative report into the rise and possible fall (or at least the impeded growth) of Huawei, a company that started off as a telecom company and ended up becoming one of the biggest players with their toes within the telco & surveillance industries.

Starting from scratch once the dust of the Cultural Revolution has settled, Ren Zhengfei became one of China's top entrepreneurs who would build a sprawling empire of tech known as Huawei Technologies. Little is known about the famously reclusive Ren, though Dou has managed admirably in piecing together the history of the company's founding as well as its inner workings. Through some convoluted political wrangling, while Huawei is technically not a state-controlled company, it has since become China's pride & joy and have enjoyed favours other companies could only dream of.

Of course, such success and ties with the government begs the question: what role does Huawei play in the trade war between China & the US? Since Huawei's emergence on the global field, the US has been trying to find the answer to this question as it argues that Huawei's projects either started off as a military-sponsored or are increasingly used by the military for its surveillance tech. The latter has been proven to be true, especially when it came to Huawei's involvement in the surveillance of the Uyghur people which eventually led to oppression. The US is also highly concerned with the risk of its intelligence being compromised by China's tech, given that the Europe & the US have come to rely on Huawei's tech due to its competitive pricing.

Despite the valid concerns raised by the US government (as revealed in this book), it is ironic that the Snowden leak proved that there was a reason the US is scared of intelligence leak, the reason being that the US itself is using the same tactic to exploit the weakness in Huawei's tech in order to gather intelligence on other countries. This is just one of those 'aha!' moments in this book since it becomes clear that the trade war between these superpowers is just a merry-go-round of absurdity where one party accuses the other of something they are doing.

"House of Huawei" is a revealing read for those who aren't familiar with Huawei, though the drawback in this is that it provides just enough information on what goes on behind-the-scene of this infamous company that has received US sanction due to the trade war. For those who are looking for a more in-depth study of the company, however, this might only scratch the surface. FWIW, I really enjoyed this one and wonder at just how much the world is controlled by these giant corporations in a global sense.

With thanks to Times Reads & the publisher for the gifted copy; all opinions are my own.