PRC Espionage in the Rural US?

It's not the soybeans you should be worried about - it's the cell towers

There has been much made of the so-called new cold war between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. Unlike the first one, this conflict isn’t just about ideology or tanks on the Fulda Gap. It’s about semiconductors, undersea cables, rare earth minerals, and artificial intelligence. Espionage still plays the same timeless role it did when the Soviets bugged American typewriters and built antennas that looked like flagpoles, drainpipes, and park benches - some of which you can still see here in Washington D.C at the International Spy Museum. The Soviet Union was a master of physical tradecraft and covert collection. China, by contrast, has leveraged commercial access and digital infrastructure to embed surveillance capabilities deep within the systems we rely on every day. Whether it’s TikTok, Spy Balloons or our very own cellular infrastructure. For the past few years, right-wing cable news and congressional hearings have latched onto a story: the Chinese Communist Party is buying up American farmland to spy on us.

It’s a powerful image and should concern every American. It’s also wrong.

Farmland Isn’t a Listening Post

Chinese firms have purchased agricultural land in the U.S, including high-profile cases near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota and Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. And yes, proximity to sensitive sites raises valid questions. But the idea that a few hundred acres of farmland give Beijing some secret surveillance edge is not how modern espionage works.

Radio monitoring and SIGINT is collected from from large, purpose-built sites. Think massive circular antenna arrays like AN/FLR-9 “elephant cages” used during the Cold War. Think of golf ball-shaped radomes intercepting satellite uplinks or collecting telemetry from orbit. These facilities are specifically engineered to catch, process, and decrypt targeted communications - usually from hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Could the Chinese build a VHF/UHF direction-finding antenna on farmland? Sure. But that would stick out like a sore thumb. Direction-finding works best when done in networks, with multiple antennas calculating line-of-bearing from different positions.

Huawei and Rural US Telecom Providers

For over a decade, Chinese telecom giant Huawei sold networking equipment to rural U.S. telecom providers. These were often small carriers serving lightly populated areas across the Midwest, Great Plains and the south. Huawei’s gear was cheap, bundled, and turnkey - and that’s how it wound up installed on cell towers in close proximity to bases that house key nuclear infrastructure such as ICBM silos.

So What Is Normally On A Cellular Tower?

Before we get into what Huawei actually installed, it’s worth understanding what a normal cell tower looks like. At the top: panel antennas, which handle mobile traffic over UHF and SHF bands. Midway down: microwave dishes for backhaul when there’s no fiber nearby. And at the base, tucked in a climate-controlled cabinet, is the real nerve center - where Huawei made its move.

Cellular panel antennas and microwave dishes

What Did Huawei Install?

1. Baseband Units

These are the core processors of the radio access network. Baseband units handle everything from encoding and decoding signals to traffic management. In Huawei’s architecture, these units were often proprietary, meaning the network couldn’t function without them. If compromised, they could allow:

• Access to user metadata

• Real-time monitoring of calls or messages (especially on unencrypted networks)

• Traffic redirection or logging

2. Remote Radio Heads

Mounted near or on the antennas, these are responsible for converting between analog and digital signals. Huawei radio heads could be remotely configured and updated, creating the potential for firmware-level backdoors or spectrum monitoring modules that wouldn’t be visible to the tower owner.

In the context of espionage, systems such as these near military facilities could function as passive receivers for local RF signals - including military UHF/VHF traffic, telemetry, or even encrypted communications. With beamforming and filtering software, they could potentially isolate high-value spectrum bands of interest.

3. Microwave Backhaul Radios

In rural deployments - especially in the Great Plains near ICBM fields - towers often relied on microwave links instead of fiber. Huawei provided these dishes, too. That gave them access not just to cell traffic, but also to transport-level data moving between network nodes. Think command-and-control signals, telemetry routing, or even DoD-related mobile comms that piggyback on commercial infrastructure.

4. Network Management Software

Perhaps the most underappreciated vector: the centralized software that controls and monitors the entire site. Huawei offered slick graphical interfaces and remote diagnostics. Carriers could configure towers, troubleshoot problems, and deploy updates - all over the internet. But so could someone else.

Not Just the Midwest

According to a 2022 New York Times investigation, the U.S. government became concerned that Huawei gear wasn’t just installed near nuclear launch sites, but also near critical military communications nodes throughout the country.

One standout case was Pine Belt Communications, a small regional telecom based in Alabama, which deployed Huawei gear across multiple towers. Some of these towers sat within range of U.S. military installations, including:

• Naval Air Station Whiting Field

• Redstone Arsenal

• Eglin Air Force Base

FCC and DoD officials feared the Huawei equipment could intercept sensitive communications even if encrypted - and conduct traffic analysis, pattern monitoring, or RF spectrum capture near mission-critical assets. The Times report noted that some Huawei systems were capable of monitoring DoD bandwidth or military-use LTE bands, particularly when base personnel used commercial phones or private broadband while on or near installations. This wasn’t just a rural telecom story anymore. It was a national security problem.

So What?

The PLA, like any modern military, is always hunting for an edge - strategic, asymmetric, or both. That edge goes beyond hypersonic missiles or drones. It means knowing what we’re doing before we do it - where our mobile command units are deployed, when silo maintenance crews are surging, which bases are active or quiet, and how fast reserve units are responding. The Cold War with the Soviet Union taught us to harden our embassies, sweep our electronics, and assume every chandelier could be listening. The new Cold War with China demands the same caution but extended to our day to day commercial infrastructure.