A Chief Adviser to the Obama State and Treasury Departments now leverages her credentials to lobby on behalf of Huawei, a technology company recently designated as a national security threat by the U.S. government for its Chinese Communist Party ties, the National Pulse can reveal.
Working as a Senior Vice President for Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW), Shaila Manyam “provided strategic communications advice related to ongoing U.S. governmental and media inquiries into Huawei” in 2019 according to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
At the time of her registration as a foreign agent, the U.S. government’s campaign against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) linked company was at its peak.
Manyam, however, used the credentials she gained at taxpayer expense to defend Huawei – identified by the Department of Defense as a Chinese military collaborator that provides the CCP with backdoor access to its networks and devices – from efforts to to ban its usage in the U.S. and the world writ large.
Even Manyam’s former employer, the U.S. State Department, identifies Huawei as “subject to a deep and pervasive system of CCP control.”
She’s also leveraged her State Department credentials as a member of The Steady State, a “group of veterans of the U.S. National Security Community who believe that President Trump, unfit for the Presidency, presents a clear and present danger to America’s safety and security.”
BEIJING BIDEN.
The group has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, with Manyam was a prominent signatory of the letter declaring support for the first-choice pick of the foreign policy establishment.
Under George W. Bush, Manyam served as a foreign service officer focusing on French language programs and coordinating media at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti.
Under President Barack Obama, however, her duties expanded greatly: she served as the Treasury Department’s Liaison to Israel in 2010, Public Affairs Chief and Communications Adviser for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) delegation in 2011, and Deputy Spokesperson and Adviser for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs (IOA) which oversees international agencies such as the UN from 2014 to 2016.
Her decade-long tenure culminated in her role as Special Assistant and Chief Policy Adviser on “all issues and policy concerning international organizations” to Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, an Obama appointee. She touts herself as a “key liaison” for “developing and implementing” President Obama’s refugee policies on her LinkedIn.
Maynam’s personal bio also leverages her former role as “advising Cabinet-level national security officials, journalists, and Members of Congress.”
While Manyam no longer consults for Huawei, her employer, BCW, still has lucrative contracts with the company.
Meanwhile, the Biden campaign and his leading endorsers continue to boast about the former Veep’s foreign policy credentials.
Max Baucus, who served as U.S. Ambassador to China and now contributes to the Chinese Communist Party’s CGTN news outlet, said this year: “I think you will see Joe Biden will not publicly criticize China nearly as much. He’s smarter than that… he knows if you want to work with China you have to say things that won’t upset China.”
HUAWEI IN HOT WATER.
And while U.S. firms with former Obama staffers continue to lobby on behalf of Huawei, many in the British government are trying to get the firm out of its technology infrastructure.
“It is not fixed in stone,” Britain’s digital minister, Oliver Dowden, said of an earlier decision to give the company a limited role. “We constantly review our security to ensure we have the best possible security for our telecoms network.”
The news is unnerving China’s running dogs, with former Sky News reporter and current Huawei Head of International Media going on an anti-American and anti-British Twitter rant this weekend.
