[HN Gopher] German draft proposal would subsidize smaller firms ...
___________________________________________________________________
German draft proposal would subsidize smaller firms to enter 5G
market
Author : DyslexicAtheist
Score : 157 points
Date : 2021-02-03 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| schoolornot wrote:
| Easy. Hire Fabrice.
| dathinab wrote:
| I know it's the title of the article but I still would rename it
| to "Germany...".
|
| Berlin is a city state in Germany with is own local government.
| dang wrote:
| We've replaced the title with the perhaps more neutral
| subtitle, which includes that scope expansion.
| tschwimmer wrote:
| This is an english linguistic practice called metonymy. This
| practice involves referring to a whole entity by something that
| it is part of it. For example, Berlin is part (the capital) of
| Germany. This is a very common practice in discussing
| international politics, with other examples being Washington,
| Moscow, and Beijing to refer to the US, Russia and China
| respectively.
|
| More info can be found here:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy
| dewey wrote:
| > Berlin is a city state in Germany with is own local
| government.
|
| Germans will know that Berlin city doesn't have this kind of
| money lying around ;)
| BillyTheKing wrote:
| and calling it a 'government' really does seem like a stretch
| :)
| solarkraft wrote:
| Oh, yeah. I thought it was about the city of Berlin.
| Nagyman wrote:
| AFAIK, it's common to use the capital of a country when
| referencing government decisions in news articles. e.g.
| Washington, Beijing, Ottawa, Delhi, Brussels, etc.
| nix23 wrote:
| The devices will be as great as the almighty Airport, if it comes
| to build something...berlin is as good as it gets.
| niklasd wrote:
| Actually the title of the article is kind of misleading.
| "Berlin" stands in this context for the German federal
| government (the announcement is from the Federal Ministry for
| Economic Affairs and Energy) not for the state of Berlin.
|
| Living in Berlin myself I can attest that very few people would
| believe that the state of Berlin could pull off such a feat,
| however, the federal government is (somewhat) better positioned
| for that.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| City of Belin cannot enforce smoking ban, let alone anything
| else.
| the-dude wrote:
| Wasn't Merkel's phone tapped by the NSA?
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| When German ok'd the NSA doing it for normal German citizens I
| think they just assumed she'd be exempt.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I don't think they had much choice in the matter. And the
| Merkel thing was flexing.
| asien wrote:
| Yes she fired the diplomat of the US Embassy for a few months
| IIRC.
|
| But it's irrelevant to this post , the goal is for Germany to
| get sovereign 5G Telecom Infrastructure, today it's either
| China with Huawei or American antenna ( NSA + CIA ) with
| Ericsson.
| zekica wrote:
| Buy they have no issue with Microsoft's vendor lock in.
| guipsp wrote:
| I'm sure you'd agree that vendor lock in on client
| endpoints is a much lesser issue than the critical
| infrastructure those endpoints are connected to, specially
| because not all endpoints are Microsoft
| sorenjan wrote:
| Why would it be easier for the Americans to spy on Ericsson
| networks than some German network?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Indeed. As a Canadian too I'm agnostic to Chinese or
| American-backed equipment - they both pose a similar threat.
| If there is an option for domestic equipment then that is of
| course wildly preferable to either.
| belval wrote:
| You shouldn't. The US is our ally through NORAD, NATO and
| free trade agreements. It has had a rough pass because of
| the Trump administration, but they would still defend our
| interests in case of trade disputes or armed conflicts.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Canadian geostrategic policy has always been to limit
| reliance on the US as much as possible. This is the
| reason why the Canadian military went as far as training
| with the USSR in the 80s.
|
| The US will not help Canada in trade conflicts. In fact,
| most trade conflicts that Canada has are with the US.
| Equally, the US only helps Canada militarily as far as it
| furthers US interests.
|
| Here is a good example. The only significant military
| challenge to Canadian interests right now are Russian
| claims in the Arctic. The US, instead of supporting
| Canadian claims, first made its own claims, and then
| argued that the territory should be under international
| jurisdiction.
|
| States do not have friends. Only interests.
| f430 wrote:
| The absolutely do not compare!!!! As Canadian I am appalled
| at the constant CCP apologists in our country and on HN.
|
| One is a totalitarian regime devoid of basic human morality
| such as ripping out organs out of people for profit _while
| they are alive_ , responsible for genocide of Uighurs and
| suppression of information and many many other stuff that
| is devoid of any dignity for humanity.
|
| The other is a democratic hyperpower that Canada is also
| part of under the Five Eyes agreement.
|
| If I had to choose between the CCP, Russia or America, it's
| America _every fucking time._
|
| edit: I took a look at your comment history and when you
| talk stuff like this I see where you are coming from:
| A significant reason why Stalin was able to successfully
| rise to power and why the Bolsheviks were able to secure
| total power is because of foreign violence and
| interference.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26013882
|
| the other commentators replying to you are correct. Your
| ignorance is quite disgusting.
| onethought wrote:
| I think your view of China is ignorant, not the GP.
|
| There othering of a whole nation is only going to make
| the situation worse. They have different political and
| cultural values and yes some morally questionable
| actions... but so do all countries.
|
| In terms of Canada/US relations... Canadians were
| imprisoned (and put to death?) in China because of the
| very questionable US indictment of Huaweis CFO... how was
| that good for Canada?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Canadians were indeed imprisoned on bogus charges for
| which the maximum penalty is death, but they were not
| sentenced yet (and won't be unless something happens to
| the CFO).
|
| Indeed, it's a situation where Canada won nothing and
| lost a lot.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I'm not making any value statements here. The US,
| democratic as it may be, is a threat to Canadian
| strategic independence, and has been forever. For this
| reason, Canada has always strategically hedged.
|
| This is the reason why Canada maintained ties with Cuba,
| a Communist State, and did some limited military training
| with the USSR in the 1980s.
|
| The US is the greatest peace-time threat to Canadian
| independence.
|
| Nations have no friends. Only interests. It's sad, but it
| is how it is.
| cambalache wrote:
| > If I had to choose between the CCP, Russia or America,
| it's America every fucking time.
|
| Now ask that to the rest of the world.Not only to Five
| Anglo Eyes
| f430 wrote:
| Most countries will agree so not sure what your gripe is
| about.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| Five Anglo Eyes, perhaps?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You are living in a bubble.
|
| Whether by racism or political calculus, US authorities
| do not seem to respect lives of citizens of third world
| nations.
|
| US has kidnapped random people around the world to keep
| them in jail idefinately with no court or trial. It has
| killed thousands of people in drone strikes, in violation
| of international law, airspace and territorial
| sovereignty.
|
| Add to that some invasions, and maybe you will start to
| realise why people in Russia/India/Vietnam/etc. do not
| trust US any more than they do anyone else when it comes
| to upholding international law. As a
| Britton/German/Canadian you don't have to worry about
| these things.
|
| Additionally, if you consider territorial ambitions,
| various land disputes of old world nations are usually
| historical. As in "we will reverse some kind of injustice
| and get back some lands that belonged to our ancestors".
| That doesn't justify them, but one benefit of this is
| that they are predictable - China is not going to wake up
| one day to invade Somalia, but with USA you never know.
| f430 wrote:
| > Whether by racism or political calculus, US authorities
| do not seem to respect lives of citizens of third world
| nations.
|
| and China, Russia, North Korea does?
|
| Seems you are not even aware of your own bubble!
| the-dude wrote:
| Are you aware literally any transplant organ is removed
| while the donor is still alive? Like all over the world?
| f430 wrote:
| against their will and without anesthetics?
|
| no.
| onethought wrote:
| That is just plain false. If you transplanted like that
| your chance Of rejection is way higher because of stress
| hormone... why would you bother? You've been reading a
| bit too much epoch times my friend.
|
| There is evidence of organ harvesting of prisoners on
| death row, that seems clear. Morally that's different
| ballgame to vivisection.
| celloductor wrote:
| Yea not sure what the overreaction to China is. Any foreign
| power is a threat- but I'd rather the enemy you know, than
| a friend who would (and have a record of) stabbing you in
| the back.
| tormeh wrote:
| Huh? Ericsson is Swedish. Why is it more likely to be US
| spying gear in Ericsson products than, say, Nokia?
| forks34 wrote:
| It was. But Germany cooperated with the NSA on mass
| surveillance so that's okay. The anti Huawei narrative is
| entirely political and not based on facts.
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am very confused here:
|
| > The anti Huawei narrative is entirely political and not
| based on facts.
|
| Are you saying that there are no security implications in
| having the CCP build and run your country's digital
| infrastructure?
| thow-01187 wrote:
| I believe one of the major reasons why Huawei is so
| vilified is that it's the first Chinese corporation that
| not only outprices its Western competitors, but also
| outtechs and outmanages them. This goes so counter to the
| Gated Institutional Narrative that cognitive dissonance
| kicks in - media insist there must surely be something
| dishonest and fraudulent about Huawei.
|
| Both Ericsson and Nokia barely make any profit, even amidst
| of what should be a 5G bonanza. They're famous for their
| perennial layoffs, constant cost-cutting, bland working
| conditions, outsourcing, infighting, insane level of
| bureaucracy and proliferation of management positions.
|
| Huawei on the other hand, is well known for paying above-
| market wages (though long working hours), "poaching"
| skilled people from competitors, generous employee share
| scheme, valuing engineering above middle management,
| contributing to open source projects, and relative freedom
| their R&D personnel enjoys in tackling technical
| challenges. And their B2B offerings are the best value. And
| their consumer electronics is among the best value. And on
| top of that, they're highly profitable.
|
| Even if you assert there's some secret money pump from CCP
| to Huawei, you cannot deny the fact that Huawei is a well-
| oiled machine that delivers. Pump billions into not only
| Nokia/Ericsson, but also IBM, SAP, HP, Oracle - the money
| would just get sucked into a black hole with very little to
| show for it. Huawei is portrayed as evil, because the
| alternative is to confront our weakness.
| threeseed wrote:
| This statement is completely wrong.
|
| Huawei is a legitimate threat from a country that doesn't
| have the same checks and balances as other countries e.g.
| free media, robust judiciary, democracy.
|
| And it's not like network providers are specifically trying
| to secure their platform against Huawei. It's against anyone.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The internal structure of a country is not a good predictor
| of its foreign policy. How countries act foreign policy
| wise is very simple - they will attempt to achieve the most
| advantageous positions for themselves, without regard for
| you (unless you can help them, of course).
|
| It doesn't matter if you're dealing with a dictatorship or
| a democracy when it comes to foreign policy. Both will kill
| you.
| onethought wrote:
| But the US had all those things and still spied on
| everyone's networks... but we should keep following that
| logic?
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > The anti Huawei narrative is entirely political and not
| based on facts.
|
| So anti-CCP? Sounds good to me!
| Udik wrote:
| Using "CCP" in place of "China" is a trend that started
| with the recent demonization of China. It appears you have
| been persuaded by the anti-China narrative to the point
| that you openly welcome _more_ of it irrespectively of its
| factual basis.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The CCP controls every facet of China. I suggest you
| learn more about that. For example, every company larger
| than about 40 employees has a CCP cell co-located in the
| office (office space, staff with the highest salary in
| the company, etc.)
|
| Most of the companies you hear about in the press are
| dual military/civilian, and the CCP has access to all
| computer systems. That's why Huawei (founded by a PLA
| member) cannot be allowed to be used in the West.
|
| FYI: the CCP has been in a cold war with the US since the
| 1950s, and asked Russia twice to attack the US with them.
| Luckily Russia laughed them off.
| [deleted]
| consumer451 wrote:
| > Using "CCP" in place of "China" is a trend that started
| with the recent demonization of China.
|
| I take exception to this as I have been trying to explain
| to everyone how evil the CCP is for many years. It is not
| recent. Using the term CCP is simply an attempt to
| accurately identify the problem, and not be lazy/racist
| by blaming things on "China."
| onethought wrote:
| I'm curious what the "evilness" is.
|
| Also, Hua wei isn't the ccp. I'm sure there is influence
| for sure. Just like there is influence in US companies
| from government.
| threeseed wrote:
| It's more accurate and appropriate to refer to the ruling
| party rather than the country itself.
|
| Many people have issues with Israel's foreign policy for
| example but that doesn't mean they are anti-semitic or
| anyway blame the Israeli people.
| Udik wrote:
| > .. or anyway blame the Israeli people
|
| No, they blame "Israel", which is a political and
| national entity. You can be more specific and blame one
| leader or party when that is a variable, but that's not
| the case with China- the CCP is in fact its fundamental
| political organisation.
|
| So the only reason to talk of "the CCP" instead of
| "China" is that it reframes an issue which is mostly a
| struggle for economic and military power between
| countries, to an issue within China itself, between the
| Chinese people and their government. Which is dishonest,
| because truth is, from one side the Chinese don't have
| much issues with their government, it's working great for
| them; and from the other side, the US would have issue
| with _any_ government of China, as long as it keeps
| steadily advancing to become the first economic power in
| the world. But of course admitting that is not easy, so
| it 's better to pretend the issue is "the CCP".
| onepointsixC wrote:
| Yup. Just like how the White House and other US institutions
| were tapped by BND.
| supercon wrote:
| This is really puzzling. For once we actually have not one, but
| two 'hi-tech' companies in Europe, that can be considered
| significant competitors in a global market, yet instead of
| embracing this opportunity, Germany thinks its better to further
| segment the market to smaller players? A market that to be
| honest, is not as lucrative as many might think and has huge
| upfront R&D costs everytime the next G is coming up, especially
| on the RAN side.
|
| I guess if its not airplanes or cars, we can leave it to Silicon
| Valley to handle. Or is it only airplanes now?
|
| /rant from Finland
| heisenbit wrote:
| The reasons the network equipment suppliers consolidated was
| that the network service providers had consolidated and were
| starting to buy in bulk. That forced the prices down and gave
| advantages to the larger players who stayed larger players by
| gobbling up the other players before a competitor could.
|
| The key problem is differentiation for network access
| providers. The business is highly infrastructure intensive and
| at the end of the day you take an IP packet, ship it to an
| interconnect and collect monthly payments. It is hard to see
| how such an industry where innovation is centered around
| bundling of tariffs for different access technologies is able
| to run more fragmented network technologies in cost effective
| ways.
|
| So this is imho. all support PR to justify funding general EU
| tech investments. The US has venture funds the EU has research
| grants.
| bilekas wrote:
| > two 'hi-tech' companies in Europe, that can be considered
| significant competitors in a global market
|
| And they still will be, this just lowers the barrier for entry
| on smaller companies who might have some beneficial R&D but
| dont have to sell/lease their intelectual property to the big
| two.
|
| I have worked at Ericsson and they're extremely patent hungry.
| Thats not a bad thing in and of itself, but it reduces
| significant competition when you can buy smaller companies IP
| or block them out of the market.
| iagovar wrote:
| So you want OpenRAN, that's cool, but who is exactly going to
| build the hardware for that in Europe if it isn't Nokia and
| Ericsson? Infineon? IDK man, I lack information here but I'd say
| that be careful with what you wish.
| herewegoagain2 wrote:
| It doesn't matter, the German government hardly ever finishes
| their big projects. They just want to look good on paper and
| spend some tax payer money.
| throw2102032112 wrote:
| The Berlin Brandenberg Airport comes to mind:
| https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20181030-what-
| happened-...
| tpmx wrote:
| Nokia Networks used to be called Nokia Siemens Networks - it
| was a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens before Nokia
| bought out Siemens in 2013. They still have lots of employees
| in Germany.
|
| Nokia Networks recently announced Open RAN allegiance/support.
|
| I guess this is about forcing Ericsson to do the same for some
| added competition. If they don't, who cares, lots of money will
| still flow back into the german economy.
|
| > The German draft proposal includes over EUR300 million of
| investment in Open RAN technology,
|
| This is sort of a (possibly) legal way for the german
| government to subsidize the company formerly known as Nokia
| Siemens Networks.
| liotier wrote:
| I'll believe OpenRAN when I see the interop party. Telco
| suppliers loath open standards - in practice they are usually
| only implemented as far as necessary to tick a RFP checkbox.
| Better than nothing though.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, I'll tend to agree. I think this is Germany being
| Germany.
|
| As a Swede: I've long thought that EU will split up in
| northern/southern parts. Germany is in the middle - this is
| a stab in the back of Sweden. Before this I thought Germany
| might end up in the northern part. Now they have forged an
| alliance with Finland/Nokia.
| bilekas wrote:
| Stab in the back of Sweden ? How so? Because of lower
| barrier for entry that might hurt Ericsson's bottom line
| ?
|
| Ericsson will still be at the forefront of EU
| infrastructure, they have the money to do it and will
| earn from that, their reputation too is already favoured
| in the EU over Huwawei.. Which is the whole point.
|
| But sure.. Swexit, lets 'extrapolate' that out then,
| Ericsson will then be under increased tarrifs and
| excluded from initial EU contract proposals.
|
| They have not forged an alliance with anyone, they are
| leveling the market to allow for other competitors and
| not have a bottleneck on suppliers.
| tpmx wrote:
| Well, i guess we could have Sweden and/or Scandinavia put
| say 10 billion euros into outperforming and eventuallly
| putting 10-25 randomly chosen very old and beloved German
| companies out of business. See where I'm going with this?
|
| I mean, like OpenLiebherr rolls off the tounge nicely.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| The idea is that you don't need one fully vertically integrated
| specialist manufacturer, like you do now.
|
| You can have multiple different components.... Think of like
| building your desktop PC today - you can have CPU from AMD, the
| motherboard from ASUS, GPU from MSI, SSD from Intel, etc...
| abledon wrote:
| For More information...
|
| I enjoyed this sites articles on the O-RAN matter[1]. There is
| an entire subsection with articles on the recent industry
| movements.
|
| [1]https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/nokia-is-making-
| risky-...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am going to put it in the most blunt, politically incorrect and
| frankly offensive way: I don't want my communications to touch
| any Chinese services, hardware, applications or processes. This
| is what my gut feelings are. I have surveyed over 200 suppliers
| in China, I've got zero trust in their professional ethics.
|
| EU should develop its own infrastructure for communications. No
| one would hesitate to use German communication infrastructure
| because it's reasonable to expect strong ethics and
| professionalism. It's completely opposite with Chinese companies.
| Really. This is a broad generalization to help navigate. Of
| course there are exceptions, many, in fact. I find it totally
| ironic that the CCP is recently cracking down on low level
| corruption in mid-sized firms in China (a good thing), while
| ignoring their own deeds.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| It goes beyond ethics. The CCP has clear long term global power
| goals and espionage plays a large part of this.
|
| China threads turn into whataboutism. Yeah obviously the West
| spies as well. But we don't tend to use that to steal IP and
| coordinate with our state-owned or virtually quasi state owned
| companies. Even if we did do that I'd rather the spying be on
| our side. Plus we do have some individual liberty protections
| (no matter how deteriorating) and can push for
| more/transparency (Democracy versus a dictatorship).
|
| We're in confrontation already why give up such an important
| strategic asset?
| throw2102032112 wrote:
| Well, maybe the idea is to fix your own house first?
|
| I mean this is the whole reason we've got into the Brexit
| situation, by constantly casting blame on the EU for our own
| government's failings. But I guess that's the whole point in
| Democracy isn't it? Constantly blaming someone else, making
| up false accusations of someone else, and when they try to
| defend themselves, intensify the accusations.
|
| I am also curious about where you think Huawei stolen the 5G
| IPs from? Or are you regurgitating false accusations without
| any evidence?
| joering2 wrote:
| When you mentioned Germany, I chuckled a little. Worked there
| for many years and corruption and lack of professionalism I
| witness in IT section was astonishing. At least here in US
| corporate corruption is not blunt; nobody here - like it
| happened to me in Germany - will meet you for the first time,
| listen to your case and then ask for $15,000 Euro bribe.
|
| Here is a good start how terrible German ethics are:
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/image-problems-mount-in-corporate-germ...
|
| And then my favorite case of corrupted to the core Siemens:
|
| https://theconversation.com/lessons-from-the-massive-siemens...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Thanks for the contrast. We also know the VW scandal. As I
| said, this is a broad generalization from my own experience
| with mid-sized firms in China. I can only expect larger
| unethical behavior with CCP members in the board meetings.
|
| At least in EU/Germany, you don't have the Government asking
| you to do shady things without due process. Worse, unspoken
| threat and chilling effect executives and leadership team
| would have to appease the CCP members. There was a recent
| example of this - Jack Ma.
| onethought wrote:
| How's Jack Ma related to your trust in Hua wei? It was a
| different company and it wasn't just random interference
| from the government it was the other way round. Jack Ma
| started using his position to interfere with government.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think it's very much related. Can you imagine Jeff
| Bezos disappearing for 2 months because he didn't appease
| the US Feds?
|
| Now imagine the chilling effect it would send to the rest
| of the executives from small to large corporations.
| throw2102032112 wrote:
| In my eyes, Jeff Bezos is constantly disappearing. I
| mean, he's only in the media spotlight once every few
| months right? I'd dread to think what happens to him
| while he's missing during those media lapses...
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Can you imagine a billionaire implicated in child sex
| scandal and with potential dirt on many politicians
| mysteriously dying in jail?
| onethought wrote:
| It's not comparable... China isn't a democracy and free
| speech isn't a thing.
|
| Can I imagine Jeff bezos being arrested for committing a
| federal crime: yes
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Speaking out against the government is a crime? Did Jack
| Ma get a trial?
| sgift wrote:
| > It's not comparable... China isn't a democracy and free
| speech isn't a thing.
|
| And that makes it right? Or are we on the "it's their
| culture, so we aren't allowed to be critical of it"
| bandwagon?
| okl wrote:
| > At least in EU/Germany, you don't have the Government
| asking you to do shady things without due process.
|
| Sure? https://www.dw.com/en/internet-exchange-de-cix-
| accuses-germa...
| mywittyname wrote:
| I've worked for a few German mega-corps and I was always
| struck by how in point their "anti-bribery" training was. It
| kind of felt like a "how-to" course on bribery where they
| just tell you not to do the thing at the end.
|
| Kind of like those anti-drug campaigns in schools where the
| police would tell you about all the different drugs and how
| not to use them. "This here is crack cocaine, it's like
| regular cocaine but cheaper and more effective. Most people
| put the crack rock into a glass tube and light it with a
| torch. Now smoking crack makes your body feel better than
| anything in the world. So don't do it." Then they tell you
| how to spot a drug dealer and let you know that most offer
| free samples.
| [deleted]
| vasilakisfil wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scanda...
| __sy__ wrote:
| It sincerely pains me to write this, but I tend to agree with
| the general conclusion of this comment. Of course, Germans,
| French, Canadians....etc are NOT immune to incompetence or
| unethical conduct either (see Enron, VW, Total...etc). But once
| you've dealt long enough with Chinese CM/ODM/OEMs, you've seen
| things that make you nod along this comment.
|
| JUST YESTERDAY, we received an SDK doc from a well-known
| networking gear OEM that was encrypted using 3DES. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.precisely.com/blog/data-security/aes-vs-des-
| encr...
| coltsfan wrote:
| For sure. But the specific statement of expecting "strong"
| ethics from some group of companies is bizarre.
|
| I would go all the way and say that it is completely
| unreasonable to expect "strong" ethics from any company.
| There are just too many individuals involved with their own
| incentives.
|
| It's like looking at MLB dopers and expecting european
| cyclists to be a better type of person and never dope. It
| will never happen that way. However, you could reasonably
| expect a sport whose governing body does regular testing of
| athletes and their gear to have less cheating. You could say
| that has nothing to do with ethics. It's about consequences.
|
| This should be a very easy conclusion for anyone that has
| ever read about cheating in any kind of system. sports,
| finance, academia's replication crisis, scrabble
| tournaments... it is sad, but the most reasonable conclusion
| is to expect cheating and unethical behavior. It's just what
| people, including some very good people, end up doing due to
| pressure and being able to get away with something. And if it
| is profitable to just pay the fine and not do a recall, don't
| do a recall. Even if that means kids will die.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness/
| zm262 wrote:
| Ironically. You could be right about the 200 suppliers in
| China, except that Huawei in this case IS actually one of the
| few trustable Chinese companies.
| skohan wrote:
| > No one would hesitate to use German communication
| infrastructure
|
| Maybe they would hesitate to use it because it's embarrassingly
| bad. I've been living in Germany for 5 years, and for the most
| part I love it, but the telecom situation is shocking. Speeds
| are slow, most people are still on DSL, and hardly a day goes
| by where I don't have at least a few minutes of random network
| blackouts, which is really great for working during a pandemic.
| A few weeks ago my home internet was down for 72 hours.
| Sometimes it feels like like when I have traveled in the
| developing world and the power just goes out sometimes and
| nobody makes a big deal about it because they're used to it.
| gpvos wrote:
| ...compared to where?
| skohan wrote:
| Eastern Europe, south east Asia, even in Spain and the US I
| had better experience with internet.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Maybe they would hesitate to use it because it's
| embarrassingly bad.
|
| German here. That's not because our tech companies are
| incompetent (AVM's FritzBox DSL/Cable modems are top notch,
| Fraunhofer and the public broadcasters' research arm IRT are
| leading in communication standards development)... it is a
| side effect of our dysfunctional politics and decades of
| "conservatives" in government:
|
| 1) Our mobile networks are ... lackluster because the
| governments (both center-left and "conservative") extracted
| something like 50 billion EUR from the operators during the
| infamous UMTS license auctions to prop up the government's
| balance sheet. That, together with the cost of building out a
| network in rural areas that don't have many customers, is the
| reason why mobile plans are so expensive and the quality so
| bad.
|
| 2) Our fibre adoption rate is so utterly disgusting because
| the fibre plans were shelved by the newly elected
| Conservative government in 1982 - it got replaced by cable-TV
| so that the percieved "too far left" (=too critical of the
| government) public TV stations could be "countered" with
| private TV stations. I wish I were joking, unfortunately I'm
| serious: https://netzpolitik.org/2018/danke-helmut-kohl-
| kabelfernsehe...
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| Where in Germany did you live with such bad internet?
| milankragujevic wrote:
| If it's any consolation, it is just as bad in other
| countries, when using Huawei equipment. This is not due to
| technology, this is due to carriers and ISPs. Those two are
| completely separate from tech companies making networking
| hardware. Ironically [for this comment] Germany uses A LOT of
| Huawei stuff for the access network on xDSL.
| onethought wrote:
| What did Huawei do to make you come to this conclusion?
|
| Why isn't encryption the solution here?
| exyi wrote:
| Encryption does not protect you from:
|
| 1. metadata leaks 2. denial of service backdoors - a real
| consideration for nations going to trade war with China and
| Huawei is pretty connected to the Chinese government
|
| Also there is the problem that lot of tech is legacy and can
| not be easily upgraded for encryption (think SMS and mobile
| calls)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| There is a lot of rot in Huawei:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/technology/huawei-
| rackete...
| lucian1900 wrote:
| No, the US government and media say there is. That is not
| necessarily the truth.
| bithavoc wrote:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1612385723&dateRange=custom&.
| ..
| radres wrote:
| Holy shit
| disiplus wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
| pupdogg wrote:
| At least you know that some forces existed where this got
| documented. Good luck with that in China!
| elefanten wrote:
| If you wanna play case for case, we'll be reading the China
| stack until heat death
| Judgmentality wrote:
| While I absolutely do have the perception that Chinese
| businesses are more corrupt than Western businesses,
| admittedly any sort of data or analysis would be welcome.
| frostwhale wrote:
| that's kinda that point... you dont get any data from
| China.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| You don't trust health data from tobacco companies
| either, but you can still figure out ways to analyze the
| health of tobacco.
|
| This certainly is not my wheelhouse, but I assume someone
| has made some attempts to analyze this?
| throw2102032112 wrote:
| I guess maybe you don't hear about as much corruption in
| Germany is if you are a whistleblower, then you get poisoned
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36185194
| baybal2 wrote:
| > EU should develop its own infrastructure for communications.
|
| Before telling that EU or US should develop its own
| infrastructure for communications, think why it's not there
| already, and why it needs a boot from the government.
|
| US, and EU largely nuked their own industries without any
| foreign spies blowing up bridges.
|
| I cannot single out what's in particular what's solely
| responsible for demise of industrial economy in the West, but
| having tried it myself I can say that the sense of swimming
| against the current is omnipresent.
|
| Don't just spray money, first think why doing so 10 times
| before did not work.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| A lot of it is labor costs. There's also the fact that there
| are other, more lucrative industries for American industry to
| chase. Everything has tradeoffs. I don't know if I would say
| industry left the US due to a failure of any kind. This is
| kind of the definition of an economic comparative advantage.
| narag wrote:
| Sometimes when I read History, I wonder why the hell people
| at the time didn't see the obvious threats that were looming
| over them. Actually there's always some guys that see what's
| coming and tell, but nobody cares and a lot of time passes
| whith plenty of opportunities to correct the course.
|
| Then comes the war or an empire falls.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| US/EU sold out to cheaper prices in China partly due to
| currency manipulation and partly due to the fault of their
| own (meaning capitalistic incentives, no regulations,
| international trade agreements, etc.).
|
| Further they did so with the presumption that China will shed
| off its authoritarian tones as it grows. That didn't pan out
| as well.
|
| I would say your assessment of this situation is pretty spot
| on - we need to ask Why and what led to centralization of
| manufacturing specifically.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Hit tech industries are limited by the number of educated
| people in the population available to support them, so they
| operate at the whims of citizens and the education system.
|
| If countries want to expand their silicon design and
| manufacturing capabilities, then they need to somehow get
| their citizens to study the relevant fields necessary to
| grow such industries.
|
| American university graduates tend towards degrees related
| to business or healthcare. I'm not sure how countries like
| China, Korea, and Japan manage to graduate so many
| technical people.
|
| Part of the issue is chicken-and-egg. It's hard to get a
| job in the field of chip design / manufacturing because
| there just aren't that many of those jobs available in the
| USA, outside of a few key regions.
| centimeter wrote:
| I think the decline of the industrial economy in the US is
| substantially down to the US government effectively
| subsidizing foreign manufacturing with seignorage (dollar
| printing) profits.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Optimizing for quarterly returns means nobody plans for 10
| or 25 years into the future. You won't get a bonus for
| planning ahead.
| danlugo92 wrote:
| Are you forgetting about COINTELPRO and PRISM?
| mountainb wrote:
| I wouldn't trust Americans either if I had no access to courts
| that had jurisdiction over them. This is one of the issues of
| trade without reciprocal jurisdiction. The problem extends
| beyond just communications hardware and the special concerns of
| that category.
| caycep wrote:
| I feel like this is akin to one of those Stanford psychology
| experiments, but in political science/cultural development,
| i.e. what happens when you bomb a country back to the stone age
| (interregnum post-Qiang dynasty, then WWII), but then juice up
| the economy in 2-3 decades but without the "normal"
| cultural/political/ethical development, and in a complete
| effectively laissez-faire libertarian-but-also-authoritarian-
| with-a-lot-of-bribes environment
| pelasaco wrote:
| Always when I read about it, I remember this darknetdiaries
| episode https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/64/
| JustFinishedBSG wrote:
| I don't understand why Huawei is suddenly the networking devil
| when it comes to 5G when it didn't (and still doesn't) bother
| anyone when most of the GPON/EPON/XGPON/NGPON hardware is full
| Huawei...
|
| I bet the fibre connection to the not-Huawei 5G towers is going
| to be Huawei anyway.
| Thaxll wrote:
| You have to start somewhere, with your argument we already have
| some x.y.z provider so why change?
| Stevvo wrote:
| Protectionism surely plays a somewhat unspoken role.
| bigpumpkin wrote:
| The NSA needs to hack into everything. Huawei everywhere makes
| it difficult to do so.
|
| https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/27/nsa-hacked-...
| [deleted]
| jdsnape wrote:
| You do have a point, but I think from a risk perspective there
| is a difference.
|
| When Huawei was chosen for those fixed line projects it was
| providing relatively 'dumb' pieces of kit (switches etc.), with
| controller software that could be looked at and ringfenced.
|
| The 5G stack has been implemented using much more
| virtualisation, and the vendors are providing much more general
| capability which makes it a lot harder to risk assess and probe
| for weaknesses etc.
| martinald wrote:
| The UK has tens of thousands of Huawei VDSL2 DSLAMs
| installed, I imagine most countries have similar (Portugal
| seems to use Huawei for nearly all of their FTTH equipment).
| They are not dumb pieces of kit at all in terms of computing
| power.
|
| Regardless, even if it was, it is still a huge potential
| problem. Imagine Huawei had some backdoor code that looked
| for a certain pattern of data across any of the network
| interfaces and corrupted the firmware so it wouldn't load
| without being physically replaced. China then buys a load of
| ads and as users browse the web, they load the image with the
| secret string in, triggering it (one example).
|
| Within a couple of hours enough users have seen it that the
| vast majority of western infrastructure is down, and needs
| replaced (and I would assume in this case, China wouldn't be
| willing to sell more!).
|
| I think this sort of attack would likely take down most 5G
| anyway - as it's incredibly likely that the backhaul has some
| sort of Huawei fibre product in it somewhere along the line.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| That is one form of attack, but that's "the nuclear option"
| of infrastructure. It's a concern, but many of the concerns
| around 5G are persistent nation state spying activities.
| China is far more concerned with data aggregating and
| mining than it is with nuking the West. China, in general,
| tends to avoid cataclysmic actions that upend the current
| order. Especially given that most of the Western world is
| China's largest trading partners and a fundamental part of
| their economy.
|
| China's strategic plan is spy and collect, not destroy.
| Traditional espionage stuff that every country does.
| threeseed wrote:
| China et al don't care all that much about individual
| users.
|
| By compromising a large network provider they have the
| ability to access data from enterprise and government
| customers. Which as we saw when the US did it is very
| beneficial for trade negotiations etc.
| gsich wrote:
| Then 5G is down. So what? Considering the amount of procen
| backdoors in Cisco devices that seems miniscule.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Easier to replace because 5G is being fresh installed, imagine
| replacing all that fibre. It's also easier to hide possibly
| nefarious equipment in 5G and proxy to somewhere else, whereas
| the usual fibre splitters and taps nation states use are high
| traffic, bulky and basically impossible to exfil back to China.
| Fibre is "dumb" equipment whereas much of the 5G stack includes
| vendor software, virtualization etc which increases risks
| enormously.
|
| You're not wrong.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Heck, many ISP modems (which are not only modems but also
| routers and wireless APs) are of Chinese manufacture.
| abc-xyz wrote:
| Perhaps it's due to their involvement with the concentration
| camps, or their close ties with the CCP, or subverting
| sanctions against Iran?
|
| It's also absurd that EU would even consider using Huawei in
| the first place given their desire to achieve technological
| sovereignty.
| petre wrote:
| No, it's tied to industrial espionage.
| blowfish721 wrote:
| Here's another side of it. When Huawei deployed their equipment
| previously with at least one big telecom it's equipment worked
| so badly that they sent a boatload of engineers onsite to fix
| it all and as far as I know they did. Now imagine all the
| systems, schematics, blueprints and locations these engineers
| touched or at least gained knowledge about. Even without a
| backdoor in this knowledge would probably be a hacker group's
| wet dream if they wanted to plant themselves inside a telco.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Eh, this is getting silly. There are Chinese nationals
| working in the West, obviously they see how systems are made.
| Then they can go back and build something similar based on
| their knowledge - you can't copyright someone's brain.
|
| I keep thinking that if, hypothetically, i would be in charge
| of a developing economy, I would not recognise foreign
| copyright and patents untill the country can catch up, at
| least on medicine and software. Especially the idea that
| breaking copyright is a crime and not a civil offence is an
| absurdity
| distances wrote:
| This is exactly what has always been done. US did to UK,
| Japan did to Germany, now China is did/is doing to US.
| Copyrights and patents only come to the table when they get
| useful.
| threeseed wrote:
| I used to work for Australia's national broadband network.
|
| The issue with 5G is that there is a lot more software involved
| e.g. software defined networking, network function
| virtualization, edge computing, containerisation etc.
|
| This makes securing the platform much more complex as you have
| to constantly validate that each piece of software is not able
| to access your core network or siphon user traffic.
|
| Optical networks like you listed are pretty dumb so aren't
| nearly as much of a threat.
| throw0101a wrote:
| In addition, I think that a lot of ISO Layer 1/2 and even L3
| gear can be swapped out too without much effort because of
| open standards (IETF, ISO, etc) that allows for easier mixing
| and matching.
|
| Whereas a lot of wireless components are more tightly coupled
| to each other.
|
| Which is why many service providers are talking about Open
| RAN.
| mercurysmessage wrote:
| "Optical networks like you listed are pretty dumb so aren't
| nearly as much of a threat"
|
| They can be tapped into still, of course. Doesn't GCHQ copy
| all the data coming through their fibre lines and run it
| through computers for analysis?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They can be tapped into still, of course_
|
| Slightly different threat model.
| not_exactly__ wrote:
| Welp. This is what I come to HN for.
| dalbasal wrote:
| good answer. cheers.
| onethought wrote:
| This doesn't quite make sense... at the end of the day you
| still put data in one end and it comes out the other... can
| you not just encrypt?
|
| I'm missing something right?
| __sy__ wrote:
| yes, denial of service attacks.
| onethought wrote:
| Say what? I can denial of service attack any brand of
| network with state level resources... what does Huawei
| change in that equation?
|
| Do you mean like they could disable the equipment and
| deny service?
| bilekas wrote:
| If the COM/SYS layer to the infrastructure is all Huwawei
| due to no other providers being immediately available for
| contract, then all of the infrastructure has security
| issues along the entire chain.
|
| It's implementing the security and 'ownership' of the
| data along the infrastructure thats at risk. And Huwawei
| don't have a good track record.
| fab1an wrote:
| This is the type of content we're here for! Thanks.
| Copenjin wrote:
| > bet the fibre connection to the not-Huawei 5G towers is going
| to be Huawei anyway.
|
| With all the competition on fibre equipments I really doubt.
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