[HN Gopher] U.S. telecoms are going to start physically removing...
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U.S. telecoms are going to start physically removing Huawei gear
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 233 points
Date : 2021-11-01 13:48 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Swisscom installed a Huawei box on a leased line between two
| Cisco sites. I found that.... surprising.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| All my knowledge about this has come from Media articles Covering
| the dangers of using huawei tech, but I haven't seen anything
| that describes Chinese attacks using huawei equipment. We do know
| the long history of China sponsored hacking and it's not a leap
| to go so far as to think Huawei could be compelled to backdoor
| equipment. For that reason not using Huawei is safer for national
| security one way or the other.
|
| However, on Capitol Hill, I think the idea is more to harm China
| than protect. I remember that the Washington metro trains were
| almost blocked because they are built by a Chinese company.
| Someone in congress dreamed up a Tom Clancy plot where the
| Chinese could bring down Washington by hijacking their transit
| system.
| gonational wrote:
| Just about every data center in the US has a decent percent of
| its servers running as nodes of botnets for entities inside of
| China, not to mention the hundreds of millions of "smart"
| devices. That leaves out of the equation TickTock and Reddit
| and every other above-board Chinese communist party partly
| owned tech in the US.
|
| Assuming that you know what your exact attack surface is is a
| pretty clear sign that you are very vulnerable to attack.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| That one time tiny chips in AWS servers
| Elemental/Supermicro/Apple 2018
| liotier wrote:
| ANSSI, the French agency for information systems security, has
| severely tightened authorizations for vital infrastructure.
| Though Huawei is still kosher in many network functions, French
| telcos have had to remove a few thousand nodes they had already
| deployed, especially in network cores. All authorizations are
| temporary - between three and eight years.
|
| This is not just about security in a narrow definition, but in a
| large part about ensuring that mastery of strategic functions
| remains with European firms.
|
| Like armaments, telecommunication infrastructures are not a
| normal market.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If anyone is in the know, looking for pointers on where to pick
| this gear up on the used market for use in underserved developing
| areas.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| guess you didnt read the article, its all being destroyed.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I did, but lots of things that are supposed to be destroyed
| end up on secondary markets.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| probably not when part of the requirements to get the
| subsidy are destroying the old equipment.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You'd be surprised.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| I'd be surprised if you'd be willing to risk the
| sanctions for buying equipment you knew was defrauding
| the US government. The feds play for keeps...
| drdaeman wrote:
| Unless the destruction process is thoroughly documented
| so following up the mandatory requirements will ensure
| the hardware is totaled and whatever remains of it is
| beyond repair, there are always some chances it would be
| disposed of in a less than irreparable manner, and
| someone would just recover it and sell for profit.
|
| It doesn't require malicious intent, just negligence,
| ignorance, lack of awareness and/or poorly worded
| instructions.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| My comment you replied to was not suggesting defrauding
| the government (definitely don't ever do that, going on
| the record I don't support that) but commentary on how
| frequently something that should happen (equipment
| destruction) as required by law, policy, or contract
| doesn't happen. Very similar to how hard drives with very
| sensitive information on them always seem to end up on
| eBay (or marketplace of your choice).
| squarefoot wrote:
| > The U.S. is about to start destroying tons of Huawei and ZTE
| equipment.
|
| Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? Tons of perfectly good, top notch
| quality and 100% reliable RF gear are going to be destroyed
| because they fear there is spyware contained in the digital
| chips? I totally understand the arguments, but it's like throwing
| away a car because one doesn't trust the brakes. Just strip out
| the logic and sell the rest! Pollution aside, this is an insult
| to those who struggle to buy RF parts because of the shortage
| prices.
| tomhunters wrote:
| The US is really against Huawei; this war has been happening
| since the rise of the 5G technology. They did various things
| against Huawei, like removing the Android OS and Google
| Playstore.
| egberts1 wrote:
| oooh cheap fire sales coming up!
| outside1234 wrote:
| This is good policy. One of the few things I think Trump did good
| on.
| betimsl wrote:
| Not against anyone, and I know -- given the state of company --
| this is not the time to ask, but because of climate crisis,
| should Huawei be slapped a climate tax too?
|
| Imagine all those resources used to produce spying hardware that
| now will be decommissioned.
| sdfasf wrote:
| I need an expert to explain something to me:
|
| If we enable E2E encryption on the end points, why do we care if
| Huawei makes it since the local gov't retains local monopoly of
| force? The reasons I can think of are:
|
| - meta-data - denial of infrastructure. This is a big reason and
| a good enough reason.
|
| Aside from reason number two, I really don't see the security
| threat. Not to minimize the threat of meta-data, but I think, on
| a national level, it too is solvable for the sovereign (by, for
| example, having phones make fake random calls to each other to
| poison the information)
|
| EDIT: For the record, my question is genuine - I really want to
| understand this - and not some backhanded way to defend Huawei
| kube-system wrote:
| Denial of service/parts/maintenance is a very real concern.
| Telecoms put a lot of effort into deploying this
| infrastructure. If we end up with a telecom system entirely of
| Huawei gear, we're one sanctions declaration away from a
| completely unsupported, unpatched, unmaintainable telecom
| network.
|
| The US already puts tech sanctions on China. It is not at all
| hard to imagine China reciprocating.
|
| And, even if they never actually do _anything_ -- once our
| telecom system is mostly Huawei gear, they can now use it as a
| political chess piece against us. And on the opposite end of
| the spectrum, if we hypothetically go to war, they
| unquestionably would use that power to their advantage. All of
| our public /government services rely on functioning telecom
| networks.
|
| China does the same stuff. They know if we go to war, we're
| likely to cut them off from GPS service, which is why they have
| their own system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeiDou
| Beached wrote:
| encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near
| term, but not long term. all major state actors vacuum up and
| retain encrypted communications and store them until the time
| it is possible to crack. the average Joe's vacation planning
| with his friends over txt won't matter too much. but a senators
| phone call, or a ceo phone call, or even an engineers txt,
| email and phone calls can lead to io theft, Intel leak, etc.
| once encryption is cracked a few years later.
| sdfasf wrote:
| "encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the
| near term"
|
| Very interesting. I knew that state actors syphon everything,
| but I assumed it was since they can afford and it's a Hail
| Mary if they stumble on a breakthrough or a side channel.
| Some further Qs:
|
| - What's near term? - What's in the far term? - I thought
| that encryption could be made arbitrarily more difficult to
| crack at little cost. Is this not the case? - Does this
| future assume quantum computing is feasible?
|
| Finally, if encryption is no longer believed to be safe in
| the long term, shouldn't we be moving towards making one-time
| pads practical? Given modern data storage densities, it's not
| that unpractical for many use cases (say embassy
| communication, etc)
| thedigitalone wrote:
| https://archive.md/F5FUk
| cinntaile wrote:
| Strange title. How else would they remove hardware if not
| physically?
| hn8788 wrote:
| Could be to emphasize that they didn't "remove them" by just
| turning them off and collecting a re-imbursement from the
| government. The article says the removed devices must be taken
| to approved destruction facilities, so the govt really doesn't
| want the devices popping up on ebay or in internal networks.
| voz_ wrote:
| What always disgusts me about news and dealings with the CCP is
| the double standard. They can play ball in western markets with
| impunity, enjoying our egalitarian legal systems and protections,
| while we cannot do so in theirs. I'd love to see an equivalent
| anti-ccp stance taken across every field.
| dragonelite wrote:
| There is a reason Ericsson threaten to move from Sweden if they
| would block Huawei from having market access. Because it would
| mean Ericsson would lose a lot of tenders, they went from
| getting 12% of the 5G tenders to like 2%. Part of their tenders
| went to domestic companies and Nokia scored some 5G tenders.
|
| Same for a lot of other sectors and western companies on the
| background the Chinese market is by far their biggest market.
| I'm all for it that western companies lose their Asian market
| share means more internal consumption for Asian made products.
|
| https://www.asiafinancial.com/ericsson-vow-to-win-back-china...
| voz_ wrote:
| Sorry, I have no idea what point you are making. Are you
| responding to the correct comment?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is true of every company headquartered in a country with
| an oppressive government. You can buy Emirates air line
| t-shirts all over the place, but the country is a monarchy with
| a poor human rights track record. For better or worse we've
| decided that we're ok with treating foreign companies basically
| equally to our own up until now.
| awill wrote:
| as opposed to virtually removing?....
| adamrezich wrote:
| this is a good move. from the beginning, the Huawei 5G push was
| full of cause for suspicion. John C. Dvorak quit PC Magazine [0]
| after they took down his entirely reasonable (especially for
| Dvorak lol) 5G-skeptical column [1] and replaced it with a pro-5G
| column, accessed from the same URL as the deleted column. once
| covid hit, the narrative shifted further and anyone who was
| skeptical of Chinese 5G infrastructure in the US and elsewhere
| elicited responses of "lol you think 5G causes covid, ok Alex
| Jones lmao." the whole thing was shady from the start and the
| cries of "conthpirathy theorieth" were extremely odd given that
| the subject being discussed was the telecommunications
| infrastructure of the country being replaced/augmented by a new
| technology from a rival superpower. plus, I don't know about
| anyone else, but I personally haven't seen an actual use case for
| 5G to date. and then when you throw in the last administration's
| Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks at the 2020 National
| Governors Association with regards to Chinese influence on our
| States' leadership [2]...
|
| [0]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180901090946/https://in.pcmag....
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.co...
|
| [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/08/mike-pompeo-
| governo...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Wow, I was not aware of this. I used to read Dvorak a lot when
| I was younger. It also appears that he did not quit but was, in
| fact, fired - according to [1]:
|
| > As many of you know, I was unceremoniously fired from PC
| Magazine on Sept. 20th, 2018 after over 30 years of service. I
| just figured it was the new people coming in and I was an
| unneeded throwback to the old regime.
|
| Edit:
|
| > but I personally haven't seen an actual use case for 5G to
| date
|
| Incidentally, the most "compelling" use cases I've seen for 5g
| are always-connected smart devices that don't rely on WiFi.
| E.g. a smart TV where you can't pihole its advertising or view-
| tracking "features".
| adamrezich wrote:
| that's right, I misremembered and thought he quit when in
| fact he was fired.
| jmacd wrote:
| I fail to understand why the press in western countries gives
| this story so much air time. It's a regular fixture in the
| Canadian, UK and NZ press as well. I think it speaks to the
| lobbying effort and quality of PR retained by Huawei.
|
| There are certain things that a country, or group of allies,
| absolutely should retain control over. Communications
| infrastructure is absolutely one of those things.
|
| There is a reason China and Russia both have their own GPS
| alternative.
|
| There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei. But equally
| there is no good reason to trust Huawei.
| scandox wrote:
| My view is that this is part of the single most important
| narrative that all news media ultimately contribute to: the
| story of the lead up to, causes of and justification for war.
|
| We are a civilization based on sanctified violence: nowadays
| that sanctification comes from the news media.
|
| Just to be clear: I am not blaming the media for war. I am also
| not definitively "anti-war" as I don't know precisely what that
| means.
| kodah wrote:
| As someone who has been in war, I think war should be
| reserved for very special circumstances and not driven by
| public opinion (positive or negative). The US does not have a
| framework for war that isn't somehow affected by popular
| opinion though. The current best-effort application is the
| Joint Chiefs, whom I used to trust when Mattis was involved.
| Whether the Joint Chiefs can continue to recruit stoics like
| Mattis is another matter entirely.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Public opinion doesn't drive war. Public support for war is
| established during the lead-up phase to war by the
| influence of the dominant institutions.
| kodah wrote:
| There are _a lot_ of things that drive war (or
| withdrawal), and public opinion is just one. Media is
| certainly another, and maybe related.
| jacknews wrote:
| Given what you say, I don't understand why you don't
| understand.
|
| For one, it's now quite clear that all network infrastructure
| has backdoors controlled by the respective producing
| governments. I know for fact that alcatel do, for example. Why
| else the strict purge against huawei; a spy can spot a spy.
|
| And I think there are quite serious implications for free and
| open markets in certain sectors.
| scrubs wrote:
| I wanna know: why in the hell did American managers OK CCCP H/W
| in the first place? Because it cost less? Because they didn't
| get that "communications infrastructure is absolutely one of
| those things" you don't hand out to the other side? You know,
| we graduate a lot of business majors but sometimes I seriously
| wonder what in the heck American management does. In fairness
| there's probably blame at senior "engineering" types who OK'd
| purchase of Chinese stuff too.
| jollybean wrote:
| If the 'trust' of an entity used for critical infrastructure is
| not definitive, then we 'don't trust', i.e. 'distrust by
| default' in those scenarios.
|
| We literally do not know who owns Huawei, legally. We know that
| the CCP wants to monitor all communications, everywhere, do the
| extent they can. We know that de facto, the CCP has the final
| say, and can bend Huawei at will to do as they please and
| interdict without consequence (see: Jack Ma).
|
| While it's obviously a much more complicated question, there
| are other issues for sure, but in the end, it's as easy as
| that.
|
| The same should be held for any bit of critical software, and
| legislation should be introduced to protect citizens from CCP
| oversight in consumer apps like TikTok.
|
| The 'smart play' would be to play into the financial incentive
| of the companies - most of them are 'profit first' and adhere
| to CCP policy mostly 'because they have to' but with maybe some
| degree of national loyalty in some parties. But just like
| Hollywood can be very easily manipulated with the threat of
| China-blackout into making films the way the CCP wants ... Zoom
| and TikTok will act reasonably with the right regulation and
| oversight i.e. 'All US data has to be kept in the US, in
| certain terms, with some regulatory process etc'.. If they are
| forced to keep a firewall between non-China and China users by
| host nations, it makes it easier for them to rebuff CCP demands
| for interjection i.e. "Sorry Xi, but the data is kept on
| servers in the US on a different business unit, if we pass data
| across borders they will shut us down"
| thewarrior wrote:
| Is it okay for all countries in the world to do this to
| American companies ?
| gonational wrote:
| > communications infrastructure is absolutely one of those
| things
|
| So is the media.
|
| Perhaps it is not on account of the tremendous PR efforts of
| Huawei that American media outlets appear to be on the same
| team as the Chinese communist party, on many fronts.
| nafizh wrote:
| There is good reason to distrust Huawei. There are no private
| Chinese companies, everything is controlled by CCP.
| cletus wrote:
| I agree with the general sentiment of your post. There is an
| undeniable national security interest in maintaining control
| over telecommunications backbones.
|
| > There is a reason China and Russia both have their own GPS
| alternative.
|
| _As does the EU (ie Galileo)._
|
| > There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei.
|
| Here I disagree. Chinese companies are extensions of the state
| and tools for domestic and foreign policy to a degree that
| Western companies simply aren't. China's massive censorship
| policy doesn't exactly instill confidence in the principles of
| openness or independence either for either the Chinese
| government or the companies that enable these policies.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > to a degree that Western companies simply aren't.
|
| NSA paid RSA Security $10 million in a secret deal to use
| Dual_EC_DRBG as the default in the RSA BSAFE cryptography
| library[1]
|
| Juniper routers had an apparently deliberate Dual EC backdoor
| allowing VPN traffic to be decrypted.[2]
|
| I'd say that there is probably _more_ evidence of the west
| putting state-level backdoors in things than there is of
| China doing so. (although there may be sampling bias in
| this!)
|
| [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-rsa-
| idUSBRE9... [2]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf
| monetus wrote:
| I still resent room 641a, and that is relatively tame
| compared to what is happening now. Sampling bias is
| probably present though as well.
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Room_64
| 1...
| op00to wrote:
| There's more evidence of everything in the west because of
| the openness of governments compared to China. China isn't
| responding to FOIA requests all that much these days.
| blitzar wrote:
| Any chance the US would answer a FOIA request on the
| subject of STUXNET?
| ectopod wrote:
| Western backdoors were not uncovered through FOIA
| requests either. Huawei kit has been extensively analysed
| by GCHQ. They found nothing untoward.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > They found nothing untoward.
|
| I don't believe this. Nearly anything complex and
| networked, after a few months investigation by a good
| security professional, will have a good number of
| exploits found.
|
| These could be plain old bugs, or they could be planted
| backdoors. (usually indistinguishable)
|
| Even after months of effort, there is a high probability
| there remain undiscovered security issues (either
| deliberate or accidental) that more effort would have
| found.
|
| For that reason, I don't believe any claim when they say
| "nah, we couldn't find anything". They either didn't
| look, or don't want to reveal what they found.
| ectopod wrote:
| They assessed the kit to ensure it was safe to install on
| British networks, they announced it was safe, and the kit
| was installed.
|
| Further, when America's anti-Huawei panic started HMG
| were looking for an excuse to ban Huawei kit. If problems
| had been found it's likely they would have been
| mentioned.
| [deleted]
| Spooky23 wrote:
| They reported nothing untoward.
|
| Unless you have access to secret information and are for
| some reason burning your life down on HN, you have no
| idea what they found or didn't find.
| simonh wrote:
| How many journalists in China are you aware of that have
| investigated Chinese state interference in their technology
| companies, and reported on it? Yes western intelligence
| agencies do make use of western technology companies from
| time to time. I still think it's obvious that China is
| willing to go much, much further in the control it
| exercises. In fact exercising complete control over all
| aspects of business is official party doctrine.
| throwawaygal7 wrote:
| This type of comments...
|
| The data you show isn't proof of anything other than
| ineptitude of western agencies and the freedom of the press
| in the west. Go look for ICMB and warhead leaks, you'll
| always find better and more extensive documentation for
| NATO weapon systems. Does this mean the former communist
| block had no such weapons? No. It has to do with freedom of
| press and the legal system in the west making plans and
| docs public knowledge compared to a pretty locked down
| system in Russia and china.
| president wrote:
| What you're saying is a common thing I hear. I have been in the
| China watch camp for a few years now and there are a lot of
| major stories that you and most others are missing if the only
| place you get your news is from mainstream media, most of which
| has been captured by Chinese government. Bloomberg, CNN, AP,
| Reuters all receive Chinese money and/or coercion (not allowed
| to have offices/journalists in China unless you do what we say)
| to bring pro-CCP narratives to their audience. Same goes for
| most other international media. Just saying.
| topspin wrote:
| > I fail to understand why the press in western countries gives
| this story so much air time.
|
| Huawei pays for "sponsored" pieces in major media outlets.
| Politico, Reuters, Wired and others are paid by Huawei to run
| puff pieces, clearly labeled as "sponsored" content. Should a
| sudden spasm of inner dialog cause you to wonder whether the
| checks getting cashed have any influence on editorial decisions
| related to non-sponsored news you're expected to suppress that
| as much as possible and also keep it to yourself. Thanks!
| pydry wrote:
| It's definitely about more than just national security. BT was
| explicitly pressured to remove "dumb" components that were
| thoroughly vetted after they'd started removing smart
| components where surveillance risk was higher.
|
| At no point was any surveillance detected on any kit.
|
| Removing it _all_ (as opposed to just the "smart" kit) is
| extremely costly and if security was the real concern, not
| worth it.
|
| They did bug the african congress but they were invited to set
| _everything_ up in that building and nobody paid attention to
| anything they installed.
|
| I suspect it's an attempt to wage "economic" warfare. Under WTO
| rules national security is a virtual get out of jail free card
| for protectionism. Huawei had just recently proven that China
| can overtake western technological capabilities in a key
| industry. _That 's_ the point when America flinched.
|
| It also explains why they bullied _all_ their allies into
| taking out _all_ the tech _all_ at the same time after years of
| seeminglh not being concerned about their own networks (let
| alone their allies) and without any evidence of a breach or
| anything.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I personally feel it is a pro-rated cost. I completely
| understand in China doesn't want to add US technology to
| their critical infrastructure and I hope China understands
| the practicality of it. It's a one time sunk cost, we would
| have to do it at some point. We aren't waging economic
| warfare as this is a tiny amount of trade that happens
| between the USA and China, if your theory was correct we
| would be doing it in all industries.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| Surveillance not detected != it's not happening or not going
| to happen.
| bkandel wrote:
| I'm not following here. If they bug high-stakes customers
| when given freedom to operate, why should any country trust
| anything they build to operate as described? "We'll behave as
| long as you're looking over our shoulder" doesn't inspire
| confidence.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I mean the phone company bugged my neighbor's house but he
| let them set up his router so I guess that's fine.
| pydry wrote:
| It's not really a question of trust though is it? Did you
| really think we blindly trusted every piece of kit they
| sold us until the US government kicked up a stink?
|
| It's a question of eye watering costs of ripping out ALL of
| the very expensive hardware vs. simply vetting it & ripping
| out some of the more complex stuff that cant be vetted.
|
| Nope. Scorched earth.
|
| I have no doubt that they would have _already_ bugged the
| west if they thought we wouldnt catch them in the act.
|
| Which we likely would have.
|
| Hence, probably economic, not national security (unless its
| about america wanting to install its own bugs in which case
| lord help us).
| larrik wrote:
| Can you even vet it, really? All you need is one chip
| with secret logic inside it, in just a handful of boards,
| and you are hosed. You'd have to physically inspect every
| single board, in every single piece of equipment, and
| even then that's not 100%. Often these devices look
| completely different inside from lot to lot, due to the
| way component sourcing works.
|
| I think ripping them out is likely _much_ cheaper.
| pydry wrote:
| If it's in the core, to a certain level of confidence,
| but it's arguably worth ripping it out because of how
| hard it is to have enough confidence.
|
| likewise anything that can address anything else on a
| network.
|
| If it's, say, a radio antenna? yeah, you can.
|
| The core was the cheapest and easiest thing to replace.
| It's the rest - the stuff it would be implausibly
| difficult to hack while we are watching which is
| eyewateringly expensive to rip out.
| roody15 wrote:
| I think you are correct here that this is a more a economic
| move than national security. The truth is Huawei networks
| switches and routers are equal to if not are better than
| equivalent Cisco devices. Cisco just cannot compete at this
| price point IMO.
| kube-system wrote:
| That national security concerns about Huawei equipment has
| nothing to do with the quality of the equipment. The issue
| is whether the vendor can be trusted in hypothetical
| scenarios in the future.
|
| If the US implements all Huawei equipment, and China
| sanctions the US from receiving support/updates/parts from
| Huawei (or worse, go to war and use it as a weapon), then
| the US telecommunication infrastructure is at risk.
| uap wrote:
| So if it is true that this is economics not security, what
| was offered or threatened to coordinate action across all
| the countries sending Huawei away?
|
| Mass population is moved by fear, but is that how
| concordance is manufactured across the executives of a set
| of countries: a few terrifying top-secret presentations,
| and IC has successfully reputation-assassinated a foreign
| company? Why would these countries agree if there was no
| breach and a cheaper price? What offer or threat besides a
| more expensive but more secure infra? I suppose if you view
| telcoinfra as defense assets then it's a no-brainer, but
| was this the calculus? Blackmail/Mafioso-tactics would be a
| good one, maybe: You have to buy from us, or we will
| reveal/do such-and-such horrible thing.
|
| But if it's true this is economic, not security, and also
| that Huawei has superior value for money, then is it not
| just these countries accelerating their already decaying
| infrastructure, for the sake of pride?
|
| "The phones are down." "Yeah, whaddayagonnado? At _least_
| we 're not paying the Chinese to make them work."
|
| Replace phones with other critical things China makes
| better for a better price, and the future of these
| countries may look like the past of the former-Soviet ones:
| a whole bunch of weird anachronistic tech resulting from an
| (in this case self-imposed) embargo. But at least it will
| be 100% built by subjects of approved countries. I suppose
| that is _one_ strategy to fight back against the dominance
| of Chinese industry: just outlaw it.
|
| The hilarious thing is, probably all these "approved
| suppliers" will have to purchase significant inventory from
| what is essentially Huawei's supply chain anyway. Seems
| much more like the tail wagging the dog, with corporate
| dishonesty dictating so-called natsec policy. Could it
| really be so twisted?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Mass population is moved by fear, but is that how
| concordance is manufactured across the executives of a
| set of countries: a few terrifying top-secret
| presentations, and IC has successfully reputation-
| assassinated a foreign company? Why would these countries
| agree if there was no breach and a cheaper price? What
| offer or threat besides a more expensive but more secure
| infra? I suppose if you view telcoinfra as defense assets
| then it's a no-brainer, but was this the calculus?
| Blackmail/Mafioso-tactics would be a good one, maybe: You
| have to buy from us, or we will reveal/do such-and-such
| horrible thing.
|
| Governments don't operate exclusively through sticks. The
| US has plenty of carrots to give out.
| dirtyid wrote:
| > coordinate action across all the countries sending
| Huawei away?
|
| It should be noted that up until early 2020, US campaign
| against Huawei had spanned 10+ years long, and only
| secured a few committments to ban Huawei, not even all of
| FVEYS. It was a spectacular failure. It wasn't until
| successive US sanctions against Huawei access to
| semiconductors that countries relented, not due to
| security concerns but Huawei's ability to supply hardware
| long term due to sanctions.
| tcbawo wrote:
| I have first hand knowledge of IP theft by Huawei dating
| back more than 15 years. It's not surprising they can
| outclass competitors on price over the long term. Perhaps
| this behavior should not be rewarded?
| newsclues wrote:
| Nortel?
| mountainb wrote:
| We don't have jurisdiction over China. There is no such
| thing as IP theft across state lines without both states
| agreeing to recognize it as such. Even among countries
| that do recognize it, it's an insane kludge of treaty and
| the independent operation of fundamentally incompatible
| legal systems which can only reach within states
| themselves and tend to bump into serious obstacles
| whenever they try to reach across state lines.
|
| Most major corporations deal with this by just
| registering IP in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously
| and litigating internationally, which can also be done in
| China just as you would do it in France or the UK.
| Redundancy is easier to manage than cross-border
| cooperation with foreign court orders.
| jaywalk wrote:
| >There is no such thing as IP theft across state lines
|
| That may be true in the strictest legal sense when a
| Chinese company is the one doing the stealing from a
| Western corporation. But in reality, that's so laughably
| incorrect that it makes me question why you said it.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Exactly. And to put it in clearer terms, they have been
| continuously hacking into Western companies for 20 years
| and stealing design schematics and counterfeiting them.
| I'm sure you'd be cool with a Chinese APT rooting your
| servers and stealing all that you have in your company?
| tata71 wrote:
| > Huawei had just recently proven that China can overtake
| western technological capabilities in a key industry. That's
| the point when America flinched.
|
| Here I was thinking it was because Tony Podesta et al were
| involved with keeping them clean in the first place!
| optimiz3 wrote:
| > At no point was any surveillance detected on any kit.
|
| All it takes is one firmware update.
| pydry wrote:
| Huawei couldn't push updates remotely and firmware updates
| were vetted.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| As of March 2019 [1] this vetting was not going very well
| in the UK. Only one piece of Huawei firmware was even
| able to achieve "binary equivalence" where the agency
| could determine that verified source was actually the
| source for specific firmware running on the device.
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/huawei-
| cybersecurity-...
| bobbybabylon wrote:
| One of the things I have never seen, is an original source
| that details the type of attack that was done on the African
| National Congress HQ in Ethiopia. The only original source I
| have ever seen is a short piece from (of course) Le Monde. I
| have never seen a CVE, much less writeup of the attack.
|
| We hear that the device was sending uploads to China in the
| middle of the night. But what type of uploads? And was it
| firmware based, or OS based? That whole Hussein(-Addis affair
| just seems very suspect to me.
| pydry wrote:
| As I understood it China/Huawei offered to wire up the
| entire place for free and no other contractor was used.
|
| There are 1000 different ways they could have done it.
|
| I too would be interested in hearing more though.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Free stuff tends to end up rather expensive eventually...
|
| Free software might be an exception, but free hardware
| equipment really sounds suspicious.
| mtnGoat wrote:
| why would firmware or OS be UPloading? os and firmware
| updates come down. no need for a device to be pushing
| anything at all upstream, IMO.
| bobbybabylon wrote:
| I meant a firmware or OS vulnerability. It was claimed
| that the hack (whatever it was) was send info to China in
| the middle of the night.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Dumb components can still be backdoored.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > At no point was any surveillance detected on any kit.
|
| That's not proof of absence...
|
| > I suspect it's an attempt to wage "economic" warfare. Under
| WTO rules national security is a virtual get out of jail free
| card for protectionism. Huawei had just recently proven that
| China can overtake western technological capabilities in a
| key industry. That's the point when America flinched.
|
| That _is_ a legitimate national security concern.
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| I thought the point when America "flinched" was after
| Australia's intelligence agencies raised concerns that
| reached the US government.
| Natsu wrote:
| > BT was explicitly pressured to remove "dumb" components
| that were thoroughly vetted after they'd started removing
| smart components where surveillance risk was higher.
|
| You say that as if there haven't been clever spy techniques
| using crazy things that took ages to detect:
|
| https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/584493/soviet-spies-
| bugg...
| jcun4128 wrote:
| That was a cool read/also wiki on it. No battery
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think it speaks to the lobbying effort and quality of PR
| retained by Huawei.
|
| Speaking of which, Huawei ads have been all over the NYT app
| for the last week or so.
| sithadmin wrote:
| >There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei
|
| Backdoors? Being caught red handed doing espionage? Cozying up
| to bad actors like North Korea and Iran?
| blitzar wrote:
| > Backdoors? Being caught red handed doing espionage? Cozying
| up to bad actors like North Korea and Iran?
|
| Are we talking about Huawei here or any number of US
| companies?
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > Cozying up to bad actors like North Korea and Iran?
|
| You'll probably feel a need to shit on a flag when you
| realise that an allied Swiss company (ABB) sold North Korea a
| two nuclear power plants when Rumsfeld was on the board of
| directors.
|
| https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/rumsfeld-was-on-abb-board-
| durin...
| sofixa wrote:
| What backdoors? Didn't the UK audit telecoms and networking
| equipment and say that they have shoddy security in some
| places ( like having telnet) but aren't worse than the shoddy
| security in "good" vendors like Cisco and Juniper.
| michaelt wrote:
| No audit is guaranteed to find a backdoor if one is
| present.
|
| It simply isn't possible - any more than you could get an
| audit guaranteeing the Linux kernel is bug-free.
| sofixa wrote:
| But if nobody has found any backdoors, including with an
| audit by a security agency, how can OP use "backdoors" as
| an argument against Huawei?
| cute_boi wrote:
| In the realm of no experts, everybody is expert.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Maybe because the US vs. Huawei war has had a noticeable impact
| on laypeople.
|
| I can understand why they remove network equipment and have no
| problem with that, but as a happy Huawei smartphone user from a
| non-US country, I'm still pissed that I need to change to
| another brand (and I don't see anything on the market that is
| as attractive, by far) because a foreign government decided to
| cripple this one.
|
| I know, in theory I could go without Google, no one is banning
| Huawei from selling their phones to me. In practice, that's not
| feasible when e.g. your everyday banking apps rely on Google
| services. For all intents and purposes, a foreign government
| has banned me from using the phones I like. Imagine how many
| Americans would feel if new iPhones stopped being useful due to
| some foreign political offensive. This is similar (Huawei was
| the top-selling phone brand in my country). Thus, many people
| are interested in this kind of news about Huawei, even if they
| don't understand what network hardware is.
| rchaud wrote:
| As a consumer, the tech war made me realize how the
| availability of my daily digital infrastructure relies on the
| whims of largely unaccountable corporations and governments.
|
| I know what you mean about bank apps working only on unrooted
| Android devices and only with Google Play Services. It's an
| OS- and device specific restriction, because the desktop
| website does not have these limitations (besides 2FA, which
| is understandable).
|
| The solution for me was to wait until I have my laptop on me
| to do banking. But I understand that not everyone will have
| this ability due to the nature of their business or workflow.
| chubot wrote:
| Sure but what changed between the time the equipment was
| purchased and installed and now? It's not like the idea of
| malicious hardware is new. There was probably specific
| information about a credible or actual threat.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > I fail to understand why the press in western countries gives
| this story so much air time. It's a regular fixture in the
| Canadian, UK and NZ press as well. I think it speaks to the
| lobbying effort and quality of PR retained by Huawei.
|
| I think it's the opposite. Without all of the anti-Chinese
| bluster, this would be seen as a simple government giveaway to
| privately-owned telecoms and domestic telecom equipment
| manufacturers. These press releases are being written by their
| lobbyists, not Huawei.
| throwawaygal7 wrote:
| there are for sure plenty of pro Huawei apologists on the
| internet. It would be absurd to let a foreign power control
| critical telecom infrastructure, for that reason alone the
| decisions to ban and replace foreign gear is merited.
|
| This isn't 'anti-chinese bluster' it's just critical
| thinking.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I'm Canadian.
|
| The reason the press focusses on it so much is that it is, thus
| far, the only real step that the west is taking against Chinese
| hegemony. It's expensive and it's real. The rest of Cold War
| 2.0 hasn't really started yet. A couple of Mikes, a couple of
| tariffs, sure, but realistically if we really snap into a true
| standoff with China it's going to absolutely devastate the
| world's total economic output and stability.
| literallyaduck wrote:
| It is now a question of the lesser of two evils between world
| destabilization or surrender to the dominant Chinese.
|
| We should not expect tender mercy after surrender to the
| Chinese overlords, based on past behavior.
|
| The question then is will we still fight with the possibility
| of a world extinction as a probable outcome of an eventual
| armed conflict.
|
| Live as a fief of China, with the possibility of genocide, or
| fight with the possibility of world destruction. Peace may
| never be achieved as long as one country seeks to dominate.
| twofornone wrote:
| >The rest of Cold War 2.0 hasn't really started yet
|
| I suspect it has been raging for some time now, online, by
| bots and so called shills in the form of information warfare.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's been going for well over a decade, and it's
| intensifying.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| When I say "hasn't really started yet" I really mean it.
| China gutted Nortel here in Canada, and they've been
| hacking and ripping off IP wherever they can, but
| realistically this is nothing close to the scale of the
| Cold War. They've been biding their time and playing down
| their capabilities. Holding relatively small numbers of
| nuclear weapons and largely focussing on building soft
| power through investment ala belt and road over real
| power projection that the Soviets or Nato have done.
| That's starting to change, but it's not a real Cold War
| until the business class gets nervous going over the
| boarder and right now they're still piling into China.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| China has hundreds of EV car startups and it appears that
| they are reaching the capability of making half decent
| cars. When these cars enter places like the US market,
| they are going to decimate the competition. We should
| probably expect an invasion of Chinese cars in the next
| few years.
|
| For example:
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_e2
|
| This car looks like a decent entry level car, 190-250
| Miles. starting at around ~16k. Even if it sells for 25k
| in the US, it seems like good value.
| Goety wrote:
| Yup. Weird connections with Tesla.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| NEDC range is about 80% of EPA range, so that would
| probably be ~150-200 miles of range if it sold in the US.
|
| $16k is great though. The base Nissan Leaf is $27k for
| 150 miles. At the same time, I'm not sure how much
| importing it would raise that. If, like you said, it
| sells for $25k in the US, that's a decent value if it's
| other features are comparable to a base Leaf, but I don't
| think it would decimate the competition.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > When these cars enter places like the US market, they
| are going to decimate the competition.
|
| Surely they will then become national security threats?
| ge96 wrote:
| Wonder if they had autopiloting built into them, could
| control them across the ocean.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The 1980s wasn't called the "Cold War era" because Japan
| suddenly gave us nice cars. The USA welcomes economic
| competition with foreign rivals. May the best car win.
|
| The issue is that China is beginning to aggressively take
| out interest in Democracies in their sphere: first Hong
| Kong, and everyone knows that Taiwan is in their
| crosshairs now.
|
| We didn't (and wouldn't) go to war over Hong Kong. Taiwan
| however... that's different and is truly a serious
| threat.
|
| ---------
|
| If anything: additional trade and cultural exchanges are
| needed to foster a spirit of competition / cooperation
| even in the face of our nuclear weapons being trained
| upon each other. We don't really know if the Moscow
| Circus prevented a US / Soviet nuclear exchange... but
| maybe it did??
| nebula8804 wrote:
| EVs may be a winner take all market in the sense that
| there is a lot of software and tech that the incumbents
| (except Tesla) are traditionally bad at. If the market
| expects this it may take a long time for incumbents to
| catch up. We might see bankruptcies and consolidation.
| Auto manufacturing is the final large manufacturing
| industry left in the US and it going away will hurt the
| country dearly.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > China gutted Nortel here in Canada
|
| Didn't Nortel go under because of accounting fraud?
|
| Huawei only started releasing competing products years
| after Nortel went bankrupt.
| dv_dt wrote:
| The odd part is removing equipment after the fact is the most
| expensive way to reduce the risk. If one were serious about
| it governments should be reintroducing industrial investment
| policies encouraging investments over longer then 1-3yr time
| spans.
| creaturemachine wrote:
| Same here, and I wonder if the abduction of the two Mikes and
| the totally-unrelated Meng affair had the same impact on
| Americans as it did for us.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the two Mikes? I'm somehow entirely
| unfamiliar with what you're referring to.
| [deleted]
| tempest_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor
| _an...
| secondaryacct wrote:
| I'm Chinese and writing from a Huawei phone, and the Meng
| affair is frankly ridiculous: kidnapping those two guys,
| probably "sort of spies" and not just random teenage
| students you'll agree pretending this had nothing to do
| with Meng then freeing them up immediately after was
| impressive both in boldness and stupidity - we could maybe
| have the strength to own up rather than act like weasels
| non stop.
|
| That said, helping Iran shouldn't be a crime until they
| actually pose a tangible threat, and at my little level, I
| think the US is being way too strict on them, and I dont
| dislike Huawei trying to help them... as long as we're able
| to control the risk and focus them rather than have it blow
| up in our face "US in Afghanistan"-style.
| umanwizard wrote:
| It had zero impact on the vast majority of Americans.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > the abduction of the two Mikes
|
| What's incredible is how submissive Trudeau was.
|
| The charges were completely made-up yet he couldn't secure
| their release for three years. That's weak.
| [deleted]
| analyst74 wrote:
| He was stuck between the rock and a hard place.
|
| It's like your daddy wants you to take the neighbourhood
| bully's toy, so you stole his toy, and now the bully came
| and took two of yours. What are you supposed to do?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > He was stuck between the rock and a hard place.
|
| Yeah, leading a country is harder than teaching drama to
| teenagers... Who could have anticipated that!
| throwaway21_ wrote:
| That's interesting - talking about Chinese hegemony and
| ignoring 750 US bases worldwide and all the misery they
| brought all around the world - South America, SE Asia, Middle
| East...
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Yes, and so what?? Find me a Western nation that would
| really take China over the USA. Do you really believe a
| world under a Chinese hegemony would be better?
| justicezyx wrote:
| The point is that we should get rid of hegemony and build
| a democratic international society. Not that letting
| someone replace USA...
|
| Of course Chinese hegemony is no better. Any hegemony is
| no better than another...
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| Yeah but that's realistically not an option that is on
| the table. A decent part of the American electorate is
| not interested in that because honestly it doesn't
| benefit us directly. The choices today for most countries
| are the same as it was in 1945, side with the US, side
| with the communist, or be "non aligned" and have your
| government/infrastructure undermined by intelligence from
| both sides.
| echlebek wrote:
| Whataboutism. Canada has little to fear from US hegemony
| and a lot to fear from Chinese hegemony, it's as simple as
| that.
| throwaway21_ wrote:
| Nobody cares what Canada fears or not.
|
| Simple fact is that there's no Chinese hegemony now and
| there won't be one in foreseeable future because there's
| existing hegemon that won't just give up.
|
| btw one man's whataboutism is another man's uncovering of
| hypocrisy.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > btw one man's whataboutism is another man's uncovering
| of hypocrisy.
|
| They didn't say anything about the USA hegemony being bad
| just that they didn't want a Chinese one. How is that
| hypocrisy?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > and ignoring 750 US bases worldwide and all the misery
| they brought all around the world
|
| The alternative being Russian (or rather, USSR) bases.
|
| Yeah, pretty sure citizens of the countries with bases
| would rather have the US as a partner rather than the
| alternative.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| > There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei.
|
| https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/the-huawei-dilemma-insecurit...
|
| > The findings to these lines of inquiry proved troubling to
| the Intelligence Committee. The probe examined Huawei's and
| ZTE's ties to the Chinese state, including support by the
| Chinese government and connections to the Communist Party of
| China, and their work done on behalf of the Chinese military
| and intelligence services. _For instance, Congressional
| investigators were concerned with the background of Mr. Ren,
| Huawei's founder, who had links to the 3PLA - China's signals
| intelligence division - and the Communist Party, such as
| serving as a member to the 12th National Congress. They did not
| find credible claims or evidence that the company was, in fact,
| an employee-owned and controlled enterprise or had an
| independent board of directors._
|
| > Instead, the Intelligence Committee found that the Chinese
| government and Communist Party exerted influence over and
| supported Huawei as a "national champion." For example, Huawei
| admitted that an internal Party Committee existing within the
| company, consistent with Chinese law, but refused to discuss or
| describe the role, membership, or impact of this group on
| corporate decision-making. Huawei's failure to provide further
| detailed information explaining how it is formally regulated,
| controlled, or otherwise managed by the Chinese government
| undermined, in the view of Congressional investigators, the
| company's repeated assertions that it is not inappropriately
| influenced by the Chinese government.
|
| > Huawei also refused to provide answers to direct questions
| about its financing and connections with Chinese state banks,
| nor did it provide internal documentation or auditable
| financial records to evaluate its claims that any financing
| arrangements comply with standard practice and international
| trade agreements. In support, Congressional investigators cited
| the earlier finding of the U.S.-China Economic and Security
| Review Commission that enterprises like Huawei rely on generous
| state-backed financing to make an investment project in a new
| market viable. To the detriment of U.S. competitors, financial
| subsidies from the Chinese government can enable its national
| champions to penetrate markets by offering products below the
| costs of production.
|
| > Additionally, the Intelligence Committee found that Huawei
| exhibited a "pattern of reckless disregard" for the
| intellectual property rights of U.S. companies. Congressional
| investigators cited Huawei's settlement in civil litigation
| with Cisco, in which Huawei agreed to remove certain products
| from the marketplace due to violations of Cisco's intellectual
| property rights. Whistleblowers - former employees of Huawei -
| also offered testimony that the company deliberately used the
| patented material of other firms. In the judgment of the
| Intelligence Committee, these issues with intellectual property
| rights raised broader concerns of Huawei's compliance with U.S.
| laws in general.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This can be summarized as "The Chinese Government Supports
| Huawei" + a lot of appeals to authority and claims of
| refusals to answer arbitrary questions that US companies
| certainly wouldn't answer if China asked.
|
| The US government supports Cisco, and its diplomats are used
| to sell Cisco products. The forced replacement of Huawei
| equipment _is an example of that._
|
| If China were doing diplomacy and passing legislation that
| made US products illegal internationally, it would be worse
| than any of the accusations made here against China.
|
| Only if you're already convinced that China and its people
| are evil, and that their winning an economic war against the
| US is a sign of the end times, will this reasoning convince
| you. China has triple the population of the US; it _should_
| be doing better.
| adamrezich wrote:
| one doesn't have to be convinced that someone is "evil" in
| order to not trust them.
|
| >This can be summarized as "The Chinese Government Supports
| Huawei" + a lot of appeals to authority and claims of
| refusals to answer arbitrary questions that US companies
| certainly wouldn't answer if China asked.
|
| how can you make this statement while ignoring the
| difference is basic relationship fundamentals between US
| corporations and the US government, and Chinese
| corporations and the Chinese government? the two are
| nowhere near equivalent.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| The Chinese people aren't evil. One can reasonably argue,
| however, that the CCP is. The greatest victim of the CCP
| has been and continues to be the Chinese people, who live
| in a dystopian surveillance state controlled by an
| authoritarian ruler who has fashioned himself as a new Mao
| and uses whatever tactics he deems appropriate to crush
| political threats, suppress dissent, and eliminate ethnic
| and religious minorities.
|
| I have been living in Asia and for the past several years
| have lived approximately 100 miles away from the Chinese
| shores in a free and democratic country that is in grave
| danger because a man who can't stand being compared to a
| cartoon character and his sycophants believe that it
| belongs to them.
|
| The US is not the land of saints, but to anyone who feels
| the urge to engage in whataboutism regarding China, I
| encourage you to read about the history of the CCP, what it
| has done and continues to do to the Chinese and Tibetan
| people, its ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs and what its
| goals are for the Indo-Pacific.
|
| > China has triple the population of the US; it should be
| doing better.
|
| Doing better by what metric? Look at China's GDP per
| capita. The country is desperately trying to escape the
| middle income trap and a lot of the growing tensions in the
| region are related to the fact that the real picture of
| what's happening in China is not as pretty as the one the
| CCP projects.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >Additionally, the Intelligence Committee found that Huawei
| exhibited a "pattern of reckless disregard" for the
| intellectual property rights of U.S. companies.
|
| Not just US companies. Huawei has stolen a ton of Nortel IP.
| This is largely the reason for their 5G tech edge[0]
|
| https://nationalpost.com/news/exclusive-did-huawei-bring-
| dow...
| scohesc wrote:
| It's really depressing to see such a wonderful Canadian
| owned company being completely dismantled and destroyed by
| foreign powers while everyone stood back and watched.
| whoknowswhat11 wrote:
| It's a combination of a couple of factors.
|
| 1) Huawei had a tech / competitive lead vis a vis western
| firms, so those firms have been pushing / lobbying / this
| narrative of distrust around Huawei.
|
| 2) Huawei has done itself NO favors by just ridiculous actions
| - I think not realizing they are trying to sell into a western
| market where some of these stunts don't come across so well. In
| China helping N. Korea not a big deal and makes sense, China
| doesn't want N Koreans flooding over border. But then I thought
| the claims that no assistance etc offered was silly, just say
| yes, for x reasons we helped y country with their telecom.
| theincredulousk wrote:
| The way the last administration rolled this out was certainly
| with a political narrative, but my guess is it originated with
| people that weren't thinking at all about politics.
|
| The simple story is that core infrastructure is of strategic
| national importance, and an elevated risk that infrastructure is
| compromised can never be worth whatever the benefits are of using
| a particular supplier's equipment. There is no practical way to
| 100% ensure that every piece of software, and every chip, in
| every piece of equipment is clean. Chips are especially scary
| (the push to have domestic chip fab by the US and other countries
| is about more than just supply chain).
|
| This is true when it comes from what are considered trustworthy
| suppliers as well, but you're dealing with probabilities. I think
| that regardless of whether this move fits into a political
| narrative about China, or "economic warfare", the practical basis
| is that for some types of equipment, the risk is just too large
| and the ability to mitigate too limited, in general.
|
| Unfortunately this was figured out with Huawei/ZTE after the
| fact, but tbh I don't think the specific company matters at all,
| it just happened to be they were in this business at the time &
| based in the wrong country.
| cvzu wrote:
| Not sure I trust US more than HW. But why not.
| EarthIsHome wrote:
| https://archive.md/F5FUk
|
| > All over the country, hardware from Huawei Technologies Co. and
| ZTE Corp. keeps American telecom networks humming. In the coming
| months, many of those networks are going to start ripping it all
| out.
|
| I'm curious how this is going to affect the end user. Are some
| users going to have slower speeds?
| fabianhjr wrote:
| Probably will only affect cost, the US already has high costs
| for fiber and cellular internet. (Cellular is about 3 USD/GB in
| the US vs less than 2 USD/GB in most of Europe and Asia
| according to https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-
| pricing/)
| pessimizer wrote:
| This is just a way for the government to subsidize telco
| equipment upgrades, using popular-with-voters nationalism and
| anti-Chinese racism as a pretext.
| adventured wrote:
| The US and China having a great power conflict - which will
| last for many decades, or longer - is not based on racism. The
| US conflicting with the USSR throughout the Cold War was also
| was not about racism.
|
| It would be exceptionally irrational for the US to utilize the
| telecom equipment of a quasi enemy nation that is all but
| guaranteed to be a future enemy. It doesn't matter whether
| anyone likes those terms or not, that's how the US Government
| is increasingly viewing China - and vice versa - and that's
| what is coming.
| PrinceRichard wrote:
| It's never a good sign when the government mandates the
| destruction (or abandonment) of usable goods.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Untrustworthy comms infra is not usable.
| nimbius wrote:
| This is less newsworthy when you find out the government
| basically gifted telco's 2bn USD to do this.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-details-1-9-billion-progra...
| deelowe wrote:
| I thought some form of reciprocity/incentivization was implied.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| If I could put on my conspiracy hat... Perhaps this is related to
| Canada's detention of he Huawei executive. Someone put their foot
| down and said Chinese hardware is spying on us, and perhaps they
| forced China to give up how.
|
| At it's core, the world absolutely cannot trust China. Because
| Huawei is a de facto company owned by the Chinese government, it
| stands to reason that the distrust must be extended to Huawei.
| The product may be good, but China has very little credibility
| anymore, and should absolutely not be trusted.
| Topgamer7 wrote:
| US "asks" Canada to detain prominent Corporate exec. China
| "convicts" Canadian spies. You're right that this is all
| related to global politics.
|
| Should you really trust a modern nation? All three nations I've
| mentioned prove that they spy on their own and each others
| citizens.
|
| Its been well established that encryption standards have been
| tampered with from the outset, all our modern CPU's exploitable
| microcode, if not backdoored.
|
| I don't even consider this a conspiracy, from a strictly
| technical perspective, if it's possible, its probably either
| been tried or fully implemented to exploit.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| But who do you trust more?
|
| I prefer a revolving door of elected leaders more than a
| false democracy. It's more the non-transient "state" that
| worries me how we get to elect our representatives, but many
| of their staff are in practice there across many terms
| influencing the direction of the country across their
| career[1].
|
| I prefer countries with a better track record on human rights
| and freedoms than the CPC.
|
| [1]: Edward snowden talks about this in his book Permanent
| Record
| gonational wrote:
| We should all be very worried that your comment is being
| downvoted here.
|
| I think this forum has been filled with millennial leftist
| ideologues, many of whom are Chinese communist party
| sympathizers, in part because they have attended occidental
| universities, many of which receive funding from the Chinese
| communist party. Many of these folks also partake in "main
| stream media" television programming, which is also funded, in
| part, by the Chinese communist party.
|
| The fact that you have to use the qualifying statement, "...put
| on my conspiracy theory hat...", in order to say something so
| axiomatic and glaringly obvious, is frightening itself.
|
| I sometimes wonder if these same people would be actively
| engaged in the voluntary censorship of a modern Paul Revere, on
| behalf of an invading Chinese army. Perhaps they already are,
| all over the place, and they just don't yet know.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't break the site guidelines like this. If you have
| evidence of abuse, you should email it to hn@ycombinator.com
| so we can investigate. In the meantime, please stick to this
| rule: " _Please don 't post insinuations about astroturfing,
| shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades
| discussion and is usually mistaken._" Groundless speculation
| about manipulation is basically the most common weed growing
| on internet forums, it nearly always turns out to be a
| function of cognitive bias (e.g. people see posts they don't
| like and conclude that their enemies have the run of the
| place), and it makes for tedious, low-quality discussion.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.
| ..
|
| There are many past explanations (some very in-depth) of why
| we moderate HN this way. Here are some:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 (<-- Mini-FAQ)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397695
| klarstrup wrote:
| What is an ideologue?
| gonational wrote:
| Somebody who is dogmatically following an ideology; think
| of an ideologue as somebody who is running an abstract
| program in place of their normal ability to think about
| information using the principles they have naturally
| acquired through their life experiences.
|
| Having ideas that map 1:1 to those of an ideology does not
| intrinsically make you an ideologue. Forming those ideas,
| based on conformity to an ideology that you have subscribed
| to, does.
| eyear wrote:
| Huawei has been accused for many years; yet I have not seen any
| concrete evidence presented by the accusers.
| kube-system wrote:
| Which accusation specifically do you think is not supported?
| pessimizer wrote:
| According to the person you're replying to, all of them,
| specifically. This means that you can choose any of them to
| defend.
| ergocoder wrote:
| Good luck finding a concrete evidence in a geopolitical issue
| between 2 global super powers.
|
| Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud.
| Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3.
|
| It is suboptimal but probably the best that it can be.
|
| Remember the Malaysian airline that was shot down? I remember.
| kipchak wrote:
| >Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out
| loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just
| incite WW3.
|
| Isn't this arguably what happened with the SuperMicro hack
| and the subsequent denials?
| [deleted]
| libpcap wrote:
| About time!
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