[HN Gopher] U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing nati...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. bans equipment from Huawei and ZTE, citing national security
concerns
Author : grej
Score : 198 points
Date : 2022-11-26 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.barrons.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.barrons.com)
| putlake wrote:
| Here's the inside story of how the ban was years in the making
| and all the effort it took. From someone in the government at the
| time the process started:
| https://twitter.com/JoshuaSteinman/status/159637064508835020...
| throwaway4good wrote:
| This is just appalling protectionism; is it really something
| that we tech people should cheer on?
| zenapollo wrote:
| This is silly pearl clutching, do you have any refutation of
| the arguments?
|
| I believe there is very credible reporting on ccp-sponsored
| hacking of industrial, military, government dbs, etc. Even if
| we don't have hard evidence of this type of hardware
| compromise, it seems to be wise to believe there are serious
| risks, and to take action until such risks are investigated.
|
| Despite all the expertise on HN, i would guess almost no one
| here has a clue what kinds of elite military spy tech are
| being tested/used.
|
| Further, the ccp has shown the world who they are - bad faith
| and anti-global-cooperation. Trust should be a two way
| street. I think we're foolish to do any business with them.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| As an US citizen "tech person", I absolutely cheer this on.
| dmix wrote:
| Not using it government/critical telecom makes sense but
| other but a general rule seems like a big overreach.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| The US campaign against Huawei and ZTE caused the 5G
| rollout in the west, including here in Europe, to be
| considerably delayed and much more expensive.
| chitowneats wrote:
| How expensive do you think it would be allowing an entity
| infamous for intellectual property theft, to have
| unfettered access to the teleco networks of the countries
| that they themselves say are their greatest enemies?
|
| Yes, imported Russian nat gas is way cheaper. Until it
| isn't.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| First I don't really think your premise is correct and
| second we are capable of keeping our networks secure even
| if a cable or a base station is made by a Chinese
| company.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Why do you think the premise is incorrect?
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I worked in tele for a couple of years; the reason Huawei
| and ZTE got ahead in 5G was that they invested heavily at
| time when Nokia and Ericsson were focused on cutting
| cost.
| klipklop wrote:
| This is not true at all. If anything they had to tighten
| their belts to compete with the price dumping Huawei and
| ZTE were engaging in.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| That was only half the premise, the other half was
|
| > unfettered access to the teleco networks of the
| countries that they themselves say are their greatest
| enemies?
|
| Regardless of how they got their tech, that premise is
| the reason for blocking them.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| As for the "unfettered access" stuff; a telco, or at
| least the one I worked at, doesn't really work like that.
| We buy products and engineering services from our
| suppliers but we run our own network, and if we did
| outsource operations, those engineers would sit on
| premise and the whole thing would be under our control.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| > the whole thing would be under our control.
|
| Pans to black. "The _whole_ thing was not under their
| control". Cue "aways sunny in Philadelphia" theme
| kube-system wrote:
| > we are capable of keeping our networks secure even if a
| cable or a base station is made by a Chinese company.
|
| Not if war breaks out. If that happens, maintenance and
| support channels will be weaponized and/or sanctioned.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I participated in technical due diligence for a purchase
| order of huawei tech back in 2011 (was lte back then).
| Their tech was good but there is no way in hell there
| isn't some kind of trick how cheap they were compared to
| the europeans (there were no americans at that point
| since motorola was kaput). Like it was basically free.
| There needs to be some kind of regulation when techniques
| like that are being played whether it's security or just
| economic concerns
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Isn't it obvious why it's so much cheaper? Their pricing
| for market share and cutting costs wherever they can in
| terms of labour conditions.
|
| I don't see how spending many billions on R&D to develop
| the most intricately hidden backdoors in human history
| (that no one has been able to offer proof for) and eating
| that cost to deploy them when it will all become
| worthless the moment the first one is detected, makes any
| sense at all.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| I've been to their headquarters in Shenzhen it certainly
| didn't look like much was being saved on r&d... I'd say
| much likely explanation is either aggressive government
| subsidy to price out competition with maybe some mix of
| wielding political blackmail later on (a la what US is
| doing with its chip restrictions rn)
| wankerrific wrote:
| These companies are famous for price dumping as well.
| This ban is a good thing
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Are europeans privacy measures just protectionnism too?
| chitowneats wrote:
| You're falling into the trap they've laid for us. They screw
| us with protectionism, then when we respond, they cheekily
| say, "You're violating your values! You can't do that!"
|
| Most Ukrainians don't want to kill Russians, but they were
| attacked. "Fight back" and "surrender" are the only two
| options.
| kube-system wrote:
| This is the best way I've seen this countered: https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suic...
| throwaway4good wrote:
| And maybe you are falling into the trap of black and white
| nationalism?
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Remember, it is okay to be intolerant of intolerance. To be
| tolerant, you need to have a threshold for not tolerating
| intolerance. Protectionism is a form of intolerance.
| bnjms wrote:
| Is it really protectionism when just matching the
| requirements of China?
|
| Of course it is but that doesn't mean it isn't the right
| call. Huawei & ZTE exist so Cisco doesn't have to be used in
| China. It seems this is a blanket ban for sale in all of the
| US which strikes me as excessive without knowing why they're
| a National security threat.
|
| I'd like more expectations of parity. Maybe real estate.
| paganel wrote:
| > in celebration of a great professional victory,
|
| At first I was intrigued about why did that guy call all this
| industrial protectionism act as something "professional",
| afterwards I saw that he is an active part of the industrial
| defence complex (he's a National Security Council staffer), so
| that started to make a little bit more sense.
|
| I'm wondering though for how long will the MIC ghouls continue
| to have the upper hand in this. There are huge opportunity
| costs to be paid by the side that goes all "Corn Law League" on
| something as fundamental to our age as grains were ~200 years
| ago, but, then again, when said pro-protectionism side also
| controls the media, which means no Cobden [1] to take it all
| down, the US could be in for the long-haul.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cobden
| nine_k wrote:
| Maybe this may help US manufacturers get better deals. But I
| see it as a side effect. The main effect is that we should
| not buy key communication equipment from _a country we cannot
| trust_. Its government can strongarm any of its business
| entities to comply with its orders, and these orders are not
| going to be friendly to the US.
|
| It's a bit like buying communication equipment from the USSR.
| Maybe the equipment is fine! But accepting even such a thing
| as the US national emblem from the USSR proved to be... a
| decision detrimental to security [1].
|
| [1]:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
| factsarelolz wrote:
| > The main effect is that we should not buy key
| communication equipment from a country we cannot trust.
|
| We should not buy _anything_ that is internet connected
| from a country we cannot trust.
| toss1 wrote:
| >We should not buy anything that is internet connected
| from a country we cannot trust.
|
| We should not buy anything that has non-dumb components
| from a country we cannot trust.
|
| We should not buy anything that is has high-performance
| materials that cannot be non-destructively tested from a
| country we cannot trust.
|
| Overall, we should not be buying ANYTHING AT ALL from a
| country we cannot trust, as literally any trade merely
| supports their working against our well-being.
|
| The grand experiment was done, and it failed miserably.
| We all thought that increased trade and information flow
| would bring free markets and democracy to the autocracies
| of the world. We could not have been more wrong -- all we
| did was further empower expansionist/imperialist regimes.
| Russia is now waging a genocidal hot war in Europe and
| China is more actively threatening Taiwan than at any
| time in at least decades, and putting Uighurs in
| concentration camps - all funded by our purchasing. It is
| past time to embargo them.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > It is past time to embargo them.
|
| Easier said than done when they are the dominant or at
| least major supplier of many strategic materials. It will
| take time to find economically viable alternative
| suppliers. Globalism is rapidly collapsing and China
| won't for long be able to remain a reliable trading
| partner even if they desperately wanted to be, so we
| ought to be urgently securing sufficient alternative
| suppliers anyway.
| Syme wrote:
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Still can't actually show any actual security issues though
| right?
| beebeepka wrote:
| Top dogs hate competition. Simple as that. I fucking hate how the
| US pushed them out of Europe due security concerns when we fuckin
| know for a fact the US is the worst offender when it comes to
| spying and sabotaging the competition.
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| usui wrote:
| Every article I've ever read that cites "national security
| concerns" never, ever explicitly goes into the exact,
| computational mechanism in which it is a security concern. It's
| always something like "Chinese company under Chinese government,
| therefore bad". Never anything concrete or substantive from a
| software engineer POV, such as what exactly is phoned-home, or
| what actual subversions are happening currently, only
| hypotheticals.
| jser wrote:
| Many examples, e.g.
| https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/31/16072786/amazon-blu-
| suspe.... "In November 2016, security firm Kryptowire detected
| pre-loaded remote surveillance software on BLU phones sold
| online through Amazon and Best Buy. In August 2017, Amazon
| pulled BLU Products from its website over security
| vulnerabilities that resulted in BLU consumer user data being
| covertly sent to China."
| thayne wrote:
| Imagine if other countries applied the same policy to US-
| based companies, because some US companies covertly sent data
| to the US.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Sounds awesome. Let's start right now. Google, Facebook and
| Amazon are probably the worst offenders.
|
| There is already some GDPR related pushback but it is not
| nearly enough.
| usui wrote:
| This.. doesn't answer my question still. Even if data goes to
| China, how that data is used, what it is, and by what
| mechanism is what determines whether it's a threat or not.
| Why do we continue to use boogiemen when it comes to
| explaining threats? Why don't we apply this kind of
| scaremongering to any data exfiltration to every shady
| company ever?
|
| Also in your specific reference:
|
| > "Now almost a year later, the devices are still behaving in
| the same exact way, with standard and basic data collection
| that pose no security or privacy risk. There has been
| absolutely no new behavior or change in any of our devices to
| trigger any concern. We expect Amazon to understand this, and
| quickly reinstate our devices for sale."
|
| So, clearly I'm not the only one who wants clear,
| explanatory, descriptive answers to these threat models.
| HNDV wrote:
| I find it interesting how democrats fell into a pit that I
| used to think was something only Trump and his ilk
| followed.
|
| The two parties really are the same at the core. One may
| pretend to be conservative and the other screech in woke
| language but they always converge on the parts that
| actually matter like geopolitics.
|
| When Trump duked it out against China, democrats pretended
| to be offended. Now, democrats are in power, and they're
| pushing even harder to ban China.
|
| The US is such a sham democracy.
|
| You will not hear anything from the brainwashed apart from
| "things coming from China are bad because it's China !111!"
| when in reality those bans exist because American companies
| simply are not competitive and are looking for America to
| become a captive market for American corpos. Can't have
| people selling phones almost-as-good-as-iPhones for less
| than iPhones.
| throwthere wrote:
| That's because you're reading the general news and not the
| primary sources.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Not quite. Here you can read more about the underlying reasons:
| https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:rm226yb7473/Huawei-ZT...
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The underlying reasons detailed in that report, again, are
| gripes about the corporate structure, transparency, and
| illegal practices. There are no current or past hardware or
| software threats detailed in that report. The "National
| Security Threat" posed by these companies is potential not
| actual. The justification to eliminate this potential is
| predicated on corporate shenanigans. The real threat they
| pose, in my opinion, is likely to U.S. corporation's stock
| price.
| andsoitis wrote:
| But that is what risk ("threat") is. It is something you
| assess _before_ something deleterious happens in order to
| decide whether or not to take it on.
|
| If you think of risk = impact * likelihood, it is quite
| rational to block them.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Would this help shape policy in some way or are you just
| curious as a technologist? I don't really need to know, as a
| long time infosec practitioner I have a fertile imagination for
| the shenanigans they could be up to.
| usui wrote:
| Of course it will help shape policy, AND I want to know, as a
| technologist! How can we know what standard to apply in our
| work when we don't know which standard has been broken?! As a
| fellow infosec practitioner who works at one of the world's
| biggest security companies, I don't want to leave it up to
| imagination, I want to know exactly what the wrongdoing is,
| because my job may depend on it in the future!
| bitexploder wrote:
| That is fair, but the threat model is pretty open too,
| right? In a few hours in a room we could come up with a
| pretty credible one I bet.
|
| * hardware * deep backdoors in radio chips
| * physical supply chain TM goes here * etc etc
|
| * software * we can audit and monitor
| this easier * etc
|
| There is a lot to read between the lines, but it is guess
| work based on supply chain advisories and high level
| behaviors of govt entities on both sides and our community
| is good at missing the forest for the trees on this
| speculative thinking. I think also there is the possibility
| of minimal actual wrong doing. It could just be entirely
| political. Ahh well, I guess I have seen enough of this
| over the years that I accept there is stuff we will never
| learn about.
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| kube-system wrote:
| Because it (mostly) isn't an engineering vulnerability -- it is
| a governance issue.
|
| It doesn't really matter how good your lock is, if you give the
| key to someone who is in a position to abuse that trust.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Original source: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-bans-
| authorizations-devices...
|
| This covers Dahua, which I believe is the supplier that underlies
| cheap security cams like Amcrest, which have been a common choice
| for people who want local-only non-cloud cams for a long time.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| Ouch, I own a few of these cameras. I chose Amcrest because
| they have a local US distributer who does all of the
| technical/warranty support. Interesting.
| javajosh wrote:
| Why ouch? If they are local-only the max mischief they might
| cause is relatively limited, right? Or do you suspect them of
| phoning home behind your back?
| kube-system wrote:
| I have a handful of 'local-only' chinese import cameras
| (although no Dahuas). They _all_ reach out to hard-coded IP
| addresses on the chinese mainland. (with no explanation
| why, nor a setting to turn it off) I put them on a
| dedicated VLAN without internet access for this reason.
| whiw wrote:
| google VLAN hopping
| kube-system wrote:
| I inspect the traffic. The devices I have don't speak
| 802.1Q at all.
| nazgulsenpai wrote:
| I haven't seen any unusual communication from any
| installed, but they're all firewalled and with WAN
| disallowed. The ouch was because I will have to find
| another vendor if they are no longer allowed to be sold in
| the US.
| bnjms wrote:
| Those companies are only disallowed from use in
| government.
| kube-system wrote:
| That was _previously_ the case. This[0] announcement is
| that these[1] devices from these[1] manufacturers will
| not receive FCC authorization for use in the US moving
| forward.
|
| 0: https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-bans-authorizations-
| devices...
|
| 1: https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist
| namkt wrote:
| At this point you can't trust any 'cloud' camera regardless
| of who makes it.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's not beyond the realm of possibility that in the event of a
| real war between China and the US that our Chinese-made
| smartphones and drone toys would suddenly not be trustworthy. The
| NATO IC's (and SV) software wizardry (like super clever driver
| weaknesses snuck into mainline linux) always gets trumped by a
| little this and that added to hardware (an extra component on the
| pcb or worse, a tiny corner of a chip image).
|
| To what extent do the industrial designers of consumer hardware
| take into account the threat of a last second modification of the
| design to suit the needs of the manufacturer? To what extent
| would such modifications be detectable by...anyone, ever? And
| what would it look like? The software version would be a bad
| network driver that examines all traffic for a specific
| triggering pattern that would take over the machine at first as
| uninvasively as possible, starting by modifying the kernel and
| the boot image (to stay activated). Establish contact with
| attacker and examine the user and their accounts. Some users are
| more valuable than others, having privileged positions in large
| companies, control or knowledge about important infrastructure,
| and so on. Or they may be celebrities or other people of note. Or
| they may be friends of those people. It would be useful to
| undermine everyone at once, but using a stochastic process that
| minimizes a torrent of data. Oh and it's probably better for
| china to maintain at least some of their C&C outside of China to
| make it less obvious who the actor is, and to maintain
| connectivity for longer. Ideally the adversary C&C would exist
| within the target country. In the USA you'd want a confusing
| relationship that is plausibly legitimate, and turn it into a
| free speech issue, slowing down the legal system, and so working
| to China's benefit. While the justice system tries to do it's
| job, you use the data you gather to build a very accurate and
| detailed picture of the nation's capabilities, all with names and
| leverage attached. Over a short period of time, say a few days,
| what havoc could such an entity do to our nation, if it could
| send messages as anyone to anyone and be undetectable as
| illegitimate?
|
| And we worry about DDOS botnets!
|
| (Note: if we had on-shore manufacturing it wouldn't solve the
| fundamental issue which is that humans can mass manufacture
| invisible machines that can't be inspected. These machines are so
| small they cannot be perceived, not even with the most powerful
| magnifying instruments[0].)
|
| Of course, all of this could be way off base. An equally valid
| (if more cynical) reason for sanctions like this is that
| regulatory capture and campaign generosity is finally paying off
| for someone.
|
| 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_microscope And the
| preparation methods required destroy the object under test, such
| as a chip image.
| macawfish wrote:
| Why are the stakes so high? Well, research "integrated
| communications and sensing" to find out. IEEE is pushing this
| paradigm shift. The radio hardware isn't just being used for
| communications between active devices anymore. It'll be useable
| for passive and biometric sensing applications, including but not
| limited to passive localization and identification of people
| without phones. Next generation wireless standards are being
| explicitly designed to facilitate this.
|
| That said, for some reason I doubt that hardware deployed in the
| 5 eyes nations won't also be used for surveillance purposes, just
| that the institutions controlling the systems will be different.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| > reason I doubt that hardware deployed in the 5 eyes nations
| won't also be used for surveillance purposes
|
| Well that makes sense. They didn't cite privacy concerns.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Could you elaborate on what exactly "integrated communications
| and sensing" is and why it's so important here. I tried to do
| some quick reading but I failed to find any good high level
| overview of what it is. Most of what I was able to find seemed
| like academic research papers around beam-forming.
| saurik wrote:
| The status from 3 years ago was already pretty scary.
|
| https://web.ece.ucsb.edu/~ymostofi/IdentificationThroughWall.
| ..
| bogomipz wrote:
| Wow, this is equally fascinating and frightening. Is it
| correct to say Cross-Modal-ID is an application of
| "integrated communications and sensing" technology then? Am
| I understanding relationship correctly?
| macawfish wrote:
| I'd say that's a good way of putting it, though the way I
| understand it is that "integrated sensing and
| communication" is an engineering approach intended to
| facilitate more applications like this and to push them
| to the theoretical limits. The main reason being to help
| communication and sensing applications coexist in the
| same spectrum.
| macawfish wrote:
| It's an approach to wireless engineering aiming to make it
| much easier for sensing and communications applications to
| use the same spectrum simultaneously. There are so many
| papers on the topic and some of them are more technical but a
| lot are focused on possible applications. The name "ISAC" is
| kind of an umbrella term to describe a bunch of different
| approaches both old and new.
|
| For the passive sensing applications you can mix and match
| these keywords in Google scholar:
|
| "Device free", "gait recognition", "passive", "localization",
| "identification", "activity recognition"
|
| For example: "device free localization" is a keyword for
| papers about tracking people who don't have phones. Another
| similar one would be "passive identification". You might also
| try "adversarial localization".
|
| See this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.11457
|
| And check this out: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=
| 1812720569488179637...
|
| Some of these papers are more than a decade old, and are
| written about standard WiFi hardware. So for researchers this
| kind of stuff is old news.
|
| WiFi radiation makes a great source of illumination for
| sensing applications.
| bagels wrote:
| Which standard? Where can we read about how these standards are
| designed to facilitate biometric sensing?
| rob-olmos wrote:
| I believe they're referring to 802.11bf "WLAN sensing"
| rightbyte wrote:
| > It'll be useable for passive and biometric sensing
| applications, including but not limited to passive localization
| and identification of people without phones.
|
| What? How? Why are all these tinfoil hat conspiracies turning
| into reality ... like your TV or alarm clock spying on you.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.04859.pdf
|
| 802.11bf is a thing. It doesn't seem completely out of the
| picture for such a technology to be abused once it is
| implemented.
| 2devnull wrote:
| In the future we won't see tanks driving over dissidents. Such
| barbarities gone, a safer more technocratic dystopia awaits.
| Smart cities. Chilling.
| grej wrote:
| https://archive.ph/zzMCh
| seaourfreed wrote:
| Finally
| 71a54xd wrote:
| That took long enough! Glad we're finally looking out for
| national security interests, even if it was partially
| incentivized by economic protectionist ideas - it's naive to
| think China hasn't done the same to other foreign tech companies.
| baybal2 wrote:
| ausudhz wrote:
| Ericsson and Nokia sell their 5G technology in China.
|
| Actually funny enough they were siding China too on this in
| Europe because a ban of Chinese tech in Europe could've
| resulted in a ban of European tech in China.
|
| and for anyone that doesn't live under a rock, they know pretty
| well that china is far a bigger market than Europe
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Unfortunately, the free countries where they live facilitate
| their business... Too bad they can't sell to a country that
| enslaves ethnic minorities anymore :(
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Ericsson essentially lost its 2nd largest market because of
| Sweden's decision to ban Huawei.
|
| From [0]:
|
| > Swedish telecommunication equipment maker Ericsson plans to
| restructure its operations in China, its second-largest
| market, after its sales in the country plunged for a second
| consecutive quarter in the wake of its home government's move
| to exclude Huawei Technologies and ZTE from 5G mobile
| networks.
|
| > Ericsson recorded a 74% drop in revenues from China, to 1.3
| billion Swedish krona ($150.3 million), in the July-September
| quarter compared with a year earlier. This followed a 63%
| drop, to 1.5 billion krona, in China revenues in the second
| quarter when the company wrote off 300 million krona worth of
| Chinese inventories.
|
| 0. https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Telecommunication/Ericsso
| n-...
| NKosmatos wrote:
| This might be true, but Ericsson currently has the biggest
| 5G market share, has more operators onboard and is doing
| fine even without the Chinese market. For sure it was a big
| blow, but that's the way thing go if politics come into
| play.
|
| I don't know what US people really feel about all these
| Chinese companies, but I for once don't trust their
| software/hardware. This doesn't mean that equipment from
| Ericsson or Nokia Siemens don't have "backdoors", but at
| least they're clearly communicated with other governments.
| That's the good thing if your company is neutral and sells
| to everyone. Chinese want to sell to everyone but they want
| the "backdoors" only for themselves ;-)
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| "National security" has been increasingly been used over the last
| 5 years as a justification for measures that are actually much
| more broadly geopolitical in nature.
|
| A private individual using a Huawei phone or router isn't a
| national security threat to the US.
|
| However, in a broader sense, the US government sees the
| technological development of China as a threat to American
| strategic dominance, and has been taking ever more drastic
| measures to try to hobble the Chinese tech sector. The campaign
| against Huawei, which began a few years ago, was the opening
| shot. Blacklisting various Chinese semiconductor companies (which
| does not only prevent American companies from doing business with
| them, but which also threatens companies around the world with
| secondary sanctions if they do business with the targeted
| companies) was a further escalation. This was also justified as a
| "national security" measure, with the claim that these companies
| do business with the Chinese military (these claims were not
| publicly backed up by evidence, of course). Biden dramatically
| escalated the "tech war" recently with even broader sanctions
| against much of the Chinese high-tech sector.
|
| The "national security" justification has become so broad that
| virtually any business with China is now being construed as a
| national security threat. Americans should consider if they
| really want to turn their relationship with the world's largest
| economy into one that is purely hostile.
| galdosdi wrote:
| > "National security" has been increasingly been used over the
| last 5 years as a justification for measures that are actually
| much more broadly geopolitical in nature.
|
| That's what national security IS, dude.
| genmud wrote:
| Consumer devices with sufficient adoption are most definitely a
| national security threat.
|
| Let's for a moment imagine Iran (instead of china) has a
| significant amount of the low end consumer cameras sold in the
| US. Imagine they push propaganda, or build in a back door to
| control them.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| The US will just keep increasing bans and sanctions as the
| Chinese stategy seem to be not to respond in kind, but instead
| build capacity to become independent of US-controlled
| technology, something that might take a decade.
| lordfrito wrote:
| > Americans should consider if they really want to turn their
| relationship with the world's largest economy into one that is
| purely hostile.
|
| The relationship is far from "purely hostile". We're giant
| trading partners. The relationship is mutually beneficial.
|
| As was said here, our restrictions on Chinese companies are
| nothing compared to their restrictions on ours. And they've
| built their economy using so much stolen IP that's it's hard to
| believe this wasn't CCP policy coming from the top. [1] [2]
|
| It's also not hard to imagine CCP hackers using homegrown
| telecommunications equipment as part of this IP "procurement"
| process. Personally I think a move like this is long overdue.
| As has been said here, what's wrong with deciding who your
| friends are and aren't? We're trading partners, that doesn't
| necessarily make us allies. Yes this is geopolitical, and if
| geopolitical issues aren't issues of national security, I don't
| know what is.
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/1-in-5-companies-say-
| china-s... [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectual_pr...
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > As was said here, our restrictions on Chinese companies are
| nothing compared to their restrictions on ours.
|
| This is something that is widely believed in the US, but
| which is not actually true.
|
| American companies have very large market shares in many
| sectors of the Chinese economy. Chinese companies are not
| active in the US market on any comparable level.
|
| China used to have many more restrictions on market entry,
| but that was during a time in which investment was almost
| entirely in one direction (into China). Those restrictions
| were meant to prevent foreign companies from completely
| supplanting Chinese companies, which were technologically far
| behind and incapable of competing with foreign giants like
| Volkswagen.
|
| The deal was that foreign companies got to exploit cheap
| labor in China and gain a dominant position in China's
| growing market, and in exchange, they took on local joint-
| venture partners, to which they transferred some amount of
| technology. As China has developed, those restrictions have
| been dropped from most sectors.
|
| > As has been said here, what's wrong with deciding who your
| friends are and aren't?
|
| There's a very big difference between not "being friends" and
| implementing broad sanctions intended to bankrupt another
| country's entire high-tech sector. The US is attempting to
| prevent any company anywhere in the world from doing business
| with any major Chinese tech company. This is really an
| unprecedented level of economic warfare, at least in the last
| several decades. I don't think many Americans are aware of
| how far their government has gone here.
| galdosdi wrote:
| What happens if I search for "Tiannanmen Square" on
| google.com while I'm inside the PRC territory, then?
|
| Oh, nothing comes up?
|
| Why?
| lordfrito wrote:
| I agree, the sanctions aren't helping the Chinese tech
| economy. And I also agree that economic warfare has
| escalated recently. Battle lines have been being drawn for
| the last decade or so, and now pieces are moving around on
| the chess board (not just US and China, Russia Ukraine etc)
|
| As to how much beyond "not being friends" this is, I'm not
| sure that protecting the Chinese tech sector is anyone's
| responsibility but China's. As you said, this is
| geopolitics. It's not like China is looking out for US or
| EU or anyone else's interests. Widescale IP theft certainly
| isn't helping the US tech economy. If US and China were
| allies I'm sure more would be done to find a mutually
| agreeable solution, but it's pretty clear at this point
| that US and Chinese geopolitical interests are not aligned.
|
| Having it's IP stolen is the US's problem to solve. They're
| solving it in part by refusing (at a state level) to do
| business with parts of the Chinese tech sector. Considering
| how long its taken the US to respond, it's clear to me time
| was being taken to solve this diplomatically, and that
| patience has run out. It's not like the CCP hasn't had time
| to change their bad behavior and reach a compromise
| solution.
|
| Having something stolen is a problem for the victim. But
| the victims response may be a problem for the thief. This
| is simply a long overdue consequence for systemic bad
| behavior.
|
| This situation is regrettable for both parties. But
| resorting to "US bad" and "China victim" here is a gross
| simplification of the situation.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| > This situation is regrettable for both parties. But
| resorting to "US bad" and "China victim" here is a gross
| simplification of the situation.
|
| It's clear which side is the aggressor here. The Chinese
| government doesn't want a tech war or a trade war,
| because every year that China can stably develop its
| economy plays in its favor. The US sees the same
| situation in exactly the opposite way: every year that
| China develops economically lessens American dominance.
|
| > Widescale IP theft certainly isn't helping the US tech
| economy.
|
| You're vastly overstating the importance of IP theft.
| This is a minor annoyance in the US-China relationship
| now. China used to have weak IP protections, like most
| developing countries, but now it has much stricter IP
| enforcement. If this were just a question of reducing IP
| theft, China and the US would have little difficulty
| negotiating a deal. The issue is much deeper: American
| anxiety about being displaced as the world's top power.
| googlryas wrote:
| Why would this be considered souring the relationship, when it
| is child's play compared to the restrictions put on Americans
| selling in China?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Apple is the #1 smartphone brand in China.
|
| American companies are much more active in the Chinese market
| than vice-versa. If China starts reacting in kind, a lot of
| American companies will be in for a world of hurt.
| loandbehold wrote:
| Manufactured in China, with forced technology transfer.
| Animatronio wrote:
| Who forced Apple to enter China? Didn't they know the
| situation beforehand?
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| _Assembled_ in China, by a Taiwanese company, mostly
| using imported chips, with most of the profit going to
| Apple.
|
| And there's no forced technology transfer (who would they
| transfer it to - the Taiwanese company Foxconn?).
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Chinese government takes a much stronger involvement in their
| companies than the US government. Do you know the chaos that
| would ensue if every Huawei router injected 100+V into the LAN
| cables connected to it at a fixed time? What if the phones all
| caught fire at the same time as well, and all the 5G modems
| jammed everything from GPS to WiFi bands, including aircraft
| communication, sattelite comms etc. This could easily bring a
| country to it's knees for a week, never mind the time spent
| cleaning up and purging the mess. Compare that, and the US's
| still ongoing reaction, to just _two buildings_ in NYC being
| destroyed over 20 years ago.
| Normille wrote:
| Frankly, I don't really give toss if the US decides not to
| trade with X, Y and Z. That's the US's business. What boils my
| piss is the certain knowledge that their lickspittle acolytes
| in EU, UK and AUS will dutifully follow suit.
|
| Living in a snivelling vassal state is so embarrassing. The
| more so when Brexit voting fuckwitts bleat about 'taking back
| control'.
| yumraj wrote:
| Shouldn't it ban these companies from having US offices too?
|
| And, while they are at it, can TikTok be added to the list as
| well.
| kube-system wrote:
| No, the FCC does not regulate real estate.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Reminder of how this started... when Huawei and ZTE decided that
| because they weren't American companies, they didnt need to
| answer questions from Congress, and even outright lied about the
| structure of their companies to conceal CPC/government
| involvement:
|
| https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:rm226yb7473/Huawei-ZT...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That obviously wasn't a very good move from Huawei and ZTE but
| it's disingenuous to claim this is what caused the current
| situation. It simply handed the US government a convenient
| stick when they really wanted one, and they would therefore
| have found one in any case.
|
| There is a global geopolitical struggle between the US and
| China, and the US see China as an increasingly serious threat
| to their 'leadership'. That really is the bottom line.
| [deleted]
| sschueller wrote:
| Sounds like what Twitter will be facing in the EU but for quite
| different reasons. No one left to deal with the regulators.
| huntertwo wrote:
| Doesn't everybody have the right to not answer questions?
| Americans don't have to do this either
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Many people have faced serious legal consequences for not
| answering questions from Congress, for example related to
| Jan. 6 riot. You do have the right to avoid testifying
| against yourself, so often Congress has to grant immunity
| from prosecution, in order to remove this legally justifiable
| excuse for not answering questions. I remember in the
| Iran/contra scandal, Congress was asked not to do this so
| that some of the people involved could be prosecuted, but
| chose to proceed for various reasons best known to
| themselves.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| When called before congress? That's not accurate, beyond you
| don't have to, but then pay the price - much like these
| companies have.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| That's correct, they certainly have the right to not answer
| questions...and the US government has the right to interpret
| that lack of cooperation any way it chooses, and, say, ban
| their products.
| k_paleologos wrote:
| What government can do is limited by the constitution.
| Generally speaking, unless these companies have done
| something unlawful there is no ground for banning their
| products. Is it established that they have broken US laws?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Generally speaking, unless these companies have done
| something unlawful there is no ground for banning their
| products.
|
| I don't think the right to sell goods is in the
| Constitution. What is in the constitution is an explicit
| grant to power to Congress to "To regulate Commerce with
| foreign Nations"
| loeg wrote:
| Ok 20-day old China stan account.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Have you read the US constitution? It is very short,
| easily reeadable in an hour. So if your comment is
| sincere, you would cite the specific clause of the
| constitution that you are worried is being violated.
| There is no such clause.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| Not publicly, because they won't step up and answer
| questions, in public.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| It will be if they sell their banned products
| kube-system wrote:
| > Article I, Section 8
|
| > The Congress shall have Power [...]
|
| > To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations
| [deleted]
| staticman2 wrote:
| Americans have to answer questions if you are issued a legal
| subpoena, when it's census time, among other situations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| When it's some country's Congress questioning, there are
| usually penalties to not answering. But, of course, one can
| always just face the penalties.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Americans do have to answer questions posed by Congress or a
| court in many, many situations. It is commonplace for large
| public companies for example, to have to answer questions
| from regulators or Congress.
|
| For example, any time there's a merger, the federal
| government must approve it to ensure anti-monopoly laws are
| not violated by the new market arrangement.
|
| Or you may recall the famous cases of auto executives being
| questioned over car safety, or Zuckerberg being questioned
| over social media's effects on society.
|
| Are you new to following US business news?
|
| Are you just very confused and think the famous "fifth
| amendment" applies here? Go back and read it if so.
|
| > Americans don't have to do this either
| [deleted]
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I think his point is that you can choose to go to jail for
| contempt rather than answer anything. If your sit in jail
| long enough, the world moves on and your testimony is no
| longer relevant. That's when a judge releases you (i
| think).
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Surprisingly, no.
|
| You have the right to not testify/incriminate against
| yourself. Beyond that, you can absolutely be compelled to
| answer questions.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Yes, exactly. For those in a hurry, here's an excerpt from the
| executive summary.
|
| ``` Despite hours of interviews, extensive and repeated
| document requests, a review of open-source information, and an
| open hearing with witnesses from both companies, the Committee
| remains unsatisfied with the level of cooperation and candor
| provided by each company. Neither company was willing to
| provide sufficient evidence to ameliorate the Committee's
| concerns. Neither company was forthcoming with detailed
| information about its formal relationships or regulatory
| interaction with Chinese authorities. Neither company provided
| specific details about the precise role of each company's
| Chinese Communist Party Committee. Furthermore, neither company
| provided detailed information about its operations in the
| United States. Huawei, in particular, failed to provide
| thorough information about its corporate structure, history,
| ownership, operations, financial arrangements, or management.
| Most importantly, neither company provided sufficient internal
| documentation or other evidence to support the limited answers
| they did provide to Committee investigators. During the
| investigation, the Committee received information from industry
| experts and current and former Huawei employees suggesting that
| Huawei, in particular, may be violating United States laws.
| These allegations describe a company that has not followed
| United States legal obligations or international standards of
| business behavior. The Committee will be referring these
| allegations to Executive Branch agencies for further review,
| including possible investigation. ```
| k_paleologos wrote:
| "During the investigation, the Committee received information
| from industry experts and current and former Huawei employees
| suggesting that Huawei, in particular, may be violating
| United States laws. "
|
| This is a claim which can only be proven in a court of law.
| galdosdi wrote:
| Why would a court of law have to be involved? This is a
| Congressional investigation. Nobody is being charged with a
| crime.
|
| As usual for you, you make a wild and vague claim because
| you have no understanding of US law and customs. In fact I
| doubt you have ever been to the US.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| So? No one's bringing them up on criminal charges.
|
| If I think you're shady and you refuse to provide evidence
| otherwise, then I don't have to do business with you. And
| if I'm in charge of regulating business in the country,
| then I can prevent you from doing business here because of
| that perceived shadyness. It's that simple.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| There's a decided lack of understanding in this thread
| about the US constitution and the role of Congress, and
| what this story is about. US Telecoms is a federally
| regulated industry. Congress does have the powers to compel
| testimony from individuals or companies related to this
| situation. If they're not satisified with the responses
| they can prevent them from selling into the regulated
| market. They don't need to engage the judiciary branch to
| do so.
|
| We can argue IF this is "right" and IF these companies have
| been unfairly targeted, but please stop the misinformation
| about not having to answer to congress and requiring a
| court of law.
| tiahura wrote:
| Ehh. Sort of.
|
| Congress can investigate anything they want - the
| thinking is that this power is necessary to effectively
| legislate and conduct oversight.
|
| The ban came from the executive branch. Nobody has a
| right to bring anything they want into the country.
| Wether you're a citizen returning from vacation in
| Tahiti, or ZTE, you need permission. This ban is removing
| everyone's permission to bring this stuff into the
| country.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| I wonder how many countries treat American telecom equipment
| the same way due to NSA involvement.
| [deleted]
| dilyevsky wrote:
| What american telecom equipment? ;)
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Not just telecom but phones, closed operating systems across
| any devices and basically any software.
|
| I have no illusion how good and obfluscated user tracking is
| baked in products of google apple, microsoft et al. From time
| to time some case highlights their desperate needs to use and
| hide tracking stuff, ie ms office printing almost invisible
| fingerprints in documents, and that was way more analog era.
|
| You can say though that most countries are US friends so
| there is nothing to worry. But even among friends, ie
| industrial espionage happens all the time, and just financial
| harm can easily go into tens of % of given GDP
| k_paleologos wrote:
| Is government involvement problematic? Many firms have
| government involvement, often in an under the table manner. For
| example Airbus. Government involvement is in itself no grounds
| for banning a company.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Which government is involved is what matters here. The
| governments involved in Airbus are allies.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Like United Fruits (now Chiquita) with CIA?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
| galdosdi wrote:
| Airbus is a French company. France is part of NATO. In the
| event of war, France and the US would likely be obligated to
| be on the same side by their NATO treaty obligations.
|
| I don't think you are very informed on this matter.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| Airbus is not anymore a French or Netherland company
| (Airbus Group N.V). Since 27 May 2015 the company became a
| Societas Europaea (SE) (Latin: European Company).
|
| https://lexpansion.lexpress.fr/actualites/1/actualite-
| econom...
| chitowneats wrote:
| When that government is actively stealing your intellectual
| property, hacking your computer systems and installing
| ransomware, threatening war against an important ally...
|
| And when the product is telecommunications technology...
|
| I'm going with yes. The EU and the PRC are not even remotely
| comparable from the perspective of the U.S.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| These companies have a board of Communist Party members that
| approve all company decisions/actions.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Even American companies in China have a Party cell. This is
| the law for all companies above a certain size. Those cells
| do _not_ 'approve all company decisions'.
| aworks wrote:
| On a business trip to China, I accidentally walked into
| our company's Communist Party meeting (and was politely
| encouraged to quickly leave).
|
| I have no idea if company-specific discussion ever
| occurred. Our office was mostly junior engineers so
| company decisions wouldn't be made at that level in any
| case.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| This is a very detailed examination of Huawei's ownership
| structure: [0].
|
| It was written after claims that Huawei is secretly state-
| owned. The author goes into some detail about Chinese corporate
| law, and shows that Huawei is effectively employee-owned (
| _effectively_ , because Chinese corporate law limits the
| numbers of shareholders in private companies, so there is a
| legal structure that holds shares on behalf of employees).
|
| 0. https://www.pekingnology.com/p/who-really-owns-huawei-a-
| resp...
| bbarnett wrote:
| Seems weird that people would think "secret ownership" would
| be public, about a company located in China, which controls
| ownership info.
|
| That said, what is on the books is irrelevant, if the senior
| staff are in the pocket of the PRC. Or, you know, their
| entire family is under threat, a common way to compel in
| China.
| Normille wrote:
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| k_paleologos wrote:
| Is this an executive measure? Does the executive have authority
| to do such a thing, based on vague and nebulous claims of threat
| to national security? Were these companies providing
| sevices/supplying goods in the US market subject to necessary US
| regulatory approvals? On which grounds can such approvals be
| rescinded without evidence that will stand in courts?
|
| Moreover this is infact a restriction on US citizens/ firms from
| buying these goods? Does it not impinge on their rights to fair
| choice?
| kube-system wrote:
| The FCC has extremely broad authority to regulate
| communications devices, assigned to them by congress.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They were given the authority last November under the Secure
| Equipment Act.
| galdosdi wrote:
| > Does it not impinge on their rights to fair choice?
|
| What are you talking about. You just made up a legal right that
| has never existed. Try going and opening up a restaurant in any
| city in america without submitting to any health department
| inspection. You will get shut down.
|
| There is no such universal right under US law to "fair choice"
| when buying goods, whatever that might mean. There are millions
| of pages of laws and regulations affecting buying and selling
| of goods in all 50 states as well as in the federal government.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Don't waste too much energy on the sock puppet. This person
| has less understanding of the U.S. system than my 5th grader,
| yet is commenting very confidently all over this thread.
| Account is 20 days old.
| GoatOfAplomb wrote:
| That's the quandary with sock puppets, though. The comment
| is written well enough to withstand a quick skim, and if no
| one rebuts it, it may convince some skimmers.
| thinkmcfly wrote:
| I have an online Chinese security camera system outside my house.
| I'd be happy to replace it if usgov wants to subsidize that. The
| SSH Honeypot on the network with it remains untouched for now.
| galdosdi wrote:
| No one is asking you to replace it. Keep it as long as you
| like.
|
| If you read the article you will see this applies to 3 specific
| companies, and prohibits them from selling new things in the
| future.
| javajosh wrote:
| He's assuming that the ban was caused by the discovery of
| malicious hw or sw from those manufacturers. If true, it puts
| into question their previous products as well. It may be that
| a recall was decided against for a variety of reasons from
| the practical difficulty to the more spy-related, that it
| would reveal techniques.
|
| It might also be we're witnessing masterful manipulation of
| the USG by corporations at (economic) war with each other,
| using every option to destroy the other's access to markets.
| Lots of speculation either way.
| tosh wrote:
| Can anyone familiar with the topic ELI5 this? Does this mean you
| can't use (buy? (sell?)) ZTE or Huawei modems in the US going
| forward? Or is this just a restriction re US govt related
| entities?
| ranger47 wrote:
| ELI5: The US and China are not very good friends, but Chinese
| goods still get sold to US markets. China's gov't has a hand in
| every company in its borders, or so it is suspected, since this
| is routinely denied by the companies and the Chinese gov't.
| Some of those companies make computers that can watch and
| listen to us, whether we ask them to or not. The US is no
| longer comfortable with that arrangement.
|
| Of course, it's a little more complex than that...
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| > _China 's gov't has a hand in every company in its borders,
| or so it is suspected_
|
| Not merely suspected, it's a matter of Chinese law that the
| Party is represented in any company large enough for them to
| take notice of.
| beebeepka wrote:
| protoc wrote:
| there is no connection between rich powerful companies in
| the us and government /s
| beebeepka wrote:
| I also get modded down when I remind these guys Desert
| Storm was televised on CNN. Oh well, it's a us site
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| somenameforme wrote:
| The way you're framing makes it sound unique to China. PRISM
| [1] hasn't gone anywhere and has certainly only expanded
| since the leaks. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many others
| were all participating companies. If China starts stooping to
| the same level here they would be obligated to ban products
| from these companies and more. If they want to make a
| spectacle of it, they could even have a kangaroo court
| committee hearing where they ask these companies about their
| relationship to the NSA and other alphabet agencies.
|
| Any country operating in any country anywhere is going to
| subject to the whims and influences of the government in
| their home country. Some make it more or less overt, but
| pretending this is some discovery or "them vs us" thing is
| absurd. This whole affair is another step in the apparent
| goal of escalation with China, to what purpose - I have no
| clue.
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
| bnjms wrote:
| Doesn't PRISM work by splitting fiber for "monitoring"?
|
| ...Somehow that makes me feel better.
| chitowneats wrote:
| It is absolutely them vs. us. We can choose to respond to
| their provocations or not, but they will continue them.
|
| The more the techno-libertarian crowd denies this, the more
| irrelevant you become.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| One can argue that PRISM was in place long before China
| was doing anything real. So US and allies set the tone of
| this global topic decades ago. China decided they will go
| their own way, because they could.
|
| This is all just a theatre as mentioned, long term
| planned escalation with some form of conflict inevitable.
| Not judging, it makes sense for each side to act as they
| do, but these congress hearings were a farce with decided
| outcome long before they were even announced, not some
| fair public discussion.
| selectodude wrote:
| Two decades ago, the Chinese military was actively
| raiding Nortel's IP directly from their servers.
| Regardless of when and what the US government is doing,
| Huawei and ZTE's tech is built off of rampant state-
| sponsored IP theft and shouldn't be used and can't be
| trusted.
|
| https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-
| milita...
| mtrovo wrote:
| Even if they stole IP 20 years ago so what? US industrial
| revolution was famously started by copying ideas from
| Europe https://www.history.com/.amp/news/industrial-
| revolution-spie....
|
| There's no way to deny that Huawei was years ahead of
| competition with their 5G offerings, so it seems this is
| much more a story about telecom becoming patent trolls
| rather than R&D focused companies, something something
| creating value to shareholders.
| chitowneats wrote:
| > 20 years ago
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_intellectu
| al_...
| totalZero wrote:
| The order is almost 200 pages long but it states that it
| prohibits "marketing and importation" of the devices in
| question, among other prohibitions for equipment authorization
| going forward.
| Kukumber wrote:
| What it is called when the US sells weapons to European countries
| that are connected to the US network, share data and can only be
| activated by US officials?
|
| Should their customers retaliate?
|
| "we can do it, you can't"
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23052/foreign-f-35-use...
| woooooo wrote:
| It's called realpolitik.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Your article is about a program to: "provide[s] F-35
| international partners the capability to review and block
| messages to prevent sovereign data loss" and by adding this
| program, it will save our partners millions of dollars because
| they wont need to do this work themselves (which they knew they
| needed to do because the ALIS program was part of the plane and
| disclosed in its specs when they bought it).
|
| I feel like you skimmed this article, and thought it was about
| something nefarious... so added it to your post because you
| thought it confirmed what you already thought.
| Kukumber wrote:
| No, it's the proper article that talks about its
| capabilities, it's food for thought, the "official" line, to
| avoid any conflict of interest when you develop your opinion,
| otherwise i am taxed as "conspiracy theorist"
|
| And that's just for the future ones, and it only covers the
| front end, i let you imagine what other systems are over
| there, including what's int their auto-pilot system
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Its called digital rights management (DRM). Why should weapons
| systems be any different than consumer products in that regard?
| wyuenho wrote:
| It's called the only 5th gen fighter jet Europe can buy
| qeternity wrote:
| > "we can do it, you can't"
|
| Yes, exactly. The US knows full well how powerful that sort of
| control and access is, and other countries are (apparently) ok
| with that. The implicit social contract in the West is that the
| US maintains global peace anyway.
|
| Obviously the US (and other countries) do not have similar
| levels of trust and cooperation with China, hence these sort of
| responses.
| Kukumber wrote:
| > Obviously the US (and other countries) do not have similar
| levels of trust and cooperation with China, hence these sort
| of responses.
|
| So now the US gets to decide who is worthy of becoming your
| friend?
|
| What's next?
| surfpel wrote:
| Now? That's been the policy for probably longer than you've
| been alive. (Assuming you're under the age of 70 or so)
| kadoban wrote:
| The US can decide who its allies are, other countries can
| do the same for themselves. What are you even objecting to
| here?
| Kukumber wrote:
| Have you been sleeping for the past 20 years?
|
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/the-
| impac...
| kadoban wrote:
| > Have you been sleeping for the past 20 years?
|
| Only about a third of them.
|
| > https://www.euractiv.com/section/economy-jobs/news/the-
| impac...
|
| Sorry, I'm not following how that relates to really
| anything in the current conversation.
| Kukumber wrote:
| the US promotes liberalism for others, but internally
| they promote their very own interests
|
| double face
|
| after blocking you from doing commerce with their enemies
| through multitudes of sanctions and lobbies, they'll
| start to punish you if you try to protect your interests
|
| To quote the article: "Washington announced on Wednesday
| (2 October) that it would hit European products with
| punitive tariffs worth $7.5 billion after receiving the
| green light from the World Trade Organization (WTO),
| following a 15-year legal battle between aircraft
| manufacturers Boeing and Airbus."
| iso1631 wrote:
| There are a lot of people on HN arguing against
| sanctioning Russia for invading a sovereign state, they
| believe that the west should just turn a blind eye to it.
|
| It's quite interesting, it's pretty much the only place
| on the internet I encounter such posts.
| kadoban wrote:
| That's a common stance in right-leaning circles,
| unfortunately.
| anon291 wrote:
| Letting Europeans deal with Europe was the stance for all
| of American history until WWII.
| kadoban wrote:
| It was a very common stance until the world changed and
| we learned better, yeah.
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| A lot of Americans are American because their European
| ancestors got sick of European affairs and wanted a clean
| break from it.
|
| Nonetheless, a lot of the anti-interventionist rhetoric
| seen on the net today feels very astroturfed. Anybody
| accusing NATO of warmongering is safe to write off as a
| Russian-aligned troll, considering Russia is the one who
| actually invaded a foreign country. NATO's "war
| mongering" amounts to offering sanctuary to the countries
| with a rational fear of being invaded by Russia.
| anon291 wrote:
| I'm not European descended and could care less about what
| those people think of their home countries. My parents
| and family gave up ours when they came to this country
| and became citizens. I recommend those of European
| ancestry do so too.
| zokar wrote:
| In other words, one is not allowed to speculate about a
| different outcome if NATO hadn't pushed forward so
| aggressively.
|
| The realism school of Mearsheimer is forbidden. Freedom
| of thought is one of the first casualties of the war.
| skorpeon87 wrote:
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| All those nations decided to join NATO freely and sent an
| application. NATO then approved those applications. Those
| nations are also free to leave NATO again if they want
| to.
|
| The other side annexes territories of a neighbouring
| souvereign nation and bombs the infrastructure to rubble
| with the goal of making the freezing population
| surrender.
|
| Russia, like many former colonial empires, hangs onto its
| dreams of Greatness and Restoration. It is up to Russia
| to find a new befitting place and way for its nation in
| the international community and history. Many other
| former empires were forced to do the same.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Maybe because technical oriented minds better understand
| the subtleties of the conflict? and are able to
| methodically read articles like they able able to read
| through a documentation?
|
| And i don't think people over here advocate against
| sanctioning Russia, you hear about people against
| sanctions from the politics, usually from the opposition
| camp
|
| I think it's pretty clear that everyone here is
| sanctioning the actors of the war, both actors, the ones
| who participate in the conflict, and the ones who feed
| the conflict since 2014
|
| The US complaining about Russia's influence over their
| elections
|
| And the US meddling with Ukranian ones to promote
| Zelensky [1]
|
| [1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine-
| tape-idUSBREA...
| zokar wrote:
| They may be arguing against sanctions because they are
| ineffective and hurt the West. I haven't seen the stance
| to ignore the Ukraine invasion altogether.
|
| I wonder why you would single out HN for these posts.
| They appear in every comment section even of the
| mainstream press, on YouTube and other places.
|
| Ineffectiveness of sanctions is an old and legitimate
| topic. Certainly the topic is discussed behind closed
| doors everywhere. There is a difference between hardliner
| isolationism and realism. Ultimately, the Western
| economies have to function if $billions in weapons are to
| be provided in the future.
| kadoban wrote:
| > They may be arguing against sanctions because they are
| ineffective and hurt the West. I haven't seen the stance
| to ignore the Ukraine invasion altogether.
|
| There's a certain large part of the Republican party that
| goes way beyond that and are openly hostile to helping
| Ukraine in any way.
| andsoitis wrote:
| It's actually much worse. People in western countries
| saying that Russia is in the right and that Putin's
| government is to be trusted more.
| simion314 wrote:
| >It's quite interesting, it's pretty much the only place
| on the internet I encounter such posts.
|
| You can find similar or even wierder ideas on reddit.
| Like one dude that said is from USA was telling me that
| Russia is the victim, was provoked by USA and on top of
| that he was on the opinion that countries in Easter
| Europe belong to Russia sphere of influence, that we the
| Easter Europeans have no rights, only USA and Russia have
| the rights to split the world and if Ukraine or Mopldvoa
| wants in EU is USA fault and is against the rights of
| Russia to "influence" countries East of Berlin.
|
| I am curious, is this something many USA people think,
| that the "sphere of influences" crap is still relevant
| today and that we the small countries should not have a
| choice in it?
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| No it is not common. Most people I know are pro democracy
| and very nervous about Russian/Putin's attempted
| expansion.
| imgabe wrote:
| It's called the US protecting its own interests.
|
| Yes, the US prioritizes itself over other countries, as every
| country does.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| That doesn't make it right.
| imgabe wrote:
| Countries that compromise their own national security so
| that people can have some sort of warm fuzzy feelings about
| how nice and good they are don't get to continue existing
| as countries for very long.
| [deleted]
| Normille wrote:
| >Yes, the US prioritizes itself over other countries, as
| every country does.
|
| I agree. Most western nations [especially the EU and UK]
| prioritise the US over other countries.
|
| Oh. That wasn't what you meant by 'as every country does'?
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Exactly, why would you sell weapons to even an ally (who at
| some point could broker those weapons / IP to a near-pear
| adversary or grey area state) anywhere near as capable as your
| own?
|
| Obviously, when it comes to terrorist groups and broke eastern
| european nations the U.S. has made mistakes with this line of
| reasoning. Re: captured weapons in ukraine ending up on the
| black market...
| theli wrote:
| I don't believe there has been any confirmation of weapons
| sent to Ukraine ending up on the black market or has there?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think there are so many weapons that it must occur
| (either by Russian capture or traitorous Ukrainians) but
| that should not deter the US and allies from sending as
| much as needed for Ukraine to expel their invaders.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| If Russia is bargaining with Iran trading "hundreds" of
| captured anti-tank weapons and guided artillery
| munitions... it doesn't take a genius to come to
| conclusions as to what other non-state affiliated actors
| are doing...
|
| Ukraine has also arrested a number of Ukrainians in known
| smuggling rings selling captured weapons on the black
| market [1].
|
| [0] https://news.sky.com/story/russia-gave-eur140m-and-
| captured-...
|
| [1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/ukraine-war-
| weapons-bl...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| This is why every country should develop its own industry,
| technology and weapons. Imagine the US or China just turning
| off your weapons remotely if you decide to cross them.
| anon291 wrote:
| As an American, I call that stupid on behalf of Europe. Doesn't
| mean I want my country making the same mistake with China.
|
| If you're a European, I would support parties that cared about
| your own national interests, instead of kowtowing to America.
| However I am an American, so I can't change Europe.
| totalZero wrote:
| I think some information is lost in the comparison between
| fighter aircraft and home security cameras.
| kube-system wrote:
| Dahuas market is primarily B2B
| pkulak wrote:
| I love these cams, but also put them on a totally isolated
| network. Guess I'll pick another one up just in case they get
| tough to find soon.
| dingi wrote:
| Whe you consider China's restrictions against US companies, these
| things are a drop in a bucket.
| keewee7 wrote:
| A lot gets buried in the privacy discussions but the unfair
| trade practices are also a problem.
|
| For example Western app makers don't have access to Chinese
| consumers the same way Chinese app makers have access to
| Western consumers.
| protoc wrote:
| App needs to meet the standards of local laws, its not like
| China is just targeting American apps. The US has laws bases
| on color tone lol
| qwytw wrote:
| Your point being? Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Iran and
| Saudi Arabia had/have laws too...
|
| > The US has laws bases on color tone lol
|
| Any actual examples? lol
| medellin wrote:
| Even companies as large as Uber got strong armed in china.
| From having traffic shut off completely inside the country
| without warning (no net neutrality laws) to having to setup
| an entirely new business in china that didn't touch the US
| one.
|
| I have little sympathy and i hope that the Us continues to
| push restrictions on china tech.
| namkt wrote:
| Uber probably isn't the best example given that the company
| prided itself in being 'fucking illegal', but your point
| generally stands.
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/10/uber-
| investigation-...
| medellin wrote:
| It's the only one i can speak directly to although i know
| of numerous other examples.
| parineum wrote:
| What does that have to do with the example?
| somenameforme wrote:
| What would you say is the best example? I'm aware China does
| aggressively censor US media type products that don't toe the
| Chinese worldview, but I'm less familiar with absolute bans of
| major companies of this sort.
|
| I may be misreading the situation here, but to me this seems
| like a rather extreme escalation that would be analogous to
| China banning e.g. Apple or Google based/created devices after
| questioning them over their relationship with the NSA [1] and
| being [predictably] dissatisfied with their responses.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
| stefan_ wrote:
| For the longest time companies could simply not operate in
| China at all other than through some majority Chinese joint-
| venture.
| teawrecks wrote:
| China will happily ban any company that doesn't give them a
| backdoor to the version of the product that their citizens
| use.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_China
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