[HN Gopher] Akamai to shut down its CDN operations in China
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Akamai to shut down its CDN operations in China
Author : nunodio
Score : 227 points
Date : 2025-01-05 18:02 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (content.akamai.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (content.akamai.com)
| l1n wrote:
| https://www.akamai.com/newsroom/press-release/akamai-announc...
| related
| bdcravens wrote:
| Is it? I'm not familiar enough with those certifications to
| know if that requires them to divest of their offerings in
| China.
| hlieberman wrote:
| It's not. They've held FedRAMP certifications for more than a
| decade.
|
| Source: ex-Akamai InfoSec employee
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The requirements of the certification might change for
| political reasons.
| hlieberman wrote:
| That's not something that's currently planned, and even
| if it did, it would take years. Besides, it wouldn't
| apply anyway; Akamai's China business was already routed
| through a mainland China company, as required by Chinese
| law.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| It generally takes a long time to change the text of a
| formal requirement. Changing the meaning of the existing
| text doesn't take so long.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Akamai to shut down its CDN operations in China
|
| ...and continue offering the same service by reselling Tencent's
| CDN.
|
| Looks like they're making this one of the things in China that
| has to be provided locally?
| wordofx wrote:
| They don't want foreign businesses having a solid foothold in
| the country.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Control is important during both global decoupling and
| potential geopolitical conflict (Taiwan).
| kittikitti wrote:
| This can often occur when parts of the application are out of
| their control. For example, geographical apps are hard to
| recreate locally on the scale of Google or Apple Maps. It's
| vastly easier and sometimes cheaper to use their API. But if
| China has any disputes on how it's represented in the geo data,
| the software becomes a liability.
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| More likely Tencent will own the land and physical
| infrastructure but it will still be Akamai software operated by
| Akamai employees.
| ghaff wrote:
| I see a lot of US organizations decoupling stuff from China,
| especially if it's fairly peripheral, such as pulling back from
| running events there. But there's also a lot of more fundamental
| second-sourcing and the like.
| talldayo wrote:
| The writing has been on the wall for over a decade, at this
| point. The only companies that "risk it" with China are the
| ones that rely on borderline (or in some cases, literal) slave
| labor to maintain their margins. If you don't have an
| outstanding manufacturing investment to honor, it's a net-
| negative reliance in many cases.
| robinjhuang wrote:
| Canva has a great presence in China.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Canva is Australian though.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Still foreign.
| alephnerd wrote:
| True, but Australia and China have extremely close
| economic relations due to proximity and an FTA.
| t-3 wrote:
| That's a pretty one-way relationship though. Australia
| and China are literally thousands of miles away from each
| other, but China is still important to Australia because
| all the continental landmasses are far from Australia.
| ghaff wrote:
| For many things, it was never a particular net positive. At
| this point, it makes sense to cleanly and quietly withdraw.
| This particular release isn't especially quiet but many
| companies are just stopping doing activities at convenient
| points.
| soared wrote:
| This is not remotely accurate. Plenty of large tech companies
| still play in China. The difficulties are very high but if
| you are big enough the huge market size it's still very
| profitable. I don't think google/etc are in China for its
| slave labor.
| ghaff wrote:
| Certainly, depends on the company/organization. If working
| in China is a big win then many companies will decide to
| continue doing so while preparing other options. If it's
| more marginal, then starting to carefully pull out probably
| makes sense. Which is more or less what I'm seeing. I'm not
| sure about ten years but the situation over the last five
| has started to become pretty clear.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Plenty of large tech companies still play in China
|
| Depending on the segment you are in within the tech
| industry, the Chinese subsidiary of the foreign company
| might be a white-labelled Chinese offering (eg. AWS China,
| Azure China) or entirely unique IP developed in-house by
| the Chinese subsidiary.
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| AWS and Azure in China are the literal opposite of white
| labeling. It's still the global product, branded under
| the global name, (mostly) operated by the global
| organizations.
|
| The affiliation with Chinese companies is borderline fine
| print, white labeling would be if you had "tencent cloud"
| which happened to behave exactly like Azure.
| flaminHotSpeedo wrote:
| It's not just tech companies, many entertainment companies
| (e.g. video games, media) do the same, even at the risk of
| alienating or angering Western customers
| gopher_space wrote:
| I'll never buy a Blizzard product again. Fortunately
| they've made this very easy for me.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Well depends on the organizations. Some of the organizations
| aren't actually pulling away from China, as they're just
| getting outcompeted in terms of price/quality by local
| companies. To my understanding, government is trying to
| convince people that "Chinese products can also be luxury", and
| some people are switching.
| mayama wrote:
| Or it could be part of general trend of splitting off
| internet and creating a firewalled chinese internet. PRC is
| explicitly favoring this outcome for decades now with
| explicit incentives via legal, financial and social routes.
| DrWhax wrote:
| Curious if Cloudflare will follow
| DenseComet wrote:
| Cloudflare's China presence is already operated by a local
| company, like what Akamai is switching to.
|
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-partners-with-jd-clou...
| crystaln wrote:
| China never has and never will offer a level playing field for
| non-Chinese companies.
|
| The US is finally starting to act in kind, and should continue to
| do so.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Fair trade. It's amazing it took us until Trump to make this a
| major agenda item.
| azinman2 wrote:
| And yet he's not blocking TikTok. It's quite astonishing
| given:
|
| A) they're a Chinese owned company
|
| B) China asymmetrically has never allowed US social media
| (amongst practically all major internet properties)
|
| C) We cap ownership of foreign owners of US media. TikTok IS
| TV for the young generation.
|
| But apparently he thinks it helped him win (would love to
| know if that was actually true, which is probably impossible
| to calculate), so who cares about all these other principles!
| wkat4242 wrote:
| D) It was him who started the whole discussion of banning
| TikTok in the first place
| bee_rider wrote:
| I thought he asked the court to pause the ban until he was
| in office. In the interest of trying to be neutral, perhaps
| he either:
|
| * Thinks he can help negotiate some sort of deal that keeps
| TikTok here fairly, or
|
| * Sees an opportunity to do a grift/accept some bribes from
| ByteDance/get some control over an effective propaganda
| engine.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| * wants the publicity from being the president to ban
| them
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| Genuine question as someone not from the US, wouldn't
| that make a significant part of a generation mad at
| Republicans? Some who might be close to voting age or
| might even be able to vote already.
| okasaki wrote:
| Both parties are owned by the same oligarchs and security
| state. The owners don't care who you vote for, the system
| is a political World Wrestling Federation.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Trump isn't up for re-election, and he's isn't interested
| in the long term performance of the Republican Party (he
| only became a Republican because that's the party whose
| primary he could win).
| wbl wrote:
| We've had CIFUS for decades. The only change is now we say no
| to Japan teaching us to make better steel.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > We've had CIFUS for decades. The only change is now we say
| no to Japan teaching us to make better steel.
|
| I'm curious what you mean by that.
|
| Most of what I know about steel is in relation to knives (and
| peripherally, swords, axes, and other tools). At least in
| that (admittedly small) niche, Japanese steel is good, but
| certainly not superior to US steel (although with the
| financial trouble that Crucible is having, perhaps things
| will change a bit).
| kortilla wrote:
| Likely referring to the acquisition attempt by nippon steel
| wenc wrote:
| I used to live in a rust-belt steel town. My knowledge is
| cursory except for my lived reality of my town being
| economically depressed by poor management of steel
| production facilities.
|
| US Steel mostly focuses on commodity steel.
|
| Nippon Steel has a wider portfolio focusing on higher-end
| specialty steel.
|
| Commodity steel producers like US Steel (they acquired the
| main steel company in my town) generally play on lower end
| of the market, and have not invested adequately in
| technology or modernization. They are not able to make
| specialty steel because they have not made those kinds of
| investments. Instead they have chosen to languish with low
| productivity practices, so they're being outcompeted by
| foreign companies who are now able to make the same quality
| of steel but cheaper. They used to laugh at foreign steel
| companies because of the trash steel they made, but they
| laughed a bit too long and didn't realize that foreign
| steel gradually got better year over year. I saw this
| hubris play out first hand in my town.
|
| My town also has another steel maker, a specialty one. This
| one was smaller but chose to invest in automation and
| modern technology, and also on producing new types of high-
| value steel for specialty applications. They had a profit-
| sharing scheme and had loyal employees who did not reject
| automation or modernization, but instead had a growth
| mindset. They remain competitive today.
|
| This is capitalism's creative destruction playing out, and
| companies like US Steel that refuse to adapt find
| themselves outcompeted by more productive players.
|
| The Nippon Steel takeover, even if it had succeeded, might
| have been too late.
| brightball wrote:
| Where does Nucor fall in this? I don't know anything
| about the steel industry but know the name.
| wenc wrote:
| I don't have lived experience with Nucor, but some years
| ago I read "Plain Talk" by Ken Iverson, who was Nucor's
| CEO. I don't have context but I remember it being a
| breezy, folksy management book, and one that had high
| believability because it came from the horse's mouth --
| not some management consultant. It doesn't mean there's
| no hagiography, but at least you get more practicality
| out of CEO-written books than management consultant
| fluff.
|
| Nucor today is the largest steel company in the US (and
| more profitable than US Steel). I believe they too
| produce commodity steel, but they were able to stay
| competitive because of good management, investment in
| updated technologies like electric arc furnaces, and
| focus on the quality and service market segments that
| foreign steelmakers have a hard time competing in.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It was quite obvious to everyone for a long time that
| commodity steel production will be outcompeted by
| countries with lower wages, lower energy costs or both.
| US is not competitive on wages for commodity products, so
| investing in mass production of regular steel was a bad
| idea.
|
| Specialty steel has a barrier of entry - not every third
| world country can make it. Even today China imports most
| of the bearings for high-speed trains and planes. This
| grants high margins to the few companies that know how to
| produce this steel, this is where US can compete.
|
| So what happened there was normal business decisions, not
| "creative destruction playing out". Economy beats
| politics for once.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > The only change is now we say no to Japan teaching us to
| make better steel
|
| Blame Cleveland-Cliffs [0] - Nippon Steel's Brazilian-owed
| competitor in Ohio.
|
| > Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of steelmaker Cleveland-Cliffs
| (CLF.N) which made a failed $7 billion bid for U.S. Steel in
| August 2023, participated in at least nine calls assuring
| investors that President Joe Biden would scuttle the Nippon
| Steel merger months before he did so on Friday, according to
| summaries of investor calls included in a Dec. 17 letter from
| lawyers for Nippon Steel (5401.T) and U.S. Steel to the
| Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) and
| confirmed to Reuters by two participants in the calls.
|
| > "I can't force U.S. Steel to sell to me, but I can work my
| magic to make a deal that I don't agree with not to close,"
| he told investors on a March 13 call hosted by JP Morgan, the
| letter quoted Goncalves as saying.
|
| > While Goncalves made similar comments about the deal to
| analysts on three earnings calls this year, his private
| remarks made throughout 2024 about the deal process show the
| extent of his effort to cast doubt on Nippon's bid for U.S.
| Steel. His comments sometimes preceded drops in the U.S.
| Steel share price, Nippon Steel and U.S. Steel told CFIUS.
|
| [0] - https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/rival-ceo-spread-
| doubt...
| sschueller wrote:
| I thought we don't want to be like China?
|
| You aren't going to spread your form of "democracy" across the
| world by doing what the "oppressive" regimes are doing.
| zulban wrote:
| Saying "we'll let your businesses in if you let ours in"
| isn't like China.
| null_deref wrote:
| But you also don't want to tolerant the intolerant, it's thin
| line.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Debatable.
|
| > whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to
| him the other also (Jesus)
|
| > I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of
| a better one. Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of
| the inferiority of other faiths to one (Gandhi)
| legulere wrote:
| I guess the author alludes to the paradox of tolerance
| first described by Karl Popper 1945 in The Open Society
| and Its Enemies.
|
| Sometimes deterring punishment is the only thing that
| keeps people from abusing tolerance or freedom to destroy
| that tolerance and freedom, but it needs to stay a
| measure of last resort.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Thanks for the reference, I'll have a look.
|
| It's interesting indeed how tolerance and freedom
| interact with each other's. To put another perspective,
| here's a quote from an unrelated text (0)
|
| > Middle Eastern Muslim culture expert Marvin Zonis notes
| that Arab societies value the honor and dignity of the
| individual more than personal liberty.
|
| I 100% about the benefits of (sometime) punishments, but
| also perhaps a bit less liberty to make space for other
| values might have benefits. I'm not sure where to place
| the slider on that scale, as too much honor and dignity
| can be quite restrictive.
|
| 0
| https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/SR236Venhaus.pdf
| kortilla wrote:
| Tit for tat taxation or restrictions on businesses are not
| related at all to democracy.
| diggan wrote:
| > restrictions on businesses are not related at all to
| democracy.
|
| I guess we've dropped the whole "Global fair trade leads to
| a more free, peaceful and democratic world" argument that
| used to be so popular?
| alephnerd wrote:
| > I guess we've dropped the whole "Global fair trade
| leads to a more free, peaceful and democratic world"
| argument that used to be so popular?
|
| Global Free Trade is based on the Stag Hunt Principle -
| all players need to be aligned to cooperate in order to
| "hunt the stag".
|
| If players decide they wish to undermine the principle of
| fair trade, then they should be isolated.
|
| For example, if China has banned FB or Google from
| operating without Chinese government oversight, then we
| should do the same with TikTok and WeChat.
| typon wrote:
| The rules are written by the powerful to advantage the
| powerful. Once those advantages disappear, the rules must
| be rewritten or disregarded.
| dilyevsky wrote:
| It has been successfully proven wrong so yes
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I guess we 've dropped the whole "Global fair trade
| leads to a more free, peaceful and democratic world"
| argument that used to be so popular?_
|
| Sadly, yes. It took Russia invading Ukraine and
| threatening the E.U. for it to sink in. Now it's pretty
| much accepted that the experiment failed.
| a12k wrote:
| We don't. But if we keep throwing companies into the grinder
| like this where all their IP is stolen and they are just
| replicated in China on an unfair playing field, we end up
| losing anyways regardless of intent.
| j45 wrote:
| Another way to go is not to participate in the hype cycle
| of pitching investors instead of pitching customers
| (marketing and sales) and giving away ideas and
| opportunities that end up being made elsewhere and not
| supported where the founders currently are.
|
| Doing the market research and opportunity and presenting it
| on a stage can be very helpful sometimes, other times it
| can seem a little head scratching.
|
| It's fine to be open, start with the ICP.
| Salgat wrote:
| This has nothing to do with democracy, it's about trying to
| keep a level playing field. The US has been trying to open
| trade with China since the 70s, and until China stops doing
| this the US has to adjust trade policy to keep things fair.
| Free and open trade is a two way street, otherwise it's just
| charity to the bad faith actor.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Basically: Wanting a level playing field does not mean
| allowing yourself to be exploited.
|
| If you're in the Olympics and your competitor is doping,
| you shouldn't practice doping yourself, but you can refuse
| to compete.
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| The US has a long history of abusive trade relationships.
| China has seen what the US has done in Latam (and possibly
| in Africa) and said nope. US is used to have everyone play
| the US game when trading in Latam and other developing
| countries. China has been making the US play the China game
| when trading with China. And now that China is a serious
| world power, it is possibly a bit late to stop playing.
| jhp123 wrote:
| each side accuses the other of bad faith, but only one side
| is sabotaging the international body that is supposed to
| adjudicate trade disputes
| j45 wrote:
| One person's/entity's freedom and rights end where anothers
| start. :)
|
| Beginning with choice.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Let them be insular. I don't think it should be anyone's
| mission to "spread democracy". If people want it, they need
| to fight for it for themselves.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I'd also argue that the US establishment's goal is to
| spread capitalism (that favors US capital), not democracy.
| User23 wrote:
| There are enough scare quotes here that I can't actually tell
| what you're getting at.
| transcriptase wrote:
| How's that "if we make China rich they'll naturally become a
| Western democracy" plan coming along?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > I thought we don't want to be like China?
|
| Tired: "spreading" democracy.
|
| Wired: battening down the hatches so you don't lose your
| democracy.
|
| It's a new world, you just haven't received the memo yet.
| sangnoir wrote:
| How level of a field has the Jones Act been setting since 1920?
| I don't know why HNers act like protectionism is new or foreign
| to the United States.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Talk about a red herring.
|
| 1) No country is a perfect free market, and has some 'sacred
| cows' that it attempts to protect. China takes it to another
| level.
|
| 2) Jones Act is actually really bad, for America! It should
| go away! It especially hurts areas like Hawaii and Puerto
| Rico, but it is generally bad!
| sangnoir wrote:
| It's not a red herring, I was responding to this specific
| sentence about the US "finally" acting, as if it's a new
| phenomenon:
|
| >> The US is finally starting to act in kind, and should
| continue to do so
|
| > No country is a perfect free market, and has some 'sacred
| cows' that it attempts to protect
|
| This is a more nuanced take that should be the starting off
| point for any productive discussion around what counts as
| "fair" trade.
|
| > Jones Act is actually really bad, for America! It should
| go away! It especially hurts areas like Hawaii and Puerto
| Rico, but it is generally
|
| Sure, but it's protectionist, and has existed for over a
| century as proof of American protectionism.
| parasense wrote:
| It is a Red Herring.
|
| That is because the Jones Act in context to the gross
| entirety of the USA and PRC economic relations is at best
| utterly irrelevant. Besides, you might find it
| interesting to learn that the protectionist parts of the
| Jones act are in fact common around the world. Many
| counties prohibit port to port shippments without first
| visiting an international port. Mind you, many folks here
| would agree these kind of laws are stupid, and I would
| personally agree... However, that does not stop this talk
| about the Jones act from being a Red Herring. I'm glad
| you found a topic of great interrest to you, and that's
| great.
|
| What does this have to do with Akamai, and many other
| American companies, ending services in mainland China?
| Nothing... What does export tarrifs on Chines exports
| have to do with Jones act? Very little, asymptoticly
| little... to the point one might say the topics are
| orthogonal, or more plainly they might say Red Herring.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Well, I'm glad that we can at least agree that the US
| _has_ protectionist policies and has had them for a long
| time.
|
| If you want a bigger protected industry, perhaps checkout
| any Farm bill from the past several decades. But that's
| neither here nor there. China is not weird for _having_
| protectionist measures - like you said - it 's pretty
| normal - the scope and size is what may be unusual for a
| country that's not a hegemon.
|
| > What does this have to do with Akamai, and many other
| American companies, ending services in mainland China?
|
| Glad you asked: China has protectionist policies that are
| designed to help its domestic tech companies.
| Consequently, foreign (read American) tech companies like
| Akamai may find the operating environment much more
| challenging that they would without those policies. Other
| non-protectionist policies don't help - such as working
| with the great firewall, or complying with censorship
| requests.
|
| TL;DR version: China protects its tech industry like the
| US protects its farmers and merchant marine.
| Acknowledging that will help frame whether the respective
| countries have the political appetite to temp or undo
| those policies.
| dgfitz wrote:
| > Acknowledging that will help frame whether the
| respective countries have the political appetite to temp
| or undo those policies.
|
| What does framing matter? Things are going to happen,
| trying to "frame" them is why journalism is miserable.
| sangnoir wrote:
| What journalism? I'm talking about how we frame the
| discussion on HN in threads like this one.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >China never has and never will offer a level playing field for
| non-Chinese companies.
|
| Foreign companies in China have to play by Chinese rules, which
| are more restrictive than the US but so do Chinese companies.
| When it comes to doing business abroad China imposes very few
| rules or conditions. Meanwhile the US has been waging a
| straight up trade war on China with the not just implicit but
| stated goal of strangling China's technological progress. If
| anyone should level the playing field it's the US.
|
| This is how this is perceived in the world outside the
| Anglosphere, it's astonishing how out of touch the American
| centric commentary on this is. China's open to do business with
| the world, the US and Western countries are politicizing trade.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Chinese companies don't have to play by the rules in the same
| way that foreign companies do. China isn't a rule of law
| country, and has explicitly stated that it doesn't want to be
| a rule of law country. Instead laws are enforced selectively
| for whatever outcome the official branch wants at the moment
| (rule by law). They are perfectly willing to fine American
| companies when Chinese companies cheat (and not apply
| anywhere near the same enforcement to the Chinese company
| that actually cheated).
|
| Foreign companies have to be heavily aware of context just
| like Chinese companies do, but they will also be treated very
| differently in how and when laws are applied (not always to
| their detriment, China will elevate some foreign companies to
| show they are fair and open to FDI).
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >and not apply anywhere near the same enforcement to the
| Chinese company
|
| About two years ago China imposed regulations on its own
| tech sector so strict that it killed the entire "ed-tech"
| sector overnight and wiped out a decent chunk of the
| country's tech market value. What other country has done
| this to its own companies?
|
| The US has slapped a 100% tariff on cars, bans on Chinese
| hardware and software in autonomous vehicles, ripping out
| 5G equipment, tried to basically destroy Huawei
| specifically, and the list goes on. Whatever local
| favoritism may happen in China, you realize that pales to
| the full blown protectionism that the US engages in. China
| hasn't even retaliated in kind. You're complaining about
| being poked with a stick while throwing a sledgehammer
| around. Am I supposed to believe the "TikTok ban" is
| anything other than completely absurd security theater?
| Like do you think the world is so naive they think this is
| how the "rule of law" works? You realize every time a
| Western politician utters that term everyone just laughs
| right?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China has had 20-50% tariffs on car imports since WTO (to
| protect their car industry, before it was worse!), and it
| has been successful: they coaxed most foreign car
| companies into JVs where they could transfer IP. Now that
| their car industry is secure, to complain about
| protectionism from the countries they once protected
| themselves from is just too hypocritical.
|
| Likewise, if you tell me America banning tiktok is
| unprecedented you've never heard of Facebook or YouTube?
| Again, China has no moral high ground here. If anything,
| I bet the Chinese government is just wondering what took
| us so long.
| wumeow wrote:
| > About two years ago China imposed regulations on its
| own tech sector so strict that it killed the entire "ed-
| tech" sector overnight and wiped out a decent chunk of
| the country's tech market value
|
| Unless you can point to a foreign company that was
| treated less harshly under these regulations than a
| Chinese one, this doesn't disprove the parent's point.
|
| > The US has slapped a 100% tariff on cars, bans on
| Chinese hardware and software in autonomous vehicles,
| ripping out 5G equipment, tried to basically destroy
| Huawei specifically, and the list goes on.
|
| Besides the car tariffs, these measures were taken to
| prevent Chinese hacking and intelligence gathering, not
| to protect domestic industries.
| tehjoker wrote:
| China doesn't want to be an opium den for western powers and
| have their economy underdeveloped by their firms. I think
| that's okay and it has been paying off. That's why China is
| able to develop its economy to superpower status while so much
| of the rest of the world is locked in dependency on the whims
| of G7.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That's really interesting considering China is exporting
| fentanyl to the USA and much of the western world today.
| tehjoker wrote:
| its really interesting how afghanistan became the world's
| #1 poppy producer under us occupation and it declined
| immediately after we left. heroin prices rose, leaving a
| market opportunity for fent. i still do not believe that
| china is necessarily the source btw. that needs proof.
|
| you can read about an earlier iteration of us involvement
| in drugs in this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Po
| litics_of_Heroin_in_Sout...
|
| there are infamous pictures of us soldiers guarding poppies
| in afghanistan during the recent occupation:
|
| https://publicintelligence.net/usnato-troops-patrolling-
| opiu...
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Ya, I don't see that lasting very long since China
| production is too cheap to compete with. They've
| basically taken over the whole illegal drug business here
| in the USA (opium has never been a very big drug in the
| states). I don't really know what China is trying to
| prove though, is the PLA involved or is it just a few big
| Tianjin SOE pharmaceuticals?
| tehjoker wrote:
| It's not lasting it's over. The US pulled out of
| Afghanistan in 2021 and the Taliban vastly reduced poppy
| cultivation. That's what caused a sharp rise in heroin
| prices and a demand for a substitute.
|
| I haven't looked into fent, but given the information is
| coming mainly from US security agencies who consider
| china an enemy state, I need to see physical evidence. I
| won't accept their say-so. This narrative about China
| smells suspiciously too perfect. China was the subject of
| 100 years of humiliation, was drugged to death by
| Americans, British, and others. Now the US is claiming
| they're doing it to us? The abuser is suddenly claiming
| we are the symmetric victim? Fishy story.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Great for them. And I guess you are going to tell me
| China's fentanyl production and export to the west is in
| revenge for the opium war that happened in the 19th
| century?
|
| This has been going on since 2019, fent took over long
| before the USA left Afghanistan and the Taliban retook
| control again over poppy production (they were effective
| at exporting before, so who knows what is going on right
| now). My guess is that that market doesn't exist anymore
| and illicit drugs are controlled by cheap imports of fent
| from China.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Unlikely. If the precursors are being produced in China,
| it's just capitalism at work. They don't need to do this
| kind of stuff, their economic growth is double ours. They
| just need to mind their house and the world will change
| in their favor.
|
| > My guess is that that market doesn't exist anymore and
| illicit drugs are controlled by cheap imports of fent
| from China.
|
| That's an interesting take.
|
| EDIT: I am reading some reporting on this.
|
| It seems according to mainstream accounts, most fentanyl
| is allegedly produced in Mexico from Chinese precursors.
| It is further added that a significant or all of these
| precursors are difficult to interdict because they are
| used for making ordinary consumer items.
|
| "Seizing the precursor chemicals that traffickers need is
| extremely difficult. Many are used to make basic goods,
| such as medicines, pesticides and soap."
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive
| /20...
|
| So one interpretation could be (requiring a more thorough
| investigation of the precursors list) that China simply
| produces ordinary bulk chemicals used for many purposes
| and sends them to people that buy them.
| GabensIntern wrote:
| Akamai is also a CDN that [works for domain fronting][1], which
| is an amazingly reliable way to get around the Chinese Firewall
| via [Collateral Freedom][2].
|
| Tor's meek used Azure for domain fronting.
|
| Akamai likely faced some pressure from the govt because of this.
|
| [1]:
| https://github.com/vysecurity/DomainFrontingLists/blob/maste...
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_freedom
| dilyevsky wrote:
| With fastly stopping df last year and cloudflare a while before
| that it seems like tor/snowflake options are dwindling fast
| eh_why_not wrote:
| _> All current China CDN customers must complete the transition
| to our Partners' solution by June 30, 2026..._
|
| Can anyone here who works in the field shed some light on why it
| takes a whole 1.5 years for such a change to take effect?
|
| What's involved in a CDN transition that can't be done in, say, 6
| months?
| jpollock wrote:
| Vendor validation alone can take months, and that's before you
| start the technical process of migrating.
|
| This is a company who is in front of your business, do you
| trust them?
|
| I expect a lot of businesses will take the opportunity to send
| the contract out for tender.
| wafflerewire wrote:
| My enterprise sized day job is an Akamai customer. Nothing in
| China directly so we won't be directly impacted.
|
| As a hypothetical, if we got told that we had to switch
| providers to stay in a region, we'd need to rebuild pipelines,
| EdgeWorkers, edge caching rules, origin routing configurations
| and probably more I'm not aware of. Plus testing all of those
| changes in a non-breaking way across the entire enterprise.
| Along with all the normal business delivery priorities.
|
| It'd probably take a solid year for us to fully execute it.
| viraptor wrote:
| There's also a finance process. Akamai deals mostly with
| enterprise customers, which means step 1 may be technical
| validation, but step 2 is negotiating an appropriate contract
| with another provider, which may take weeks on its own
| without a clear go/no-go answer in the meantime.
| biesnecker wrote:
| This. People tend not to realize how sprawling enterprise
| software stacks tend to be, how many implicit dependencies
| have to be untangled, etc. Even simple things can take years
| and complicated things often just don't get done at all.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Sounds fragile and pretty exposed.
|
| (Also a complete layman here)
| remus wrote:
| I don't think it's particularly fragile. Big systems have
| big dependencies, and moving those dependencies takes time
| if you want to minimise risk.
| freedomben wrote:
| It's actually the opposite. I thought the same thing before
| working in big enterprise though so I definitely understand
| how you could think that.
|
| In reality everything takes 10x longer because things are
| done in a very thorough way and typically with significant
| redundancy (high availability). The code bases are
| typically shite and personally I'd rather eat nails than
| work on them, but they are reasonably well tested and
| changes are typically done very conservatively. Big
| enterprise devs are also really good at not breaking
| production. As much as I detest that environment, I do
| think startups in general could learn a great deal about
| not breaking production from the big enterprise people.
| n144q wrote:
| No, quite the opposite. Big companies likely also have
| other big(ger) companies as partners/customers, all of
| which want stableness and see things keep working.
| Therefore companies need careful planning, execution and
| testing to ensure there is minimal disruption.
|
| Startups and a certain company can move fast and break
| things. But not everyone can do this.
| Aissen wrote:
| It's specifically because Akamai wants to preserve its
| reputation amongst enterprise customers paying $$$ that it's
| giving such a big delay. And I can predict it won't be enough
| for many.
| freedomben wrote:
| No doubt there be a lot of companies who don't finish until
| nearly the end. Barring legal reasons, I'm guessing there
| will actually be an extension because enough corps won't be
| ready at that point. Also would expect Akamai to offer
| extended support beyond that date (for a significant cost) on
| a customer by customer basis.
| pyb wrote:
| Anything less would be throwing your customers under the bus.
|
| Of course there are well known companies out there closing
| services with a only couple months notice ; but that's not an
| example to follow.
| pfraze wrote:
| Also consider that every company has their existing roadmap.
| Getting the work scheduled can be difficult.
| j45 wrote:
| Internet and CDNs has unique restrictions and requirements in
| China.
|
| Not everyone will want to play ball.
| animitronix wrote:
| Good, no US company should have ever been doing business in China
| xyst wrote:
| Does this also mean exploiting their cheap/slave labor for
| manufacturing and importing materials is also off the table?
|
| Very naive to think the incoming US administration would do
| anything to help the middle class. He sold voters as "America
| first", yet his actions speak for the billionaire class.
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