[HN Gopher] Germany to ban Huawei from future 6G network
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Germany to ban Huawei from future 6G network
        
       Author : teleforce
       Score  : 164 points
       Date   : 2025-11-14 17:19 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
        
       | jusonce56789 wrote:
       | Well, people will buy Huawei routers at home anyway.
        
         | wnevets wrote:
         | Is that commonplace in Germany?
        
           | mschuster91 wrote:
           | Sadly yes, cheap crap tends to be Huawei. Everyone with a
           | modicum of technical understanding goes for a Fritzbox
           | though.
        
             | looofooo0 wrote:
             | I do Openwrt on my HP
        
             | hopelite wrote:
             | I'm not familiar with the Huawei matter because it's
             | similar not something I have to concern myself with, but
             | can you point to something specific or a place where I
             | could get some facts on why Huawei is justifiably frowned
             | upon?
             | 
             | I have never seen anything but the various broad claims in
             | the news and by politicians that seem to always just kind
             | of come down to "China bad" as evidence. Maybe I just
             | didn't care enough to notice, but I would have thought that
             | if there was something real to how Huawei hardware will
             | make the sky fall, the powers that be would have surely
             | made that case with clear and irrefutable proof.
             | 
             | Thanks for providing anything you might be able to point me
             | towards that goes beyond "China bad", regardless of how
             | anyone feels about China.
        
               | mschuster91 wrote:
               | > I'm not familiar with the Huawei matter because it's
               | similar not something I have to concern myself with, but
               | can you point to something specific or a place where I
               | could get some facts on why Huawei is justifiably frowned
               | upon?
               | 
               | Try to use their routers as someone with needs greater
               | than "get into the internet". Their UI is horribly slow
               | and clunky, you'll need to reboot them every few months
               | because something hangs itself and about every year or
               | two they manage to get 0wned by a wormable exploit. On
               | top of that, analyses have shown their firmware to be
               | utterly rancid [1], although I do admit that this
               | analysis is six years old.
               | 
               | > Maybe I just didn't care enough to notice, but I would
               | have thought that if there was something real to how
               | Huawei hardware will make the sky fall, the powers that
               | be would have surely made that case with clear and
               | irrefutable proof.
               | 
               | The thing Western politicians are afraid of is running
               | into another scenario like in the early days of the
               | Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Viasat was hacked by
               | the Russians leading to serious outages [2], or that the
               | equipment - particularly anything with radios attached -
               | can be "remote bricked" similar to how Israel detonated
               | Hezbollah's pagers. It's bad enough we can't be sure that
               | _our own_ equipment is reasonably secure from cyber
               | attacks, but Huawei is a complete blackbox. We need to
               | prepare for a war scenario with China, either directly
               | (the worst case), but at the very least as a side effect
               | of an invasion of Taiwan. In either case I expect the CCP
               | to behave like Mossad, cripple us piece by piece.
               | 
               | Even if the CCP never decides to invade Taiwan, it still
               | makes sense to refuse their companies entry into our
               | markets as long as our companies aren't welcome in
               | theirs. I am a big friend of reciprocity and China hasn't
               | given us much.
               | 
               | On top of that, Huawei was under fire for alleged
               | sanctions violations and IP theft [3].
               | 
               | [1] https://www.securityweek.com/many-potential-
               | backdoors-found-...
               | 
               | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viasat_hack
               | 
               | [3] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/13/hu
               | awei-ne...
        
               | heinternets wrote:
               | Look at the Wikipedia article "criticism of Huawei" for a
               | massive list of IP theft, espionage, backdoors and more,
               | including references.
        
               | MangoToupe wrote:
               | None of this really backs up the idea of "cheap crap",
               | though, or really concerns me as a consumer. Hell, if
               | anything "IP theft" sounds like "competitive product" to
               | my ear. May we all live to see an explosion of IP
               | "theft".
        
               | vasac wrote:
               | They even manage to steal IP before the original inventor
               | actually invents it. Imagine that.
        
             | iso1631 wrote:
             | I've only encountered a fritzbox in Germany, it's amazing
             | how ubiquitous they are in Germany, yet so unknown
             | elsewhere in Europe let alone elsewhere.
        
         | pelasaco wrote:
         | TBH the solar stack from Huawei, Slim modular batteries and
         | Inverter are pretty solid.
         | https://solar.huawei.com/en/products/luna2000-5-10-15-s0/
        
       | juliusceasar wrote:
       | Better late than never.
       | 
       | China has so many anti-Foreigner laws for doing business in
       | China.
       | 
       | West has made China rich and powerful in exchange for cheap
       | labour.
        
         | NoiseBert69 wrote:
         | I'd more say: they made clear rules if you want to play
         | business in China.
         | 
         | Europe never set any boundaries. Honestly our fault.
        
           | lazyeye wrote:
           | Our leaders in the West have been very naive. Also the
           | Chinese "elite capture" program has been very effective.
        
             | croes wrote:
             | You mean old we-don't-care-bout-human-and-environmental-
             | rights trick?
             | 
             | Let's face it, nobody would care if China just would be a
             | subordinate receiver of orders.
             | 
             | As soon they became a competitor there was a problem
        
               | jajuuka wrote:
               | And that is the core contention for the anti-China
               | rhetoric. That they are a competitor. There are a billion
               | and one reasons people say they don't like China, but the
               | core issue is competition.
        
               | dragonelite wrote:
               | China was suppose to become a giant sweatshop which would
               | be allowed to gain subsistence wealth. Just enough to
               | produce and consume western product but not wealthy
               | enough to ever outgrow their station in the world.
        
               | like_any_other wrote:
               | > As soon they became a competitor there was a problem
               | 
               | Was there? It seems to me trade and offshoring continued
               | even after they became a competitor. And then continued
               | after they strong-armed Western corporations to invest in
               | China [1], destroyed Western corporations through
               | espionage [2,3], or through subsidy-enabled dumping
               | prices and preferential treatment [4,4.1], after they
               | extracted groveling apologies from Western firms [5], and
               | after they started operating literal police stations on
               | Western soil [6], while turning Western countries into
               | subordinate receivers of orders [7,8].
               | 
               | I guess you were hoping your framing would guilt people
               | into not seeing the threat?
               | 
               | [1] _Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement
               | worth more than $275 billion with Chinese officials,
               | promising that Apple would help to develop China's
               | economy and technological capabilities_ -
               | https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/apple-ceo-tim-cook-
               | secr...
               | 
               | [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33758673
               | 
               | [3] https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-
               | chinese-milita...
               | 
               | [4] https://www.dw.com/en/from-solar-to-evs-how-china-is-
               | overpro...
               | 
               | [4.1] _EU: Anti-dumping probe into China solar panels_ -
               | https://apnews.com/general-
               | news-e16007adf4bd468d9acf849734d2...
               | 
               | [5] _Mercedes-Benz apologizes to Chinese for quoting
               | Dalai Lama_ - https://www.reuters.com/article/us-
               | mercedes-benz-china-gaffe...
               | 
               | [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_police_overseas
               | _servic...
               | 
               | [7] _FIPA agreement with China: What 's really in it for
               | Canada?_ - https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/fipa-agreement-
               | with-china-wha...
               | 
               | [8] _Posters depicting Hong Kong protests removed by
               | Massey University within 12 hours_ -
               | https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/116723925/posters-
               | depicting...
        
           | tharne wrote:
           | The only rule the Chinese play by is, "It's only immoral if
           | you get caught".
        
             | coliveira wrote:
             | I thought this law was invented by American business.
        
               | earthnail wrote:
               | The Germans invented that too. That's why the label Made
               | In Germany exists:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_Germany
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | American business has this law:
               | 
               | "if your business practices are not immoral, then you're
               | not doing it right!"
        
           | ta12653421 wrote:
           | Well, as European, i have to clearly state - unfortunately -
           | this is only because of what happened in the 20th century:
           | WWII. This "event" changed somehow the psychology, not
           | allowing the EU to "stand up straight with our shoulders
           | back".
           | 
           | Unfortunately. With around 500m customers, we could be
           | powerful. But we arent: Stumbling upon our own feeds.
        
             | earthnail wrote:
             | The countries that comprise the EU had been among the
             | biggest warmongers for centuries. The EU is the most
             | successful peace project the continent has ever seen. And
             | the reason for that is that every country refrained from
             | trying to be a superpower on the continent.
             | 
             | The European mentality has real, tangible upsides for its
             | continent. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well in a larger
             | world where other actors don't share the same experience
             | and values.
             | 
             | Just wanted to put that into perspective.
        
           | juliusceasar wrote:
           | Now EU is making clear rules against China. EU should apply
           | exactly the same laws against Chinese like Chinese do against
           | foreigners.
           | 
           | China shouldn't complain, especially don't bitch about
           | racism.
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | > especially don't bitch about racism.
             | 
             | The "most racist" places are typically the most diverse and
             | most multicultural. They have more exposed tissue than
             | places where minorities make up single digit percentage
             | points, so you see injustices more often in these places.
             | And it follows that it gets reported on at volume.
             | 
             | By that same coin, these places also have more friendly
             | interactions by volume than places without diverse racial
             | makeups. You just don't see that reported because it's not
             | news.
             | 
             | America, "racist", simply has a very diverse population.
             | 
             | The American South, "racist against Black people", simply
             | has the nation's largest population of Black people almost
             | to the point the racial makeup is bimodal.
             | 
             | Texas, "racist against Latinos", - same thing.
             | 
             | You see the bad apples, but you don't see the overwhelming
             | degree to which society works with people together in a
             | melting pot.
             | 
             | I grew up in the South, where every second person is Black.
             | I fly to SF where there are barely any Black people at all
             | and have dinner conversations with people calling my region
             | racist. Sometimes the people saying these things grew up in
             | all-white cities in New England. I have to laugh inside.
        
             | izacus wrote:
             | That's the same emotional dumb thought process that is
             | sending US economy into tailspin with traiffs.
        
           | like_any_other wrote:
           | > they made clear rules if you want to play business in
           | China.
           | 
           | Not really:
           | 
           | https://www.hudson.org/technology/china-ignores-rule-of-
           | law-...
           | 
           |  _Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement worth
           | more than $275 billion with Chinese officials, promising that
           | Apple would help to develop China's economy and technological
           | capabilities_ - https://www.macrumors.com/2021/12/07/apple-
           | ceo-tim-cook-secr...
        
         | anonporridge wrote:
         | The rise of China has done a lot to destroy the neoliberal,
         | globalist dream.
         | 
         | Letting them cheat the globalist system (e.g. violating IP
         | laws, human rights violations, Uyghur/Tibetan genocide) may
         | have been fine when they were desperately poor, but there was
         | always an implicit assumption that they would eventually start
         | playing by the rules and culturally liberalize. But they're
         | not. How can we hold onto ideals like "diversity is our
         | strength" and open borders are good when China is kicking ass
         | and threatening the balance of power as an insular ethnostate
         | with one of the lowest rates of immigrants on the planet?
         | 
         | And now they're growing to a power level that threatens to
         | rival the US and its authority to police this global system
         | we've created. That isn't stable, and the west would be insane
         | to not shut China out and take a step back from our open,
         | globalist ideals until we sort out this geopolitical game of
         | thrones.
        
           | jquery wrote:
           | No, just no. I get where you're coming from, but I disagree
           | in the strongest terms that copying China is the way forward.
           | Closed, centralized models can scale quickly, as China did,
           | but open models generate more frontier innovation and
           | resilience. Iirc, nearly half of our unicorns have immigrant
           | founders.
           | 
           | Sure, let's harden IP and other trade laws, and punish China
           | for violations (start treating them as an adult, a nation
           | peer, instead of a rowdy child). But giving up our strategic
           | advantage because China was able to semi-copy-us without
           | having that advantage would be a huge mistake imo. I'm not
           | saying America doesn't need major changes, but I don't think
           | the way forward is to close our borders to global talent.
           | Instead, let's take advantage of our superpower status to
           | implement UHC and UBI, to make our nation even more
           | attractive to talented immigrants.
        
             | ta12653421 wrote:
             | this is what most WEIRD people do not understand: (Western-
             | Educated-Industrial-Rich-Democratic) - by today it looks
             | like that the Chinese system may proof to be more
             | "performant" on most/several (all?) levels. Its hard to
             | accept for libertarian minds, i guess.
             | 
             | Once here on HN someone wrote like: "democratic systems
             | seems to be too slow to adapt in world changing at our
             | current speed".
             | 
             | China did some vey wise decisions from their perspective;
             | think about this joint-venture thingy that foreign
             | companies need to have a JV partner which always holds at
             | least 50.1% - very clever! Why did no western state do
             | this? Its one of the by far smartest decision that you
             | could do.
        
               | filloooo wrote:
               | This JV obssession is weird, China basically admitted
               | that they can never compete on ICE cars and bet on EVs
               | instead, either this JV model doesn't actually work or
               | what was transferred do not have much value.
               | 
               | Now people claim they stole their IPs through JVs and
               | that's why they are good at making EVs, this theory
               | doesn't add up.
               | 
               | Also, what China offered is a vast untapped market, no
               | one forced these companies to go to China to set up JVs
               | and start picking up gold down the street, this was way
               | before WTO and China was not at all obligated to open
               | it's market, let alone for free.
               | 
               | Now ask one question, what the EU has to offer to "force"
               | China to set up JVs? Guaranteed billion dollars profit?
               | 
               | EU car market is crowded and full of incumbents, Chinese
               | cars represent a low single digit market share despite
               | the weekly "China is taking over the EU car market" news
               | article.
        
               | ta12653421 wrote:
               | As said: They made clever decissions while the greedy
               | western company went into their trap :-)
        
               | CMay wrote:
               | China bet on EVs because of national security. China has
               | less reliable access to oil than many other countries and
               | the US can choke off delivery of oil to China through
               | bottlenecks if it comes to war. Investing in solar, wind
               | and nuclear makes sense in their predicament. "Green
               | energy" and "saving the planet" are secondary and mostly
               | marketing by comparison.
               | 
               | Countries hitting their industrialization stride have a
               | bloom of real world applicable talent that they can
               | direct to these things in a way that is a little harder
               | for others. Especially when you have a huge population.
        
               | seanmcdirmid wrote:
               | It isn't just the US, Russia has oil and shares a land
               | border with China. However, Russia isn't always friendly
               | with China, nor is the middle east, and anyways, it just
               | seems like a headache to deal with them + the petro
               | dollar when they have plenty of energy to tap at home.
               | 
               | Air pollution was also a huge problem, aside from
               | national security. China's empahsis on STEM and the fact
               | that they've been a huge source of
               | engineering/science/tech talent meant China could just
               | tap its own human resources rather than making them go
               | abroad for decent jobs. The fact that they also know how
               | to build things and have set up all the infra for that is
               | just another bonus.
               | 
               | China is willing to play ball in less developed
               | countries, and the deals they setup is not just Chinese
               | companies coming in and dominating the market, they are
               | also partnering with and trying to raise local companies
               | as well. That won't work in Europe or the US, at least
               | for now.
        
               | Zigurd wrote:
               | Remember 10 foot tall Ivan? Apart from eugenics
               | experiments on the basketball court, neither are the
               | Chinese. In light of gross over-spending on showcase
               | infrastructure projects, and overbuilding housing where
               | people don't want to live, over-praising the CCP's system
               | for training and promoting leaders is not going to make
               | assessments of China more accurate.
        
               | jquery wrote:
               | I agree that our system (America's, specifically) is too
               | slow, but it's not inherent to democracy, it's the fact
               | we only have elections every few years, because these
               | rules were written in the 1700s when holding an election
               | / voting in an election was difficult. No snap elections
               | when the government is about to shut down (would've
               | prevented all the nonsense of the last month and a half).
               | 
               | This isn't cope. China has virtually no cultural exports
               | of note compared to its size, except some gacha games
               | (that are still mainly voiced in Japanese, which does
               | have cultural exports). Every time I visit, I have to
               | accept that my internet is going to be ridiculously
               | unreliable and throttled and flaky.
               | 
               | I'm not saying China is "wrong", but it's not the obvious
               | winner to me. Nor is it to my Chinese-born spouse who
               | moved here for the greater opportunities and freedom.
        
               | ta12653421 wrote:
               | >>China has virtually no cultural exports of note
               | compared to its size,
               | 
               | ++1
        
           | coliveira wrote:
           | So this shows how much the West considers liberalism and open
           | markets to be its "values" when they throw that completely
           | away when they're economically threatened. This tells me that
           | in hardship is when people show their true colors. The money
           | is the true "value", everything else is just a side show.
        
             | anonporridge wrote:
             | No, it's just game theory.
             | 
             | When you're playing prisoner's dilemma games, and your co-
             | player is consistently defecting, you can only play
             | cooperate for so long. Tit for tat is the only way you
             | don't get majorly screwed by the defector over time.
        
             | dragonelite wrote:
             | Its quiet easy to understand, you can be liberal and free
             | so long as wealth keeps flowing into your part of the
             | world. What are you going to do make fun of becoming more
             | wealthier.
             | 
             | The liberalism and freedom stops once too much money flows
             | out of your part of the world, hence companies like
             | palantir popping up like mushrooms. No one likes to be made
             | fun of when they are in a declining trajectory.
        
           | croes wrote:
           | > Letting them cheat the globalist system
           | 
           | They didn't cheat, we did.
           | 
           | China didn't force the west to make them their workbench.
           | 
           | China isn't the first authoritarian country the western
           | industry loved as workforce.
           | 
           | No human wasn't a negative, it was one of the main selling
           | points.
        
           | roenxi wrote:
           | But the IP laws are visibly stupid, their role in the system
           | is prevent success stories like China where some plucky
           | upstart vaults to the forefront of the industrial world and
           | drags a billion people out of poverty. The response to China
           | achieving such success by ignoring IP laws should be to
           | recognise the laws have been disasters and then to release
           | the limits worst of the limits they impose on Western
           | innovators.
           | 
           | A huge part of the software industry is there because of
           | explicit GPL-style agreements defang the intent of IP laws
           | while working inside the legal requirements they impose. The
           | west should allow good ideas to be deployed in its own
           | industrial processes.
        
       | avipars wrote:
       | https://archive.li/18QJs
        
       | daneel_w wrote:
       | Good. Don't forget their incredibly affordable and attractive
       | smartphones and the fact that they have almost completely
       | captured the market for cellular transceiver chips used in USB
       | mobile modems, both of which are excellent products for espionage
       | and weaponization just like their cellular network equipment.
        
         | immibis wrote:
         | If secure phones were legal, we'd be treating the modem chip as
         | part of the hostile network - the application processor would
         | encrypt all data before sending it.
        
       | RobotToaster wrote:
       | And use American Cisco equipment with definitely no NSA backdoors
       | instead?
        
         | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
         | That is called being on the other side of an airtight hatch
         | (h/t Raymond Chen)
         | 
         | The US has troops, tanks, aircraft, even nuclear weapons
         | stationed in German.
         | 
         | Sovereignty vis-a-vis the United States is not something on the
         | table.
        
         | daneel_w wrote:
         | It's an east vs west thing.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | At the current rate the US will become an "even further
           | east".
        
             | jabron wrote:
             | What does this even mean?
        
               | exasperaited wrote:
               | What it means is that in the future Europe will have to
               | consider a Trumpist USA to be like a 21st Century version
               | of a totalitarian Eastern Bloc or Soviet country:
               | Orbanism, absurd projectionism, dangerous allies, the
               | state demanding a share of businesses and directing sales
               | and mergers, openly describing the EU (and now the UK) as
               | not friends or even as enemies, trumped up prosecutions
               | of political enemies, assuming that foreign surveillance
               | is built into its products, etc.
               | 
               | Some of these things are already here.
        
           | dragonelite wrote:
           | More like west vs rest of the world. Its cold war round 2 but
           | this time its the west that is starting to hide behind a
           | iron/cyber wall.
        
             | neko_ranger wrote:
             | lmao China is already in a cyber wall. What's wrong with
             | building defenses if your opponent already has? What have
             | they built the defenses for?
        
         | ojl wrote:
         | I guess they will use Ericsson and Nokia equipment instead.
        
         | izacus wrote:
         | More expensive US Cisco equipment, at least Trump will be happy
         | for it.
        
         | culi wrote:
         | The article states that they're pushing for independence from
         | American tech as well
        
       | jiehong wrote:
       | Which company will design and make 6G telco hardware in Germany?
       | 
       | I guess it will be 3/4/5G for a while, until they can someday
       | cover the country just barely, and then 6G a decade and half
       | later than everyone else (or is it by giving up sovereignty by
       | buying US stuff instead?)
       | 
       | Sorry for being hopeless, but Germany has been very good at
       | proving its inability to fix telco issues (or its train
       | issues...).
        
         | sabjut wrote:
         | Both Nokia (Finland) and Ericsson (Sweden) are great european
         | alternatives. There is no need to reinvent the wheel in every
         | EU country.
        
           | PeterStuer wrote:
           | Both Nokia and Ericsson have substantial Blackrock and
           | Vanguard investment.
        
             | nemomarx wrote:
             | blackrock and vanguard do index funds, yeah? They have
             | substantial investments in everything on the market that's
             | doing well enough to get on indexes. I don't see how you
             | can avoid that?
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | Of course, that's the whole plan. The thing about index
               | funds people don't see is they're giving away the voting
               | rights to institutions controlled by who knows...
        
               | culi wrote:
               | Both Nokia and Ericson are owned over 10% by
               | Blackrock+Vanguard
        
         | filloooo wrote:
         | This is retaliation for China recently phasing out European
         | gears, which should be expected after Europe already banned
         | Chinese gears in effect.
         | 
         | China for years has been allocating a share of the market to
         | European gears, considering their domestic offerings are much
         | cheaper, this was basically a reciprocal gesture, but it's not
         | needed now for neither side.
         | 
         | Germany has been reluctant to completely remove its Huawei
         | gears, but now that German cars are losing ground in China,
         | they probably felt it's time to make the move.
        
       | tonetegeatinst wrote:
       | I know some open 5G hardware project exists as I read about it
       | about a month ago.
       | 
       | However I wonder if that will remain true with 6G, or if it will
       | even be affordable.
        
       | mannanj wrote:
       | Why 6g? who asked for it? I am content with 4g, 5g was a push as
       | it was.
        
         | daneel_w wrote:
         | You and I are content with it, but these standards were never
         | really about our individual and immediate experiences. It's
         | about concurrent capacity for the growing grid as a whole.
        
           | Krasnol wrote:
           | The grid must grow!
        
             | kmeisthax wrote:
             | It's Bieber 6G Fever!
        
         | Zigurd wrote:
         | Unless you live in an urban environment where millimeter wave
         | is competently deployed, you should curb your contentment with
         | 5G. 6G sounds like a distraction from the lack of full 5G
         | capabilities in most places.
        
       | PeterStuer wrote:
       | They are not wrong, but will they also ban Cisco in their
       | "Sovereignty Push"?
        
         | anonporridge wrote:
         | Why should they?
         | 
         | The United States honors international IP law and doesn't cheat
         | its way into threatening domestic production of other countries
         | like China does.
        
           | tharne wrote:
           | > Why should they?
           | 
           | Because bashing all things American while ignoring the threat
           | posed by China is part of Europe's cultural DNA.
        
             | anonporridge wrote:
             | Ditto Russia.
        
             | fleischhauf wrote:
             | laughs in unhinged head of state that imposes arbitrary
             | tarrifs on half of the world and mistakes dementia test for
             | IQ test, says it's difficult
        
           | hiimkeks wrote:
           | https://archive.is/tDC0W
           | 
           | https://archive.is/IQyBG
           | 
           | and this was before the US elected an overt fascist
        
           | coliveira wrote:
           | > doesn't cheat its way into threatening domestic production
           | of other countries
           | 
           | Can you still say this with a straight face with everything
           | that is coming from Washington?
        
           | steve1977 wrote:
           | Mentioning Cisco the context of honoring IP is a bit ironic:
           | http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/cisco.html
        
           | input_sh wrote:
           | > The United States honors international IP law
           | 
           | May I introduce you to a somewhat recent concept people like
           | to call AI.
        
           | thewebguyd wrote:
           | Cisco complied with the NSA PRISM program (Snowden leaks) and
           | were putting hardware backdoors in their hardware on request
           | from the NSA, for hardware that was destined for overseas.
           | 
           | Sounds pretty untrustworthy to me.
        
             | wil421 wrote:
             | So did the EU intelligence agencies and governments. You
             | just route traffic through your neighbor so they spy for
             | you and you do the same for them.
        
           | kataklasm wrote:
           | Ah yes, the country that has perfected industrial
           | espionage...
           | https://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/960011/trans-
           | atlant...
        
         | esbranson wrote:
         | No. In the 2019 EU 5G Risk Assessment and the 2020 5G Toolbox,
         | EU regulators gave three reasons why no US vendors triggered
         | the "high-risk supplier" designation: US vendors weren't
         | building the 5G core in Europe; EU regulators concluded that US
         | law does allow compelled cooperation but accompanied by
         | independent courts, adversarial process, and statutory limits;
         | and no European regulator found technical-assurance failures in
         | US vendors comparable to Huawei's.
         | 
         | If you don't like what the EU Commission is doing, you can vote
         | them out. (Just kidding, no you can't.)
        
       | 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
       | Is 6G even a thing? From either a bandwidth demand perspective or
       | a financial perspective? Every US wireless service just about
       | bankrupted themselves rolling out 5G.
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | Bandwidth demand is very much there...
         | 
         | My connection is 1.5 Gbits at 3am, but at peak time (7pm) I'm
         | lucky to get 10 Mbits.
         | 
         | My network needs more capacity, and if 6G can offer it cheaper
         | than building 5x more 5G masts, that's the route they'll have
         | to take.
        
           | 9cb14c1ec0 wrote:
           | I guess you must live in a much more heavily populated
           | environment than I do. For myself, I'm still trying to figure
           | out remote 5G IOT connectivity that doesn't require $1k in
           | hardware. Non-consumer-grade 5G hardware is incredibly
           | expensive still, which is why we are still deploying new 4G
           | stuff.
        
         | throw0101c wrote:
         | > _Is 6G even a thing?_
         | 
         | Currently being researched:
         | 
         | > _6G aims to achieve higher data rates, lower latency, and
         | greater energy efficiency than 5G.[8] Planned advances include
         | new air interface designs, improved coding and modulation, and
         | reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.[9] Research also explores
         | integration with satellite, Wi-Fi, and non-terrestrial
         | networks, as well as distributed edge computing for AR, VR, and
         | AI applications.[10]_
         | 
         | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6G
        
           | Zigurd wrote:
           | 5G is a thing (5Ge excepted). 6G is aspirational and
           | recycling use cases that go all the way back to 3G, like
           | telesurgery. It's going to stay aspirational at least until
           | 5G millimeter wave really works and can be widely deployed.
           | 
           | "According to the NGMN Alliance, 6G development should focus
           | on demonstrable user needs and avoid unnecessary replacement
           | of existing 5G radio access network equipment."
        
       | Incipient wrote:
       | I don't get why Huawei gets specific hate? Shouldn't this equally
       | apply to all Chinese vendors? I wouldn't expect any are less
       | susceptible to government control?
        
         | zweifuss wrote:
         | ZTE is also under scrutiny. The reason it's only Huawei and ZTE
         | is that other Chinese providers are so insignificant that the
         | telecoms will likely be able to replace the infrastructure
         | themselves with spares or consolidation. However, in an
         | emergency, the government would have to foot the bill for
         | replacing Huawei/ZTE systems quickly, as the telecoms couldn't
         | finance this and lack of capacity would mean very high prices.
        
         | esbranson wrote:
         | Huawei simply accumulated a much more court-defensible paper
         | trail--dominant presence, documented code issues, clearer
         | evidence of state leverage, and heavier export-control
         | exposure.
        
         | ge96 wrote:
         | Nortel
        
         | culi wrote:
         | Isn't the same true for American tech companies?
        
         | applied_heat wrote:
         | Huawei is often blamed for stealing information from Nortel
         | that led to Nortel's bankruptcy, both information about deals
         | being made that let Huawei undercut them and technical product
         | details that allowed Huawei to more easily be a substitute for
         | Nortel products
        
       | kwanbix wrote:
       | Nice, in 2025, the world is a place where China can not be
       | trusted, Russia can not be trusted, USA can not be trusted,
       | Europe can not be trusted, etc.
       | 
       | We are very far from the "imagine all the people, living live in
       | peace". I wonder why that is...
        
         | deepsun wrote:
         | Nice how you put them all on one row.
         | 
         | How Isaac Asimov said in "Relativity of wrong":
         | 
         | "When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When
         | people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if
         | you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong
         | as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than
         | both of them put together".
        
         | peterlk wrote:
         | I'm working my way through "The End of the World is Just the
         | Beginning", and the main thesis is that everyone is preparing
         | for demographic collapse. Global populations are declining
         | almost everywhere, and this breaks the current global order.
         | For example, what does the Chinese economy look like when all
         | the people subject to the one child policy retire? What are the
         | knock on effects of labor becoming more expensive almost
         | everywhere? Can immigration solve this problem? What about the
         | cultural friction of mass immigration? What happens to the
         | places that everyone emigrates from?
         | 
         | The book basically argues that a significant amount of the
         | world is headed for destabilization, and a destabilized world
         | involves a lot less trust.
         | 
         | Side note: personally, I find the writing style and general
         | tone to be hyperbolic, but some of the analysis is interesting.
        
           | ferguess_k wrote:
           | I think we are already seeing this happening as it is not
           | rocket science. US is not willing to be the world police
           | anymore, because it is more and more expensive and some of
           | the elites and many ordinary people feel that they are not
           | gaining much as return.
           | 
           | So this left and is going to leave a lot of power gaps around
           | the globes, and regional wars are picking up paces.
           | 
           | China is not particularly happy about this, because it is not
           | ready and perhaps don't even want to be the next world
           | police. US has always wanted China to share the
           | responsibility but China is hesitant, which is
           | understandable. Plus most of the people in China do not want
           | a destabilized world, for now.
           | 
           | What I'd expect that China will gradually lose steam
           | (actually people on HN already observed since like 10 years
           | ago) when the people born in the 1970s/1980s retire. The
           | officials who are resistant to the idea of expansion (because
           | it damages their power base) are going to retire then. I'd
           | expect the world to be a LOT hotter then. So that's about
           | 2030-2040 and might come a bit earlier as the other players
           | are already moving the pieces(e.g. Russia).
           | 
           | Not sure how to prepare my family through that time, though.
           | I mean, it's just my guess, so my wife just rolls up her eye
           | and wants to buy more houses/stocks because "houses/stocks
           | always go up if you look at the chart". What I think is that
           | the whole economical-geopolitico logic is going to change
           | forever, and what is gone is gone for good. The next
           | globalization is maybe 50 years away but we will never see
           | it. From hindsight, I believe the 2008 financial crisis was
           | the turning points. They managed to drag it for another 20
           | years, which I send my kudos.
           | 
           | Again, just my guess. I have always wronged in the
           | pessimistic side so I hope I'm wrong this time again.
        
       | fodmap wrote:
       | On the other hand Spain is using Huawei servers for almost all of
       | their sensitive data. I wonder how the UE, and NATO, will react
       | to that, because they're using Huawei for Social Security data,
       | wiretapping data (SITEL), or even Intelligence Services data.
       | 
       | https://therecord.media/spain-awards-contracts-huawei-intell...
        
         | coliveira wrote:
         | And Spain will have 6G and all the niceties of telecom
         | technology, while Germany will be stuck forever on 5G.
        
         | amaccuish wrote:
         | I get why you do so, but the European Union is always shortened
         | to EU, not UE.
         | 
         | It would be as if I wrote a sentence, "The EWG was created by
         | the treaty of Rome in 1957".
         | 
         | What is EWG? Oh yes its the German abbreviation for the EEC.
         | But we're writing in English?
        
       | tchalla wrote:
       | > "We'll discuss with industry what we can do, not only to make
       | ourselves independent from China, but also for example
       | independent from the USA, independent from the big tech
       | companies," Merz said.
       | 
       | Good to know it's not just China.
       | 
       | > Merz ruled out fully decoupling from China, which is Germany's
       | second-biggest trading partner. "We can't do that," he said.
       | "China can't do that, but we can do it even less."
       | 
       | And even better to know that the move is practical and
       | understands who has the upper hand.
        
         | V__ wrote:
         | At the same time they are exploring the use of Palantir and
         | want to use more of Microsofts 365 cloud.
         | 
         | This is all just talk. Either there are very real security
         | concerns or someone lobbied heavily.
        
           | qwertox wrote:
           | This is the most incredible thing about it. As soon as
           | Palantir has a foot in the the door of the authorities, only
           | a disaster will be able to get them banned. And that disaster
           | is way past the point of all the citizen's data getting
           | collected and analyzed in real-time, because that's what our
           | authorities want: full insights.
        
         | coliveira wrote:
         | > Good to know it's not just China.
         | 
         | If you believe this I have a bridge to sell you. They're using
         | this to hide the real reason for the move, which is to do
         | Washington's bid, just like a good colony does.
        
           | tchalla wrote:
           | I won't be surprised if they do the Washington's bid. A few
           | years ago, they wouldn't even consider it. By the time we all
           | die, may be they will.
        
       | MangoToupe wrote:
       | So fun that the west is moving in a direction where we are
       | subject to all the negatives of both capitalism (wealth
       | consolidation) and socialism (lack of competition).
        
         | iso1631 wrote:
         | Unchecked capitalism inevitably leads to a lack of competition,
         | it's just a matter of who gets the benefits.
         | 
         | The west went wrong when it stopped checking capitalism
        
       | outside1234 wrote:
       | Wonder if this was one of the secret requirements Trump made to
       | avoid more draconian tariffs
        
       | rzerowan wrote:
       | Whose sovereignity though? And to replace it with what? As almost
       | all 6G kit builds on 5G kit which is at most 40% Huawei FRAND
       | patented.So whatever the path HW gets paid.
       | 
       | As an aside the whole OpenRAN debacle to replcae 5G kit seems to
       | have peterd out after the initial hype. This move also ignores
       | economies of scale - if the rest of the planet is on HW kit
       | lowerig cost even with razor thin margins.The opps Nokia/Ericsson
       | would either have to get massive subsidies to make financial
       | sense or have a worse cost/benefit ratio.
       | 
       | One thing that gets glossed over though , is that the end user
       | speeds/stability arent the main driver for 5/6G advancement (even
       | though thats where all the marketing hype went) of course mobile
       | device connectivity is growing and most users interaction online
       | is primarily mobile. The big draw use case is the industrial and
       | automation applications, where HW has a signifiant lead - from
       | autiomated ports that aut load/unload to automated 'dark
       | factories' that run without human intervention.Thats where the
       | 'real' application is. The other use case for end users most
       | likely will be in the autonomus cars and humanoid robots once
       | they take off to any significant degree.
       | 
       | The only other way to make up the requisite volume from such an
       | endeavor is one that Brussels was floating about a month ago. The
       | Global Gateway funds to assist developing countries will come
       | with ano HW clause.Might just be the final nail in the coffin in
       | EU efforts to retain friends and influence with the rest of the
       | planet.Whose main concern is living a modern life with the infra
       | not requiring you mortgage your childrens future.
        
         | paganel wrote:
         | > The Global Gateway funds to assist developing countries will
         | come with ano HW clause.
         | 
         | So they only want to "save" the Planet and its (presumably
         | poorer) people if said poorer people acquiesce with their
         | imperialistic reflexes, tale as old as time when it comes to
         | the West.
         | 
         | But not sure why would they need the Global South's money for
         | all of this? Aren't they, the magnificent West, big enough to
         | shoulder almost any costs? Especially when it comes to
         | "strategic" concerns. Or so they were saying.
        
           | rzerowan wrote:
           | The way most of these deals get structured especially when
           | multicorps get involved is requiring the donor gov to
           | guarantee the loan. Which gets routed to the recepient
           | country, kickbacks get shaved off and re-routed back to the
           | donor country. In this instance though my thinking is that
           | for competeive pricing they would need volume , and
           | prerequisite demand. This would be one way to generate that
           | demand.In a way similar to the whole Tariff circus just more
           | upfront.
        
         | CMay wrote:
         | You don't need a crazy fast connection for most of this
         | automation stuff, because it has to be able to operate offline
         | successfully to start with. Any dark factory should be running
         | on its own wireless network anyway, not some cellular network.
         | Who would do that? Even for a local wireless network, why would
         | a Huawei router be any better?
         | 
         | To me, this was never about 5G or 6G. This was always about CCP
         | controlled network hardware getting installed across the globe
         | taking advantage of a natural iterative next step in network
         | improvement which would be fine if the CCP wasn't absolutely
         | psycho and immoral, but they seem to be. I'm sure there are
         | many well-meaning and smart people who work at Huawei, but
         | unfortunately any advantage a Chinese company gets in a foreign
         | market becomes potentially leveraged as CCP advantage and
         | control.
         | 
         | Many countries leverage their companies abroad if something is
         | important enough, but few countries are as bold or blatant as
         | China in this regard. Nobody is worried about most of these
         | countries excessively abusing their influence abroad, because
         | most care about their reputation. China is basically untrusted
         | by all of its neighbors and doesn't seem to care about
         | authentic reputation over manipulation. To them, "harmony" just
         | seems like a way to misspell "control". Balance to them means
         | nothing if they aren't the center of gravity.
         | 
         | For as old and advanced as China has become, it discarded all
         | of its slow wisdom to be wrong as fast as possible. Can a
         | country like that really be trusted? No, it can't. There isn't
         | any country on Earth that can be trusted 100%, but the CCP is
         | just far below the threshold of even tolerable levels of trust.
         | 
         | There is nothing 5G or 6G provides that is worth letting the
         | CCP control your networks. Aside from just spying or hacking,
         | imagine World War 3 comes around and the CCP just decides it's
         | time to shut off all our networks? Trust is almost always more
         | important than speed.
        
           | throawayonthe wrote:
           | ignoring the weird moralizing about china, i think the parent
           | comment is indeed referring to factories etc running their
           | own 5G networks, that is very much a thing; ie aws used to
           | have a private 5g offering, there are some open source
           | projects, more that i can't remember
        
             | CMay wrote:
             | That's fair, I just don't see 5G or 6G being make-or-break
             | for any kinds of manufacturing. Do any examples exist where
             | this is the case?
        
           | rzerowan wrote:
           | To steelman some of the points ypuve posted >You don't need a
           | crazy fast connection for most of this automation stuff,
           | because it has to be able to operate offline successfully to
           | start with
           | 
           | As i mentioned youre looking at it as a consumer, this is
           | industrial systems.Its not about speed primarily but latency
           | - costs of deployment and maintainance.Your COTS router is
           | not being installed wher million dollar assembly lines are
           | operating, and for any serious business concern low
           | opex/capex are first and foremost as well as reproducibility
           | for expansion. KUKA robot arms are not being connected to
           | TPlink routers.Together with the nature of Just-In-Time
           | manufacturing , instant data for maintainance and logistics
           | is crucial. Ditto for the automated ports [1]
           | 
           | >There is nothing 5G or 6G provides that is worth letting the
           | CCP control your networks. Aside from just spying or hacking
           | 
           | The two standards are currently accelerating both consumer
           | and industrial changes worldwide.There are some networks in
           | GlobalSouth countries whose speed/latencies will rival even
           | those deployed in major US cities. Its a question of
           | leveraging future infrstructure for productivity and
           | improving living standards. As for espionage and hacking that
           | was stillthere even with dialup modems and fax machines.
           | 
           | Regarding countries using their leverage via multicorps
           | abroad , you really should read up on the US CLOUD act,
           | patriot act etc and cast a cursory glance at entities as
           | benign sounding as Nestle(child slaves in W.Africa)
           | Chiquita(Death Squads in S.America) PullMan Cigarettes (suing
           | to block ati cigaratte ads in SE.Asia) ,not adding historical
           | ones like Swiss CryptoAG. In short multicorps are immoral
           | profit extracting entities and on the global stage that act
           | sometimes directly with their parent county to further
           | whatever agandas they have. Thus far no Chinese companies
           | have been implicated in any such shenanigans - as im pretty
           | sure if it had happened it would be published about in banner
           | headlines 24/7/365.
           | 
           | As it stands all the accusations are simply alllegations of a
           | future scenario , which most people specify any sensible
           | person should be able to mitigate with good security
           | architecture and practices.
           | 
           | [1]https://govinsider.asia/intl-en/article/how-
           | huaweis-5g-solut...
        
         | LtdJorge wrote:
         | We could start treating Chinese patents with the same respect
         | they treated the rest of the world's, maybe.
        
       | dragonelite wrote:
       | This summer i was traveling through Germany and god fucking dam
       | their telecommunication infrastructure is just 3rd world tier, so
       | freaking bad. Constant signal loss, 5g was a rare sight etc.
        
       | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
       | All this is because they're afraid $COUNTRY inserted malware in
       | the chips, right? So industry can solve this. Make a device that
       | has all the hardware for networks, but without the chip. Make a
       | simple hardware standard for the chip interface. Publish the
       | standard.
       | 
       | Now any country can make a chip that plugs into the networking
       | device. Just buy your own country's spyware-laden chip, plug it
       | into the NID. Install your software in the NID, the same way
       | you'd install Linux on an AMD vs Intel computer. Works for PCs;
       | it can work for routers (they're all just computers). Choose open
       | source or an expensive proproprietary OS. Choose open hardware or
       | proprietary hardware. Let people assemble them from parts so they
       | can choose their level of surveillance-avoidance.
       | 
       | And you're done. No more banning entire manufacturers; just ban
       | those specific kinds of chips, but buy the cheap chinese hardware
       | sans-chips. Feels a lot more sustainable than global instability
       | and trade wars over what is essentially just a lack of design.
       | 
       | (I'm aware how specialized router hw/sw is, I worked for Cisco
       | once upon a time. but it can all be abstracted. it's just not in
       | the interest of corporate profits to do so; but at this point, i
       | think ramping down the china-phobia and stabilizing trade is a
       | bigger concern)
        
       | hereme888 wrote:
       | Amazing to read in a site full of devs and cybersecurity experts
       | how willing they are to use Huawei's tech despite all the
       | international theft and security issues, some exposed, and but
       | most of it kept under wraps until investigations are complete.
       | 
       | And some even shill the conspiracy that the NSA will install
       | backdoors in US equipment... I would like to think it's Chinese
       | agents at work, but most likely it's regular people.
       | 
       | For this reason I'm glad politicians are taking the initiative,
       | despite the population's awareness of what Huawei really is. And
       | sry but I don't have time to "prove it with irrefutable evidence"
       | as some may demand. Plz spend your own time researching the
       | facts.
        
       | corimaith wrote:
       | I feel that the majority in this thread are acting less in
       | Europe's interests than effectively saying "fuck you" to Germany
       | here for acting against China's interests. Or perhaps they're
       | reaching as quickly as possible to blame everything on USA. But
       | that's the consequence of letting outsiders into the
       | conversation, everything has really turned into a "water armies",
       | as defined by the Chinese themselves.
       | 
       | In any case, I do hope that outsiders in this thread realize this
       | isn't indicative of what Westerners think, so as far much as what
       | their enemies are thinking. Do you really think people like these
       | who are so quick to mock Europe are really your friends?
        
       | fidotron wrote:
       | The fundamental problem with the newer Huawei equipment is it's
       | the best stuff. Others just aren't competing properly at all.
       | 
       | As the west detaches from China, for quite plausible security
       | concerns, it's going to find it expensive on both ends: they will
       | be paying more and getting less.
        
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