Huawei is in large part built upon technology stolen from Cisco and Canada's Nortel Networks. In the latter case, there is strong evidence China was able to maintain access to Nortel's internal networks for over a decade (!!) which helped kill the 117 year old company. [1]
The government of China is systematically hacking corporations through the Ministry of State Security, and attempting to the switch the allegiances of all ethnically Chinese people across the world through the well-funded overseas political interference organization called the "United Front Work Department" [2]. In both the Australian and New Zealand parliaments, China has actually succeeded in installing individuals with undeclared links to government of China political interference and espionage organizations: Gladys Liu and Jian Yang. While there is no smoking gun that they are directly acting as spies, there is significant amounts of circumstantial evidence that they have been compromised by government of China influence operations. I don't need to explain the risk of politicians compromised by an adversarial government making key national defense decisions.
With this reality, why would any government risk allowing Huawei in their networks?
That kind of issue is solved in court with proofs and compensations. Cisco is no small bullied kid and should deal with it without us crying a river about it. They also infringe patents, get caught, pay up settlement fees and continue business as usual.
Not going down this route in this specific case makes it look way more dirty on US side IMO.
> hacking
Cisco has been caught countless times spreading NSA backdoors to the world, they shouldn’t get any moral pass.
I think it comes down to who’s wrongdoing you are willing to turn a blind eye on. If you’re not an US citizen nor don’t see US gov as a reliable ally, the whole Huawei vs the US feud has no clear moral or ethical split.
The US gov - despite all the terrible deeds in its short history - builds upon a very strong civil liberties foundation, whereas China is a one-party totalitarian dictatorship.
Sure, there's no "clear" ethical split, but just putting both of them into the naughty bin won't do anyone much good. Most of the people on HN don't want anyone spying on them, but that doesn't mean there is no point in clearly stating that Huawei products somehow represent a greater risk than Cisco's overpriced every-year-re-branded legacy junk.
It’s hard to argue an entity does terrible things while putting aside all their terrible deeds.
How would you judge if what they’re doing regarding Huawei is not one of them ? To my knowledge nothing of interest has been put on table as proof or objective justification of the ban at this point.
The point is not if the US gov is better than the Chinese one, it’s how other countries deal with the US gov having a beef against a foreign company.
If Nortel ever been killed by somebody, that was by financial engineers from hedge funds, and inexperienced managers that came to board after the bubble popped
Aren't certain Chinese people in China relatively open about this on a high level? I mean, to me it always sounded as non-believable but there have been some places (documentaries or texts) where a Chinese person would say that the goal of China is to get Chinese people in high places all over the world in a 200+ year time span and then rule it.
As I said, I never took it seriously. But maybe people should look into claims like that?
Unfortunately, I can't find a source for this because it didn't happen that often and I'm not that politically minded.
>With this reality, why would any government risk allowing Huawei in their networks?
Well firstly because the USA does the same thing. Being technologically ahead, it tends to work on giving it's companies an edge over regulators or competition rather than stealing tech. But no one is being fair here.
So you're not choosing between a good guy and a bad guy
I'm happy to agree the USA is morally less repugnant than China. I'm neither American nor Chinese but I'll take US hegemony over Chinese. But that's still picking the less bad option.
And either way, you lose some sovereignty. And both nations will be in your infrastructure whether you buy their kit or not, because most such espionage is software based, so it doesn't really matter.
So the question is really not the one your asking. A better question is, "how much will I lose to the security issue and how much will I gain from the tech I'm buying and how does this affect everything else I am doing including relations with both sides?"
Since China has better 5G tech, and the loss is the same, you buy Chinese based only on the first part of that question.
And that is the reason the USA is making so much noise: since the 70s, after the US got scared into pushing for technological progress by sputnik, the USA has been the leader in tech. Now Cisco etc have dropped the ball and the Chinese have edged ahead in this one product...
It's also worth noting how unfairly EU/Asian companies have been treated in US markets over the last decade. There might be value buying Chinese to dissuade US bullying given that the age of peaceful cooperation (economically) seems to be over (Deutsch bank fines, Toyota recalls etc).
Plus increasingly the EU wishes to deviate from us foreign policy and have its own policy. China doesn't care unless you're messing about in their back yard because they don't have much foreign policy beyond there. But the US expects compliance world wide. If you buy Cisco, and then refuse to sanction Iran for no reason, will you still be able to get Cisco spares?
You can disagree with my assessment of parts of this, that's fine. But the point is, this is 100 times more complex than buying a knock off version with security flaws or a proper piece of kit...
See William Barr remark on buying controlling share in SE & Nokia if Huawei dominance becomes real, it'll be Crypto AG round 2. Going with SE & Nokia just means maintaining status quo, aka giving US preferential access since they control much of the higher OSI stack. It's a disingenuous argument. In fact the Australian PM has recently confirmed the "conspiracy theory" that the primary concern AU intelligence over Huawei wasn't interception of intelligence by China rather denial of access to networks with Huawei hardware which compromises intelligence sharing, i.e. it makes it harder for FVEY agencies to spy on each other's citizens.
The US has unparalleled intelligence gathering abilities, intelligence agencies with privileged access doesn't want to lose intelligence sharing with them. Similar to countries under US military security umbrella, FVEY and other intelligence alliances aren't equal contributors. Which leads to situations in many countries where intelligence interests conflicts with trade interests, and you get situations like UK firing their defense secretary who leaked secret meeting info in order sway decision making.
>...the goal of American policy on Huawei is less about security and more about market share – and making sure America, not China, owns the future of 5G.
Bingo. Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Most of the premise for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou was comical at best. 30 years of US companies ignoring ITAR with at most a small fine, only to suddenly watch the US issue an extradition warrant for a chinese CFO accused of doing the same thing? I guess if its the cold war its different.
Huawei made it to market first. Most of this theatricality from the US government is a last-ditch effort to buy time until US communications companies come out with something remotely 5G.
AT&T did their usual tactic with 4g, and rolled out a watered down branded 5GE experience even to phones with no 5G chipset whatsoever in a desperate attempt to brand something they'll likely buy at twice the cost from a US supplier in 2021 just to spite their loss at Huawei.
I hate the term intellectual property and its easy to slander people for theft, but the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education and a public policy that actively persecuted hackers and anyone interested in STEM since the sixties. The US decided to turn their colleges into luxury sports arenas driven by unforgivable student loans and underpaid graduate students as teachers. It drafted legal DMCA and DRM to punish curiousity and reward obedience, and now for the past decade its tried to play both sides of the field. Insisting STEM is something all its citizens must learn, while at the same time branding anyone too interested in technology as aberrant and unlawful, a circumventor in violation of the license for the product they own. Unless and until this changes, im sure China or Korea or some other slave of the international market will own 6, 7 and 8 G as well.
My personal take is:
Huawei belongs to CCP.
Korean and US companies do not belong to their governments.
This should be an issue by default, in my opinion. That said it's not why I distrust Huawei (not that I trust Google, Cisco, Qualcomm all that much more - but I give them more benefit of the doubt). I don't even care about ATT because if you trust your carrier you're already toast, and I do not know any carrier that I respect as a company (despite them having great employees).
Here's why I distrust Huawei and similar companies:
From my 20y incident response experience in the field at very large companies, we've never caught the NSA or similar US agencies. Either because they're too good, we're unlucky, they're too bad at it, or because they don't actually need to, or do not backdoor. Who knows.
What does bother me is that we caught other countries several times, sometimes using terribly bad tactics (where the defense was bad for various reasons that are usually also bad) and sometimes using relatively novel stuff that we'd never see before.
Thankfully you do not have to trust me, ask any security engineer at any big company (amazon, fb, uber, google, lockheed, etc.). They'll either say they're not allowed to speak about it or give you an answer that's similar to the above (or break their NDAs, alternatively, I guess?!)
There is a lot of evidence about US backdoors. The invisible dots on every printed page in the world. The Snowden leaks. The fact that the US is publicly trying to get Apple to install backdoors on their phones and threatening to pass laws to make them do so (they don’t seem to be speaking up as much about google which makes me wonder if Google has already capitulated). The ability to get any cloud provider to share any info with the US government (this is theoretically better than China, because unlike China’s case, it requires judicial approval...in practice it isn’t much better, because judicial approval is given 100% of the time).
I still strongly believe that if I had to lose my privacy, and needed to install a backdoors on my devices, I’d much rather it be to an American 3 letter agency than a Chinese one of any form. That doesn’t change the fact that the NSA and co have been proven to do much worse than what Huawei is being accused of doing potentially in the future.
Could the reason be that the US and the others have different access to the companies?
The US was caught when somebody blew the whistle, just Google for PRISM, for example. China and others could not have done that, therefore they would do something else. They make and ship hardware, therefore their vector of attack would be expected to be that hardware.
Unlike the US though, I am not aware of any substantial attack that goes beyond speculation. There was supposed to be an IC implemented into Apple and Amazon servers according to Bloomberg but that story was refuted and went nowhere.
So far, in reality, we have proven US surveillance(and Obama was very sorry about it) and speculations about Chinese surveillance.
I am not sure that there's much going on here beyond the propaganda.
Anecdotes of individual cases are not the same as the institutionalized spying and the presidential "oops, won't do it again" once the spying is revealed.
I have no doubt that China or Saudi Arabia or Russia and so on have spying programs and there were cases of revealed moles installed in companies but it's nowhere nearly as substantial as US directly plugging into the systems that run globally and running mass surveillance programs.
Google for Wikileaks, Snowden. Assange. The results will surprise you.
All this debacle looks nothing more than the US not wanting competition. It doesn't even look like the Chinese mass spying efforts are beyond a startup stage when the US spying is equivalent of a giant and established corporation. Actually, not even a startup, more like mom and pop shops of spying.
I think it's alright, US is no longer the country that stands for something beyond nationalism and most of the Western nations are not covered by that American Nationalism.
Uh. What. GFC. Great Firewall of China. It's the same dragnet stuff that NSA dreamed of, only enshrined in law and staffed with thousands of people, and well funded.
They have the technology. It's only a matter of time and economic expansion to get their stuff into other exchange points.
Huawei is a greater risk than let's say Eriksson or Nokia, because there is nothing to even suggest that they have any safeguards against a future intervention by the NSA or CCP. (And users won't reverse engineer every new firmeware update.)
How greater? Well, it's hard to say.
> I think it's alright, US is no longer the country that stands for something beyond nationalism and most of the Western nations are not covered by that American Nationalism.
> US companies do not belong to their governments.
Did you see the news last week that GM is being forced to switch manufacturing to produce ventilators...
Not paid to do it... Forced to... When that kind of thing happens, it's clear there isn't a separation line between company management and their governments.
> What does bother me is that we caught other countries several times, sometimes using terribly bad tactics (where the defense was bad for various reasons that are usually also bad) and sometimes using relatively novel stuff that we'd never see before.
What are you trying to say, that sometimes they are reading a "how to hack a computer" guide and try admin/admin and sometimes Huawei is supplying 0days to them?
As for NSA or similar US agencies: why would they hack US companies? They just send a friendly letter, attach a check for the inconvenience and have the companies build them a surveillance room.
Outside the US, TAO is a thing. And when they get caught, you better have definite proof before you say that you believe it's them, because that might have severe consequences for you personally, your company and the international relations of your country.
All the wireless companies spend their money on shareholder dividends and purchasing restricted access to the airwaves. And now the US government doesn't like the new gatekeeper (i.e. China) controlling these companies.
Due to government selling the rights to our airwaves to the highest bidder, the modern portable computer + radios are locked down and obscured under layers of corporate control and constraint. I'd much rather have the software and network be required to be more open and radio waves more unrestricted for the public to use (e.g. sell me a better CB). Give me that over 5G, telecom companies and "unlimited" data.
I'm following meshtastic and disaster.radio projects. I like these little low bandwidth programmable long range transceivers running on the unlicensed bands. I bought a pair for $60 to play with. One could imagine P2P networks sprouting up on houses, cars, trees, etc with free low bandwidth services like weather info, email, chat, etc...
If/when the corporate grip on the internet is tightened enough that even VPNs and onion routing become impractical or sabotaged, I could absolutely see low-bandwidth mesh networks provide a primarily text-based unfiltered communications channel. The caveat of course being that strong encryption would be absolutely mandatory.
It wont change. There is too much inertia. But its not all bad.
Maybe in future the West will play to its real strengths - provide entertainment/content, reality tv, sports, celebs and of course porn for those 5G, 6G, 7G...networks.
While tech and science moves elsewhere.
The best and brightest in science and tech will just move to where ever its happening.
If West was reduce to entertainment provider, I doubt we'll get to keep or flawed democracy and freedoms. I'd rather have slower cellular network rather than CCP-style government...
If China were to ban retired US army officers from running companies, I think a double digit of American tech companies should start thinking of liquidation
Moreover, Chinese military is in remarkably bad relationship with the party at large after, if you didn't know.
Even a flag rising ceremony in Beijing was done not by military, but police up until recently
The question is also: how much would China/Huawei loose when something like a backdoor was discovered?
They are one of the biggest companies in the world generating billions of income. They would loose a lot if not all of this when there is proof of espionage.
Would they risk this? I don't think so.
I am not saying China isn't spying on us (every country does) but I doubt they use Huawei for this.
> The average reader of HN would rather have their data shared with the US, then with China.
Why is that? If anything I'm a bit at the opposite. Prism, cambridge analytica and the likes means that my western data is actively being used against me, by our own governments etc. It may be naive but it almost feels safer having my data in hands not cooperating with western intelligence...
No one in China will put me in a camp either, as I don't live or travel there. Which is my point. Not saying usa will put me in a camp, but currently they have more options to screw me over. (and us do put children in camps)
It may be a bit hyperbole. But I just don't want to be so quick to accept the narrative that west=good east=bad
If China will get stronger, they'll force other governments to follow their rules. And it's likely that those Chinese-friendly governments will do Chinese-style stuff locally too.
I'm not saying the east is bad. Don't change my words, jees!
If you haven't noticed. The protests in Hong Kong are related to the extradiction law from China that was forced on to them. And yes, people already disappeared.
And finally, if you want a statement, it's that democracy leads to a fairer society and communism leads to abuse of power.
I would like to correct your statement slightly:
Authoritarianism and totalitarianism of any ideological color leads to abuse of power.
All political systems are susceptible to being abused by those with a desire for power over others. That is why leaders must always be accountable to the people. Most politicians are deeply vested in trying to break that accountability.
We shouldn't have to choose between one-party political rule or corporate drone bought-and-sold rule as the only options.
Not yet. I fully believe that if China had as much power as USA, I (a canadian) would already have been kidnapped and put into a concentration camp for criticising China/Xi.
1 - coming from Belgium, my statement is valid for Europe mostly too. Don't change my statement as you please :)
2 - That's nuts, looking at what China actually does with the data, it's way more dangerous for everyone involved.
You are targeting US, but forgetting that China actually has concentration camps ( calling it education doesn't make it better) with millions of people currently in it, ...
China is actively bullying Taiwan, Hong Kong and all their neighbouring countries.
Be glad that you can share your opinion on a popular US platform without censorship.
( There is active moderation, but this is done in a very open way). In China, you would just suddenly disappear.
Saying China has a bad track record is a serious lack of judgement.
Now we are comparing who is worse, I claim both are bad actors and currently would pick a different one than you. We can each cherry pick specific cases/aspects and ignore/marginalize those we don't.
OK, so just one random point, China is bullying around. What about citizens of: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Iran, etc. China is bullying Taiwan. Compared to US killing millions of civilians and ruined future for hundreds of millions by its actions. Many wars started without any real cause. How can you even compare this...
But I guess you completely ignore these matters. You ignore NSA spying on every citizen of this planet as long as they do anything, ever online. As an European, you don't really mind being treated as sub-human being by US government on US soil (way less human and civil rights compared to US citizen, if you are suspect of terrorism than this is valid globally). I guess you don't care about Guantanamo. I guess as an European, you don't mind that US is exempt from International tribunal for war crimes in Haague, so companies like Blackwater can basically kill whoever they want.
I have no doubt China might do the same under some theoretical circumstances. But saying who is better and worse is very relative in this topic.
I'm not American but given the choice I'd go with America over China any day.
Here's why: You can't make jokes about Xi Jinping's hair on a Chinese website. Where as if you want to laugh at Trump's ridiculous bouffant on an American site have at it.
That will be a major blow to Huawei (and TSMC) and will force the Chinese to setup their own chip production as fast as possible. Will probably be quite a thing to follow.
When the president of the USA openly disparages Europe at every opportunity, it's pretty difficult to feel very sympathetic with the us administration on such matters.
The Europeans would have been just fine with working with the US against China. The problem is that the “great negotiator” thought that what would be really brilliant would be to first attack your allies, and then ask them to help you when going up against your enemy.
What seems strangely forgotten in these discussions is that the first round of tariffs the Trump administration imposed on anybody, was steel tariffs on the Europeans.
No other country in the world has absolutely any reason to trust the US, especially now that the government cannot even be trusted to act in their own selfish interests (but rather, is dependent on the whims of 1 extremely stable genius).
I don't think Americans realise how much diplomatic influence has been lost in Europe.
To me the American tradition of a politicised diplomatic corps is to blame. The politics of Trump is just very far from mainstream European politics.
I am personally convinced that had the campaign against Huawei been done by the Obama administration there would be no Huawei technology in the EU at this point.
For one thing, when he required the Europeans to increase their NATO contributions he did it quietly, without publicly insulting them, and got them to commit to increase it over a period of a decade, which is reasonable. Unlike stand he never threatened America’s commitment to NATO itself.
For another, his first major international economic action wasn’t dropping steel tariffs on his Europeans allies.
And finally, he worked with his European allies to build an effective deal with Iran, that gave Europeans something they wanted and reduced the threat of additional war in the Middle East, whole building an effective counter balance to the Saudis, instead of flippantly and unilaterally tearing it apart causing European allies unnecessary political, military, and economic headaches.
This is literally, the ultimate Trump card, that Trump himself will play.
If TSMC does this, then they will not only lose Huawei, but they will lose the entire 1.4 billion population market of China. As well as Africa, and likely, Southeast Asia, and India, and Pakistan too. They will probably also lose Eastern Europe, and Russia too. They’ll also probably lose South America too, and the Middle East.
This move might actually kill Android as we know it. Google will lose their preeminence and importance in mobile devices, and operating systems technology. They would also even lose their relevance in the search engine market. They will continue to do fine in the western markets.
This might even make ARM an irrelevant sideshow, and push RISC-V to the forefront. The world could even bifurcate into ARM vs. RISC-V.
Why? Because China will go full throttle and build out their own foundries. Huawei will now push their Harmony OS to the forefront. They’ll make it run on their own Kirin processors, that they built in China. They might even make it run on other processors, like the RISC-V.
Then the other Chinese mobile phone makers will all switch too, knowing that Trump, and the USA now has a target painted on all of their backs.
Alibaba is at the forefront with their RISC-V processor, that they can probably supply this to the other Chinese mobile phone companies.
Now, Intel, AMD, and nVidia, which make billions of dollars from China, will all have a target on their backs, and will end up losing the entire Chinese market too. Good move Trump, you just put 2 bullets into each of your best hardware companies.
Now, the world will have two standards: the western companies of Apple, Intel, nVidia, Google. Versus the upstart Chinese companies that will compete against them, lead by Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent. They will first dominate the Chinese market, and then they will expand out to Africa, Southeast Asia, and all the other southern third world countries. These countries were never going to buy a $1200 flagship iPhone 12 anyways.
This will indeed, be the most exciting technological challenge of this decade. And we are about to have front row seats, as we watch it play out.
I agree. From a technical perspective this is very exciting; all of a sudden there is an open field on all these fundamental building blocks.
But for an American strategic perspective I think it would have made more sense to keep the Chinese dependent on American operating systems and Taiwan produced chips.
This is a confused post, are you saying it was the British or are you saying it was Indians? Do you not understand the concept of slavery? Promised riches... what the actual fuck?
So the US preaches nationalism, protectionism, and isolationism except when it's not in their own interest?
Edit: My point (which probably wasn't clear) was that if you run an "America First" agenda. Don't be surprised when your allies start prioritizing their own interest above mutual interests.
Yes. Each nation looks out for its own interests and the interests of its citizens. The only thing that's surprising is that a large number of citizens seem to think that this is unusual or immoral.
A large number of citizens think that it makes sense for a certain set of nations to work together in many arenas. For decades, Western Europe and North America worked together to both regions’ mutual benefit.
Trump has torn that apart, which has basically hurt both sides to China’s benefit which appears as a far less capricious partner.
Nations should work together when their interests coincide. That's just a generalization of the idea that nations work to support their own interests. But, quite often, those interests are in conflict.
Some people appear motivated to shit on some nations while ignoring the depredations of others. Perversely, they are opposed to the nation of which they are citizens and embrace "the other side".
For example, the claim that "China appears the less capricious partner" ignores an enormous amount of evidence that China screws over international partners with no hesitation should that be in its interests.
See the recent stories about WHO delaying the release of information from Taiwan about the coronavirus.
shouldnt be a surprice bro. they have been doing this for decades but still under the pretense of the opposite. protecting marketshare, by bringing up national security as excuse is no surprise move.
How is it that the west allowed Huawei to gain such a lead in 5G? If this has national security implications, why didn't the US support its domestic telecom firms?
The US, outside of the military, has a failure to make policy, whereas China has very clear development policies.
Why is that?
The US is led mainly by lawyers, where facts are debatable, whereas most of China's leaders are STEM graduates.
Thus China has constructed around 50 new cities and airports in the past couple of decades, while the US literally can't dig a tunnel from one side of Central Expressway in Mountain View or Palo Alto to the other.
The most egregious failure of US leadership is the corona virus crisis in hospitals. But you could say the same about infrastructure, or just about any other public policy.
We've had a couple of engineers as PMs in my Southern EU country (one of them is now the Secretary General of the UN - he started his career as an assistant professor teaching systems theory and telecommunications signals), and I can assure you it's no panacea. Pouring concrete is easy and not by itself synonymous with good governance.
And since you said "any other public policy", I have to say I'd easily trade 50 tunnels and airports for access to Wikipedia.
Are you talking about the same China that understood the risk of disease so well it allowed wet markets to flourish in the most abject hygiene conditions possible? I suppose they perhaps lack virologists or similar in their 'STEM graduate', technocratic government. Or perhaps they just didn't care. This meme of China being ultra competent needs to die; they have 1.4 billion people, there's enough latent talent there that'll shine through despite the best attempts by the CCP to kill a lot of it.
When it comes to building the mobile network itself, none of the companies you mention have any footprint in that space. It's really the 3 (Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei) along with some less prominent players (Samsung, ZTE etc). The vast majority of networks are using the big 3.
This is the key question! Both Europe and the USA took their eye off the ball.
Europe's overly strict rules on "state aid" (giving public money to fund private sector work) mean that large, publicly traded telecoms companies are outsourcing their own R&D out to China, simply to save money. Few people realise, but that's where Nokia and Ericsson do a lot of their 5G R&D, and this can be verified with a quick dig around jobs and LinkedIn etc.
Huawei is the recipient of large quantities of state aid domestically, as well as the beneficiary of inter-governnental loans from the Chinese government to other countries for the purpose of building a mobile network!
In terms of the USA, they don't have a significant notional domestic player in base stations - if we consider significant players as being Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei, and consider the former 2 as being mostly European.
The obvious existing networking business to enter from the US perspective would be Cisco, and they weren't interested in this kind of low margin stuff (which says a lot about their other pricing!)
After decades of campaigning against good security in internet protocols, mandating backdoors in networks, etc - government security organs are miffed that things can't safely run on untrusted networks.
What are the British thinking? Do they think they'll get a better deal from China than the US? Or is their intention to use this as a bargaining chip against the US?
Well, I think it's along the lines of "The US has behaved recklessly for the last 20 years, and any personal or corporate preferment for a US entity has been supported at the cost of the national interest of its allies. We have discovered all sorts of theft and malpractice by US companies and intelligence agencies and yet any complaint made to the US government is met with a smirk and a shrug. Not only does the US ignore our national interest, but US officials are openly contemptuous of it. The Chinese are evil and their values are alien to us, but the US is increasingly more similar to Saudi Arabia in it's values, system of government and international outlook than it is to us. We don't trust the USA and we need to have options."
If the UK goes all in with the USA we will end up looking like Mexico. If we go all in on Europe we will end up looking like Italy, or Greece (as was made clear in the aftermath of the 2011 veto). Many people who are not from the UK seem really keen that the UK is smashed up and humbled, we are supposed to be poor, sardonic and to provide cutting edge humor. This is not a great direction of travel for everyone who lives here though. Fundamentally the UK is alone in the world and needs to grow up and act like it - so we need to make some sort of bargain with the Chinese, and the Russians (which is much harder as they are acting as the perfect irrational player in the game of international relations right now).
In addition to the "it's cheaper" point (due to Huawei being a significant recipient of state aid, and European alternatives not being able to receive any state aid), it's worth keeping an eye on some of the wording being used by the UK government.
They've said nothing safety critical or necessary to critical national infrastructure can run over Huawei base stations. It will be a brave (i.e. foolish) mobile operator that turns away large connected vehicle contracts (clearly there will be significant safety implications there), or large scale industrial IoT users.
If the rules are applied as it seems they are designed to, it looks like the intention is to let the operators make that choice, rather than dictating who they will use, while putting in sufficient restrictions to heavily influence it.
Prior to the government's (long overdue) decision on this topic, which came after 5G non-standalone networks were deployed in the field in some cities, the operators all came out to say how much it would cost them to remove all their Huawei equipment and replace it. They lobbied hard to be allowed to keep using it! But it seems that perhaps they have been given a decision that they themselves haven't quite realised will feel an awful lot like a ban...
The UK's weakness was exposed by the 2011 veto and subsequent upending of the EU treaties to suit everyone apart from the UK. We had been floundering in that club since 2009, despite bailing out other members (ie. Ireland) - and when push came to shove Germany and France made it clear that the UK could shove off. The UK is no weaker now than it was then - it's just that it's clear where we stand. The great powers of the world (China, US, Germany) act in their own interests, the UK must act as if that is true and attempt to navigate around them - or we must simply be subjugated to one of them. I believe that Germany in particular will regret this situation in the future, with a pretense of a triumvirate of powers and associated allies (ie. France, Italy, Spain etc; UK, Poland, etc; Germany and everyone else) there was a chance of a very different EU. That's gone now and Germany must take the reigns - and it will be in a very different strategic context.
Despite all that, the real undeniable facts are that no country has prospered inside the EU sad much as the UK has. And that the UK was stinking it up big time before it joined the EU.
The UK has traded limited political power as a member of the EU for no political power at all. And in return it has gotten a much worse economic position, where it will be stuck between pleasing the US, EU and China in turn for the foreseeable future, while losing the economic benefits it got from being the default English speaking gateway to Europe.
Ok - the EU was founded 1st November 1993; I remember the UK as a centre for world finance and one of the most prosperous and settled nations in the world at that time. I could have been very drunk and made a mistake however.
But - I think you are referring to the state of the UK when it joined the EEC in 1973. The UK was in fact in a big mess at that point - which promptly got a lot bigger. This led to IMF intervention in 1976 [1]. This was not a big win for the EEC at that point in my book. The UK was in a big hole because it had spent all its money on unwinding its empire and failed to either properly retool its industries or pay down its second world war debt. The EEC and Europe in general did not help or bail out the UK - in fact they continued to expect payments from the UK in the midst of all this, a pattern that I fear Italy and Spain are about to encounter in the way that sentances encounter full stops.
What turned this round - the discovery of North Sea Oil. This enabled Thatcher to restructure the UK economy, recapitalize the City of London and hey presto off the UK went to the races. The big buggeration was the collapse of the Soviet Union which meant a restructuring of Europe in order to prevent the East from falling into anarchy and exposing the German state to abject collapse. Thus we all got swept up into the EU.
Anyway, if you want to argue about "prospered inside the EU sad much as the UK has" I ask you to look at the economic performance of Germany.
We had a huge influence right up until push came to shove and then we had none. I agree we can't become great - isolation or not; I believe that isolation isn't on the table either - next few weeks excluded. The reality is that France and Germany shafted the UK publicly and conclusively during the euro crisis, they also shafted the Greeks - but I'm not Greek so that's less of a problem for me. Remember also that they removed an Italian government and installed a technocrat. Yet lots of people seem to have forgotten that and either don't care or can't bring themselves to see the reality of the situation.
America historically is infamous for making sure that anything besides their system (capitalism, supposedly) fails to work, and taking quite an active approach to make sure it happens.
In theory, if you believed you're doing things the right way then you shouldn't have to worry about making sure another system fails (if it doesn't fail, then maybe you were wrong?).
This applies as much to startups and their attitudes towards competitors (you shouldn't worry about what your competitor does, only that your product is good) as it does to nations and their attitudes towards competing economic and government systems.
The crux of this issue is purely political, and based on fears of potentially losing American supremacy. The article even references China as a "rival", and that's exactly what the fears are based on: rivalry.
If you believe that these anti-China sentiments from these politicians have anything to do with a belief in freedom, democracy, or human rights, then you're just as brainwashed as the supporters of the Chinese communist party. If our politicians believed in human rights then why didn't they do anything to stop China earlier? Why do they only care when China releases cheaper better technology that could potentially unseat their dominance? Seems like a convenient time to start caring about freedom. Why is accepting cheap plastic crap acceptable, but advanced technology not acceptable?
What is the end-game here? If you disagree with the Chinese system then you should be taking action against them. Otherwise it seems like the goal is just to keep the country in a subdued position for eternity, allowing human rights violations so long as your own supremacy is kept?
This comment's getting downvoted but I can't really see anything here I disagree with. Would any downvoters like to share an alternative opinion in the interests of discussion?
A lot people are to comfortable with china controlling a lot of the world's tech. I'm not in europe but it seems a strange thing to conclude. Either was I will vote against anyone in the US that does and its the best I can do.
What bugs me is that I'm really unsure if I should post anything critical of China, it's scary what that could mean for my family 30 years down the road.
This rhetoric against China, legitimate or not, seems like a precursor to war. I wish somebody would investigate if a troll factory is behind it or if it truly is a popular opinion.
The whole idea behind these trolls is that they repeat stuff until it becomes popular opinion. It's hard to stay objective, we tend to agree with majority (Asch cconformity experiments would be an example but this is way more subtle and harder to control).
You are correct with the war. And what we are talking about is not even a conspiracy theory. You can watch a top US general talking about it [1].
I see almost no comments like yours, only how China is evil. There is propaganda on both sides. But what worries me that here in the west most people don't seem to be aware of it.
I think people accepted that political news they are getting is biased based on who is delivering it, but somehow it is not generalized to politics outside the country.
Lmfao no. MAD is still here and nuclear weapons didn't just evaporate. No one on either side of the Pacific wants a hot war. Saber rattling over Taiwan once every decade doesn't count because each side knows that the game of chicken won't go all the way.
If there is war with China, life on Earth will end. There is no situation for a war between the USA and China that doesn't end with nuclear annihilation
> This rhetoric against China, legitimate or not, seems like a precursor to war. I wish somebody would investigate if a troll factory is behind it or if it truly is a popular opinion.
As much as the anti-China rhetoric is shameful and harmful, the answer to the WHO official to the sincere question about Taiwan also is.
Rather China's actions seem like precursor to war. Corona virus crisis may be the tipping point in Chinese influence growth as people become aware how West is becoming more and more relient on China.
I for one am surprised that anyone who is aware of some of the actions perpetrated by China's ruling regime with regards to their handling of the covid19 outbreak feels that they don't warant any criticism, and tried to pin any criticism on conspiracy theories involving troll farms and beating war drums.
Of course one can and should assign blame where it is due to the CCP. But demanding vengeful reparations from the whole country is pretty much a precursor to war.
I can totally imagine a few leaders riling up public emotions this way and also conveniently directing all responsibilities outwards. I really hope the world doesn't repeat the history of the last century like that.
> Of course one can and should assign blame where it is due to the CCP. But demanding vengeful reparations from the whole country is pretty much a precursor to war.
No, it's the basis of any civil suit.
For some reason, you're trying desperately to spin holding an entity responsible for their actions as being akin to an act of war.
You're talking about the regime that simultaneously refuses to include positive and asymptomatic cases in their contagion statistics, and at the same time publish press releases announcing that the only new cases of coronsvirus infections within China come from infected foreigners.
States and governments are held accountable to their actions and inactions quite frequently, even I'm courts of law. Somehow you see China's regime immune and exempt from any responsibility of their actions. Why?
> What bugs me is that I'm really unsure if I should post anything critical of China, it's scary what that could mean for my family 30 years down the road.
I thought the same and I have no family ties there. (Though back in the early 00's I had fun studying in China and had wished to return.)
I'm more worried about what happens if we don't speak out. While we need to fix our Western democracies, we can't ignore the biggest threat to freedom in the world.
I think this virus situation could potentially unite the world in looking critically at supply chains and the CCP's motives and behavior.
When this is all over, I hope every county tallies the bill for the virus and subtracts that from their debt to China. The CCP lied, hid information, and told us to keep travel open while simultaneously welding people inside their homes. They then shifted blame to the West and threatened to cut off critical medical supplies. It's worse than negligent, and they should lose their investments overseas to repay the damage done.
> When this is all over, I hope every county tallies the bill for the virus and subtracts that from their debt to China. They lied, hid information, and told us to keep travel open while simultaneously welding people inside their homes. It's worse than negligent, and they should lose their investments overseas to repay the damage done.
I think you're being generous to the administration for assigning blame to China. We didn't really trust anything coming out of China before so why would we conveniently be expected to trust China regarding the virus? There was also plenty of time to see warning signs in countries like South Korea... not to mention several countries that much higher risk for the spread of the virus have contained it (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore).
If you are to believe Trump then he saved a lot of lives by banning travel from China... and then killed a lot of people by doing absolutely nothing after that.
> I think you're being generous to the administration for assigning blame to China.
I pay the administration no mind whatsoever. The way this has been handed by Trump is beyond incompetent. Placing the blame on China is an opinion I reached entirely on my own while the president was still out golfing.
I'm speaking out because I want our leadership to take action. I'll be asking my representatives to stick China with the bill. (They probably won't listen since I've been begging them to shut down and that hasn't happened. But maybe we can collectively turn this meme into compelling policy.)
> why would we conveniently be expected to trust China
China had an obligation to its citizens and to the world. The CCP decided they didn't care if the virus went worldwide. That's homicide, and they should pay for making people whole again.
I'm probably going to lose family members because of this, and I'm very mad about it.
> China had an obligation to its citizens and to the world. The CCP decided they didn't care if the virus went worldwide. That's homicide, and they should pay for making people whole again.
I'm no fan of the CCP, but this is ridiculous. In your hypothetical world where China takes action to prevent this, what would they have done? The common reaction from public health professionals to the Hubei lockdown was that it was unprecedented and was unlikely to work (e.g. [1]). Are you saying that it's reasonable to expect them to have done more, sooner?
Permanent ban on wet markets before December first 2019 would have been a good start. A media campaign to get people to stop buying into "traditional Chinese medicine" would have been good too. Make them use that propaganda machine for something good for once.
No excuses for this one. China could have done something and not only choose not to, but actively attempted to surpress information about the disease. They're lying about every number related to this crisis. They are manipulating the WHO. This is a country which claims that "only" a "few hundred died" in tiananmen square. The 50 cent army actively brigades many types of anti-CCP dissent at home and abroad.
Yes. It's reasonable for them to have done more sooner. They had an obligation to do more sooner.
The world had time to evaluate the trickle of news and intelligence agencies knew earlier. Some countries took heed and prepared and are now looking at a different Future. Did they take responsibility for themselves? Who is responsible for the future of Taiwan or South Korea? China? The US?
Blame is an important tool for the structuring of responsibility, but responsibility is ultimately about results — but whose results? And who shall take up our burdens?
We should take up our burdens, since we can only blame ourselves for not preparing. I don’t think the issue was believing in China (as you stated China is known for suppressing information), the issue was hubris. There were plenty of signals that the virus was spreading and still we did not do anything effective while some other countries did. We have our own leaders to blame and it would be more effective to select better leaders than to blame external sources.
Also if you're going to demand reparations or place blame, you should be blaming the people who are still ignoring this virus in America and needlessly spreading it in spite of authority figures and evidence not to. China isn't blaming the first person that got the virus, and we shouldn't be blaming the first country. At what point are you going to start shifting blame from who started it to who's continuing it?
We should be focusing on the people who currently still aren't dong anything: megachurches, Spring Breakers in Florida, virus-change deniers.
It doesn't matter if you got it from Trump or not, my points regarding the idea that somehow "China" is at fault still stands.
With sufficient preparation and action the effects could have been mitigated. Other countries like Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong have shown this to be possible (granted they are smaller, but also arguably at higher risk due to their trade with China and also much much denser than the USA).
But probably the most important reasons why you cannot blame China is that
1) the virus cannot be contained, even if you tried (or Europe, or any of the hundreds of countries it spread to are just as easily culpable for not containing especially since Trump banned China travel early on)
2) the virus just happened to have mutated from an animal in China and it just happened to have been highly contagious. This was just bad luck on China's part. You can also read Bill Gates' explanation for WHY in this video of the reddit posts from him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwmLbhA8Kyw
Basically, these viruses are very common and in the past the US/Mexico was responsible for H1N1 (Swine Flu)... except in this case we all just got unlucky and this one has a long incubation period, high transmissibility, mild symptoms (leading to hubris from infected people) and a total lack of global preparation.
I understand you are angry and have family members at risk, but that doesn't excuse you from prejudicial blame that will burden the people of a country of billions of people for something they did not have control over and were not responsible for. And it also will not save your family members and is wholly unproductive (as is all mis-assigned blame). The severity of the virus at this point has little to do with the virus itself and more to do with our total lack of preparation, lack of action because a) "trusting China" is not a valid excuse, as we've never done so in the past, and b) China reported the virus well in advance, not to mention the epidemic spread wildly in South Korea and Europe well before it was noticed in the USA.
China looks to be bouncing back ... how bad has COVID affected their economy vs. all other economies? Is COVID going to help them in the global economy? If so, I wouldn't put it past China as unleashing this virus on the world purposely.
Before COVID China had SARS. Why are these virus all coming from there?
Viruses can mutate and come from anywhere. Granted that animal market probably was not very hygienic, H1N1, Spanish Flu (which did not originate from Spain), pox viruses, mad cow, all did not originate from China. You're probably holding this opinion because those are the freshest in your mind?
Not into conspiracies and this as of now has been unproven. Though Wuhan is now open for business giving China a head start on restarting their economy while everyone elses is completely stopped. Do you not think that is going to boost their economy and make it stronger then almost all others???
I think this rhetoric is a bit over the top. If anything this pandemic is going to buy China goodwill and stature based on their relatively strong posturing on the way out of crisis (vis a vis US) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-us-traditionally-le...
> although also screwed up with medical supplies to Spain
The "screwing up" of medical supplies in Spain is due to the incompetence and corruption of the Spanish government. They tried to arrange directly for the buying of supplies, bypassing the common importation route used by health officials. Unfortunately, and despite the repeated warnings of the Chinese embassy and many hospital managers, they ended up buying the supplies to a non-homologated Chinese startup, so the supplies cannot be used.
Interestingly a good part of the western press is pro-China. Just look at the COVID-19 coverage. We now know China lied on numbers (not that I think anyone here doubted of that), but western press was happy to push the narrative that China handled it so well (nvm the fact that they let it out to other countries to begin with).
What do they gain from this? I don't know. It's definitely not the first time i see this.
The government of China is systematically hacking corporations through the Ministry of State Security, and attempting to the switch the allegiances of all ethnically Chinese people across the world through the well-funded overseas political interference organization called the "United Front Work Department" [2]. In both the Australian and New Zealand parliaments, China has actually succeeded in installing individuals with undeclared links to government of China political interference and espionage organizations: Gladys Liu and Jian Yang. While there is no smoking gun that they are directly acting as spies, there is significant amounts of circumstantial evidence that they have been compromised by government of China influence operations. I don't need to explain the risk of politicians compromised by an adversarial government making key national defense decisions.
With this reality, why would any government risk allowing Huawei in their networks?
[1] https://www.afr.com/technology/how-chinese-hacking-felled-te...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTXPxWtl8Zw