I mean, my impression is that there has been a lot of news trying to stir up US vs China animosity; I mean, I'm sure that a lot of industrial/state espionage happens, but the renewed focus just seems a little suspicious to me at a time when our government is trying to distract us from possible Russian interference in our election.
Makes me wonder about huawei - is this all just our government trying to take the heat off their Russian allies? I mean, it wouldn't even need to be made up in that case, I'm sure that if you looked, you could find plenty of sketchy things Chinese companies are already doing.
But that was the weird thing about this supermicro thing... it was really pretty easily disprovable. Like... there are a lot of really smart people in the field looking for this sort of thing. If it was a lie to begin with, why pick one that can be shown to be false, when there are so many other possibilities that can't be proved either way?
Man, I hope I live long enough to read good history books about this era.
[1]I bought a bunch of SMCI when the story first broke; Aside from buying and using a lot of SuperMicro I simply didn't believe that they would be the only company effected if the story was true. When the story broke, I though that someone had probably found something, and that as people tore apart hardware looking, we would find something from other manufacturers, too. As nobody has found anything yet? I now think the story is just false. I know smart people are looking. (software/firmware compromises may not be as durable, but they are a lot easier to implement.) Either way, my SMCI holdings are up a few grand at a time when the rest of my portfolio is looking pretty sad.