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Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

reuters.com

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Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#81

Post by takamh »

thommark wrote: post #61
eaim wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All is vagueness. It’s popular! Why bother with evidence when agencies / governments / media can simply make vague statements about threats & security? Oh & of course we can’t supply evidence because that would threaten our security also. Circulus In probando

I wouldn't call it vagueness, investigation takes time. Plus, our largest telecom, KPN, already announced they were not going to use Huawei in core-5G - the first EU telecom to do so, last month. I am sure the intelligence report had something to do with it. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kpn-huawei-5g/dutch-telec...

What is the technical definition of core-5G? A lot of these announcements are filled with political double-speak.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#82

Post by jimclegg »

zaro wrote: post #42
holy_city wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not more dangerous, it's that the existing infrastructure is not (as) compromised as new infrastructure to be built with Huawei goods. It should be self evident that turning over domestic communications infrastructure to a global rival with the largest military on the planet, nuclear first strike capability, a history of violence, newly minted dictator, and global ambitions is a terrible idea. Also, the US gover…

> the largest military on the planet, nuclear first strike capability, a history of violence, newly minted dictator, When you say it like that it's not quite clear whether you are referring to China or the US.

This part, "history of violence", makes it clear we talk of the US.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#83

Post by parineum »

fmajid wrote: post #71
otoburb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't have large domain players in the telecom space that supply the broad spectrum of equipment that runs what is known as the 4G EPC[1] or 5G Core[2] (data & packet processing) and RAN[3] (radio access network). Qualcomm and Intel focus and specialize on chips. Cisco focuses on layer 2, layer 3 and partially layer 7 equipment (think: routers & switches). Cisco has some products that compete against Huawei…

According to the Chief Architect of BT, Huawei's 5G technology is so far ahead of Nokia and Ericsson they are not even contenders: https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/bts-mcrae-huawei-is-t... For Europeans, they have to balance the possibility of Chinese espionage against the certainty that the US and UK are already doing it: * https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/02/wikileaks-us-s... * https://theintercept.…

>In that light, Huawei equipment that the Chinese government tries to make as immune to the 5 Eyes as possible may actually be preferable.

Unless you're contributing to or benefitting from that 5 eyes intel.

Our governments aren't as averse to these things as you and I are.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#84

Post by User23 »

fmajid wrote: post #71
otoburb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US doesn't have large domain players in the telecom space that supply the broad spectrum of equipment that runs what is known as the 4G EPC[1] or 5G Core[2] (data & packet processing) and RAN[3] (radio access network). Qualcomm and Intel focus and specialize on chips. Cisco focuses on layer 2, layer 3 and partially layer 7 equipment (think: routers & switches). Cisco has some products that compete against Huawei…

According to the Chief Architect of BT, Huawei's 5G technology is so far ahead of Nokia and Ericsson they are not even contenders: https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/bts-mcrae-huawei-is-t... For Europeans, they have to balance the possibility of Chinese espionage against the certainty that the US and UK are already doing it: * https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/02/wikileaks-us-s... * https://theintercept.…

On the plus side, this means there's an opportunity for the US to commit some tit for tat industrial espionage to catch up.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#85

Post by lwf »

ETHisso2017 wrote: post #79
throw20102010 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every American company is at the beck and call of the US government at all times, with their existence in peril if they disobey. The US government has been regulating trade like this since before we were born, and most of the time we don't even notice. This is not the first time that Silicon Valley had to obey US government regulations. Notice that there are hardly any Iranian or North Korean tech companies doing bus…

So why does the US government accuse Huawei of being a risk for being at the beck and call of the Chinese government?

The lever here is export control, e.g. "you can't export this tech to these people, countries, vendors" etc, rather than a request to perform some affirmative action at the behest of a government. ( a "writ", if you will; c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act#Application_to_e... )

So the USG can tell a company "you cannot transfer this controlled material to these people, 'cause NatSec", but (probably) can't compel a company "build a tool for us that does X".

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#86

Post by chrischen »

Has it occurred that the US opposition to using telecom equipment from Huawei might be because they can't send them a national security letter or otherwise force them to make a backdoor (kind of like how Apple resisted) for domestic spying?

I feel like if China were to backdoor 5G equipment deployed to the US it'd be relatively trivial to detect by operators, and absolutely crippling to the market share of Huawei if they were found to compromise their equipment.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#87

Post by downrightmike »

fmajid wrote: post #73
likeabbas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn’t one argue that their strength in cost efficiency was largely built on the theft of IP? Without the IP barriers western countries abide by, they were able to take the best technology from multiple companies, implement it and sell it at a fraction of the price?

Not in the realm of 5G network equipment. As BT's McRae says, they are way ahead of their competitors, not something you can achieve by simply copying others' technology: https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/bts-mcrae-huawei-is-t... The reality is that Huawei has been outspending its competitors in R&D by a wide margin for over two decades, because the latter are managed by bean counters in thrall to the stock mark…

If the Huawei tech operates on the same frequencies as US military tech, that is reason enough to see the embargo. It is one reason why LEO satellite internet has taken so long, because the plans typically get near some of the frequencies that old maritime GPS devices use and they can't be interrupted.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#88

Post by mycall »

0815test wrote: post #77
femto wrote: post #74

This strikes me as a brilliant opportunity to push for a complete Free Software stack for a phone. There will soon be a heap of 5G phone hardware going cheap. Software support will be lacking. The hardware manufacturer may well be open to publicly releasing the information independent third party developers will require to write software for their otherwise useless phones. If you're reading this Huawei, why not dump…

Huawei is not known as an open company, if anything they're the very opposite. They stopped providing unlock ability for their mobile devices some time back, and even before that they were known for having by far the hardest system to work with for phone "modders" - bricked hardware was exceedingly common, and zero outside support was provided. That's incredibly harsh even by CN standards.

My Nexus 6P was made by Huawei and was very unlockable. Did I know if Huawei had a backdoor in the radio bin? idk.

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#89

Post by throw20102010 »

ETHisso2017 wrote: post #79
throw20102010 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every American company is at the beck and call of the US government at all times, with their existence in peril if they disobey. The US government has been regulating trade like this since before we were born, and most of the time we don't even notice. This is not the first time that Silicon Valley had to obey US government regulations. Notice that there are hardly any Iranian or North Korean tech companies doing bus…

So why does the US government accuse Huawei of being a risk for being at the beck and call of the Chinese government?

Not doing something about national security because the US might look hypocritical is not a concern to those making the decision. Countries spy on each other while complaining about the other spies. The US tried to stop North Korea from getting nukes while holding the world’s largest stockpile of nukes. The US has put multiple countries on blast for human rights violations while also being allies with Saudi Arabia.

The fact that Google and affiliates are being used in a similar manner that we’re accusing Huawei probably makes the people in charge laugh even harder.

The real question should be that if Chinese government policy creates a security risk for the US, why are they only going after Huawei? Why not a blanket ban on all sophisticated Chinese electronics? Lenovo has been caught before putting spyware on computers, but somehow the US government still buys Lenovo laptops...

Re: Hobbling Huawei: Inside the U.S. war on China’s tech giant

#90

Post by v-yadli »

trepanne wrote: post #72
freeflight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure one could argue that, but to do that convincingly it would probably best to bring concrete evidence of what IP was supposedly stolen to facilitate the Huawei tech.

Huawei's theft of Cisco's IP is common knowledge, and well documented. https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

yeah, STRCMP.

And I wouldn't call it "documented", unless it provides references to the official reports. The link points to a Cisco site, and what would you expect Cisco to say?

here's a legacy archive of the relevant articles from a Chinese third-party site: http://tech.sina.com.cn/focus/cisco_huawei/

I'm a bit surprised it is still kept intact after some 20 years. You could see trails of history -- mind the "Google it" header at the top.

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