Who Owns Huawei? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#301

Post by sprafa » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

yourbandsucks wrote: post #280

antimora wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think that the whole IP sharing/stealing is in the cultural fabric of Chinese business dealings. And it would be nearly impossible for Trump to fix it through his current trade negotiations.

Cultural schmultural. They're in a place where it makes sense to do it, they're pragmatic, they do it. The US industrial revolution was kick-started by IP theft as well: https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur... Would you do any different if you were in charge of a country and your people need to eat? "Sorry starving peasants, we must respect international IP law"?

Fascinating story. Thanks for sharing. It does put the Chinese example into perspective...

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#302

Post by ivanhoe » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

gridlockd wrote: post #295

tr3ndyBEAR wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most of innovation in America also comes from the public sector not the private one. Economist Mariana Mazzucato famously wrote about this and more in her book "The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths" which I highly recommend if you're interested. I think it's a little misguided to say that China's innovation is solely due to corporate espionage. States have always been effec…

This is a meme that has been adopted by leftists wholesale. The basic premise is that since any innovation can be somehow tracked backed to government investment, the government is somehow responsible for most innovation. It disregards the whole process that is required to take insights from research into a real product. Yes, the internet was developed by the military. Only when private enterprise took over did it be…

One could also argue the opposite, that commercializing an invention is much more obvious, faster and WAY CHEAPER step than inventing the tech need for it? And I agree with you that Government is a terrible entrepreneur, but that's actually a good thing, because its huge budgets and the lack of interest in making money out of it, is exactly what keeps pure science per science's sake projects alive. Lots of R&D that government finances has completely different goals than entrepreneurs would, like getting competitive advantages over foreign players or solving strategically important problems. No business person in their right mind would ever finance flying a man to moon, or research on distributed, fault-tolerant communication system for post-nuclear war world, nor anyone would be able to predict ahead all technologies that could come out of that research, it's impossible to do. So we need both steps for progress, both the government trowing tax payers money on seemingly silly R&D, and entrepreneurs looking for new ways to monetize it later.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#303

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

_ptgt wrote: post #182

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make things up, anything is possible. How about this possibility, which is actually supported by real, known facts? Huawei began with simple equipment they could manufacture cheaply, made money, and have invested in R&D to move up the value chain. Recognizing that Huawei is an important Chinese tech company, the Trump administration is holding it hostage in the trade negotiations. Americans are now being bomba…

I honestly haven't seen conclusive evidence that Huawei has spied or been asked to in the past. Alas, imo, that's irrelevant because I'm aware that Huawei would not be able to turn down a spying request and continue to exist as a company. That Huawei has engaged company-spondored IP theft has been widely reported, as well as the fact that the Chinese government widely disseminates the IP it obtains via forced technol…

Actually, it is seriously disputed, because there's no evidence that Huawei has engaged in more serious IP theft than most other major tech companies.

The same examples are always trotted out. Huawei copied some extremely minor Cisco code over 15 years ago, and the two companies privately settled the issue, and Huawei engineers took pictures of the "Tappy" robot and took some of its fingertips a few years ago. If you compare these relatively minor incidents to the types of disputes other major tech companies have had, they're nothing. Google wholesale copied the Java API, and internal emails showed that senior executives knew this was potentially a legal problem. Samsung copied the design of the iPhone. Microsoft Windows' UI was largely cloned from Macintosh. The list goes on. Yet Huawei, which hasn't had any major IP disputes of this sort, is somehow the problem.

> the Chinese government widely disseminates the IP it obtains via forced technology transfers that are required to do business in the country.

This is not how things work in China. First of all, technology transfer is not required in most industries. Second of all, the companies that transfer technology do so willingly, because they believe access to the Chinese market is worth it. The Chinese government didn't put a gun to their head and tell them they had to open a factory in China. They benefit from cheap labor in China, and in return, China benefits from technology transfer. Companies wouldn't agree to this if they didn't regard it as a fair trade, and I don't see why it's unreasonable for a developing country to set these conditions on foreign investment. But again, these regulations don't cover most economic sectors.

However, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Huawei has benefitted from this sort of technology transfer. Again, claiming that Huawei has just looks like baseless innuendo, like so many of the accusations against the company.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#304

Post by DiogenesKynikos » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 4:31 PM UTC

awinder wrote: post #270

paganel wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that if the NSA were to ask for much of Google’s data right at this moment there isn’t anything Google could do, and I’m not even that sure that they would want to do anything. The same goes for FB. If they decide not to comply then both of these companies might risk being broken up or worse, so why risk it? The bottom line is that if you decide doing anything against the current US powers that be (like harass…

This past week a woman yelled loudly about stabbing Mitch mcconnell in the neck outside his house as part of a large crowd. It became a hot-button topic but no one fell out of an 8th story apartment window. The NSA does not have a mandate to do what you’re describing, they face extensive civilian oversight and programs like their metadata collection were extensively debated in public. Are there exceptions? Yes; but t…

> they face extensive civilian oversight and programs like their metadata collection were extensively debated in public

Most democratically elected representatives don't know what the NSA is up to. The Director of National Intelligence directly lied in his public testimony when asked about NSA collection. It took a whistleblower to reveal even the basic outline of the NSA's massive surveillance powers, which the civilian population was unaware of. That whistleblower now has to live in Russia, or else he'd be rotting away in jail, or worse. The metadata program was only extensively debated after those revelations, and we civilians are still in the dark about what the NSA does. I don't trust that they've stopped their mass surveillance of Americans. A massive organization that acts with such little oversight is a danger to democracy, regardless of what it claims in public.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#305

Post by TheKarateKid » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:57 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #289

Barrin92 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original post seems to assert that >"The idea that we are competing with “free market” Chinese companies is a fiction that we’ve made up in our own minds" this fiction applies to a significant degree in the United States too.

Also, if all the Chinese are doing is going and looking up all the publicly funded research then the system is working as intended, just as if they needed some kind of software and came back with something open source. There's no need for them to "steal" Microsoft's tech if they can get something suitable with a better licence.

Did you fully read the OP's comment? We're not talking software here -- we're talking hardware, engineering, and many other things that you don't just get a copy of the how-to's from open source projects.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#306

Post by TheKarateKid » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #263

seppin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be fair, most of innovation in America also comes from the public sector not the private one What does that have to do with what OP is talking about?

He's trying to argue that America is like China.

Not sure why this is downvoted, as that's exactly what the commenter's point was.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#307

Post by TheKarateKid » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 6:01 PM UTC

yourbandsucks wrote: post #280

antimora wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think that the whole IP sharing/stealing is in the cultural fabric of Chinese business dealings. And it would be nearly impossible for Trump to fix it through his current trade negotiations.

Cultural schmultural. They're in a place where it makes sense to do it, they're pragmatic, they do it. The US industrial revolution was kick-started by IP theft as well: https://www.history.com/news/industrial-revolution-spies-eur... Would you do any different if you were in charge of a country and your people need to eat? "Sorry starving peasants, we must respect international IP law"?

> Would you do any different if you were in charge of a country and your people need to eat?

They do it, and most of their people still can't afford to eat.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#308

Post by lonelappde » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

shalmanese wrote: post #220

md224 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty conflicted on this topic. On the one hand, I've heard that authoritarianism is soul-crushing and I've been raised to believe that individual freedom is paramount. On the other hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition I keep coming back to this idea of a society united by a shared telos that cuts across all racial and religious divides, acting together as a tightly-integrated social organis…

> On the one hand, I've heard that authoritarianism is soul-crushing and I've been raised to believe that individual freedom is paramount. You need to be aware that you're buying into a persistent pro-Western, anti-China propaganda. If you survey a random sampling of Chinese citizens, the vast majority of them would in no way find the system they're living under "soul crushing". Yes, people of Xinjiang and Tibet live…

Of course "everyone" "agrees" in a place where everyone who disagrees is jailed or killed.

It might be true that after 100years of exiling and stifling dissent, the remaining Chinese and brainwashed youth fall in line. But the adults who escaped (currently aged 35+) tell a very different story.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#309

Post by lonelappde » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 6:41 PM UTC

tthhuyid wrote: post #124

throw0101a wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, owning some of Western popular culture is a decent geopolitical chip. Tencent is co-producing the Top Gun sequel, and Maverick's jacket no longer has either the Japanese or Taiwanese flags on the back: * https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a28479683/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gun:_Maverick > Maybe it’s not as great as a nuke, but China can use popular video games to raise the next generatio…

Reading about the drone strikes on civilians does not make me dislike the US. Similarly, reading those links does not really affect how I feel about China.

The hope for the future is that amoral opportunists like this will be a small minority.

Re: Who Owns Huawei?

#310

Post by ZeroGravitas » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 8:20 PM UTC

TheKarateKid wrote: post #305

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if all the Chinese are doing is going and looking up all the publicly funded research then the system is working as intended, just as if they needed some kind of software and came back with something open source. There's no need for them to "steal" Microsoft's tech if they can get something suitable with a better licence.

Did you fully read the OP's comment? We're not talking software here -- we're talking hardware, engineering, and many other things that you don't just get a copy of the how-to's from open source projects.

The claim is that the Chinese are copying stuff via industrial espionage. I get that.

But Apple also sued Samsung for using rounded corners on a phone. So there's a lot of gray area in IP enforcement.

A similar non-chinese example is the AV1 codec from Google or the Android compatibility with Java. Both are claimed to be IP theft by other western parties. I don't think either of those claims hold up, and I have no real reason to believe that China's violations are any more morally suspect without a lot more specifics.

Modern IP enforcement has left me in a "boy who cried wolf" mentality when it comes to infringement. To be honest I'm more scared of China playing that game in a hardball manner than I am of them ignoring it.