The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering • Hacker News Board

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#81

Post by chrisjc » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

AsyncAwait wrote: post #42

nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates You mean every developing nation? Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing. Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.

So you're saying that we shouldn't feel sorry for these 20th/21st century companies because of what happened in the 18th and 19th centuries? The whataboutisms are nauseating.

> Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.

No one is pretending this is how China specifically operates. This IS how certain entities from China operate. Especially certain SOE that have the backing of the CCP.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#82

Post by kube-system » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:43 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #30

tharne wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. law says corporations are people. People can be charged with RICO. It may be weird, but it's consistent.

Corporations are people mainly when it’s convenient. I am not aware of a company being sent to jail or sentenced to death. Regular persons can’t always settle things by paying a big (or small) fine.

The corporate death penalty (i.e. judicial dissolution) is a thing in the US, but is very rarely used.

https://www.nytimes.com/1889/11/08/archives/against-the-suga...

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#83

Post by rickety-gherkin » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

US political and militarized forces protecting corporate interest for the sake of...what again? Upholding ridiculous IP law?

Is it naive to think that IP law should be disintegrated? How would the world, and more specifically the digital landscape, look if there was no concept of IP.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#84

Post by jorblumesea » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:51 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #70

jorblumesea wrote: post #46

Isn't this what TPP was supposed to solve? It's ironic that the Trump admin killed Obama's China containment strategy, only to try to implement it in a half assed way without any allied alignment. Also doesn't help Trump is a highly polarizing figure. Pretty much describes the Trump admin in a nutshell. Whatever Obama did, get rid of it, regardless of its value, then implement a worse solution instead.

I'm not sure how TPP was supposed to be a China containment strategy. I've heard this said a few times, but the explanations for how it was supposed to work always seemed like hand-wavey versions of "well, it would make US partnerships with non-China countries stronger and that would somehow contain China".

It would have pretty much locked China out of the domestic markets of many Southeast Asian countries and closely coupled their economies to the US, making it harder to do business with China.

It's basically what China does today with their neighbors. Economic integration -> domestic power.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#85

Post by chrisjc » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #21

nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

in a lot of cases the low-cost competitors are not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance. They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US c…

Aren't most of the other 5G infrastructure manufactures European (Siemens, Nokia)? Do the US carriers really care where their equipment comes from?

Handset manufactures probably don't care since they're sourcing from others. Perhaps Samsung (Exynos) being the exception, but they're Korean. Apple bought Intel's 5G division.

The only chip company that I could imagine cares is Qualcomm.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#86

Post by mdorazio » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #84

mdorazio wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how TPP was supposed to be a China containment strategy. I've heard this said a few times, but the explanations for how it was supposed to work always seemed like hand-wavey versions of "well, it would make US partnerships with non-China countries stronger and that would somehow contain China".

It would have pretty much locked China out of the domestic markets of many Southeast Asian countries and closely coupled their economies to the US, making it harder to do business with China. It's basically what China does today with their neighbors. Economic integration -> domestic power.

Again, I'm not sure how TPP was actually supposed to accomplish what you're saying. As far as I know, TPP didn't restrict participants from trading with China, and it's not clear to me what would have economically discouraged them from doing so. Maybe I'm wrong - I genuinely want to know.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#87

Post by throwawei » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

Using a throwaway to share our $0.02 relating to this. AMA I guess.

We're a US-based startup that does about $100-200k in business annually with Futurewei (Huawei's R&D subsidiary). I've never dealt with Huawei proper. I can say they're genuinely investing in R&D, and trying to build a product unlike anything being offered right now. We're working with tech that's floating around the academic conferences, but no one else commercially will touch.

This in contrast to our experiences with established US companies which, a) don't want to deal with early-stage research, b) wouldn't work with us as a new, small company, and c) gave bad IP terms (ironically).

Not excusing other activities, but for us it's been above-board and beneficial. If they want to pump their profits into the US ecosystem, I see that as beneficial.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#88

Post by Koremat6666 » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

It is a DoJ allegation and that department has lower credibility than gas station sushi. It is perfectly possible that as Chinese companies continue to prove to be more competitive across the tech value chain USA will increasingly take irrational positions to hurt Chinese companies. This is an old American model that as long as Americans can control you (la South Korea, Japan,etc.), Americans treat you as business partners but since American influence on China is next to none, American come up with all these allegations.

> They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor.

This is pretty obvious and highly desirable. I think if all other countries adopt this chinese model they will be more competitive and earn more without engaging in wars and American companies will be forced to be lot more competitive.

Note that China is already making pretty big moves in other areas of Tech. Tiktok happens to be incredibly popular and I would expect DoJ to make more delinquent claims about Tiktok soon.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#89

Post by fhbdukfrh » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #78

blackrock wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tiring trope. It’s like how the music industry kept saying that people would no longer sing and make songs, because piracy would prevent them from doing so. As if there was no money to be made, and money was the only point of singing. As if piracy ever stopped people from singing for the past 10,000 years. Well, artists do make money from songs, by having concerts. They are selling the service and the exper…

People will keep singing and dancing and making music like they have always done. Most didn't make money from it. Sheet music changed that briefly, tapes/records/cds. Music = Copyright = money is a modern thing. Getting billions invested in anything won't happen without a return. If a company is limited to a short window before everyone can copy means less funding and more valueless throwaway products.

This is true for a lot of important drugs that don't have massively lucrative markets to recover their investment. This means fewer new antibiotics for global issues and more penis pills.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#90

Post by Koremat6666 » Thu, Feb 13, 2020, 11:08 PM UTC

nimbius wrote: post #21

nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

in a lot of cases the low-cost competitors are not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance. They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US c…

> On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it.

This one sentence summarized everything.