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

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

#211

Post by jorblumesea » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 4:52 AM UTC

throwawei wrote: post #199

jorblumesea wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, don't you see the connection between their risk high investments and the IP they've stolen from US companies? If anything, Huawei made its name of stealing from Nortel, Cisco, etc. Not to mention, questionable ties to the CCP. If they have R&D money to burn, it's because they've saved billions on R&D because they stole it. To see them as "good actor" because of a token $200k, while stealing literally tens of bil…

I think the stealing instead of R&D thing is somewhat misled. These guys are definitely spending billions on research as well. I get the concern, and fines and punishment is all fine. But I think they might also have got caught in the geopolitical crossfire. It's a messy world; Samsung and Apple are stealing eachother's billions everyday, Google and Facebook are spying on us, DOD is killing people. I don't know who i…

> But I think they might also have got caught in the geopolitical crossfire

I think it's extremely naive to think that Huawei is just an innocent victim. Almost willfully so.

> I think the stealing instead of R&D thing is somewhat misled. These guys are definitely spending billions on research as well.

If you really think Huawei's R&D theft is blown out of proportion, there's a huge mountain of evidence that suggests the exact opposite. There's really not much wiggle room for ifs and buts. If anything, it's probably worse than reported.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is-litte...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Intellectu...

and you know, this indictment.

That being said, I don't expect you to say anything bad about the hand that feeds you. Given Huawei's reputation, they're probably monitoring you as we speak.

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

#212

Post by sangnoir » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:03 AM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #50

AsyncAwait wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. It's not disingenuous to single out China for this behavior since China is one of the biggest player doing it and reaping so much from it in our time. Plus, whataboutism.

> We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago.

So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.

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

#213

Post by TheRealPomax » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:04 AM 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…

You mean "for a few decades"? Modern China hasn't even existed for 50 years yet (and the revolution made sure that there is absolutely no way to even pretend that China's way of life before the revolution has _any_ bearing on modern China).

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

#214

Post by pinkfoot » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:06 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #212

johnchristopher wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. It's not disingenuous to single out China for this behavior since China is one of the biggest player doing it and reaping so much from it in our time. Plus, whataboutism.

> We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.

> it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events?

Yes

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

#215

Post by jariel » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

K0SM0S wrote: post #71

AsyncAwait wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I attended a top 5 business school in France at the turn of the century. We had partnerships with similar schools in NYC, Tokyo, Sydney, you name it. It was taught in first year of international business classes that outsourcing abroad was functionally equivalent to a transfer of technology — so you always had to factor in the time it took for your magic low-cost solution to fade out and become your competitor, essen…

This is a misleading narrative in the context of the charges against Huawei.

To somehow equate the direct theft of IP and innovation as just 'shared culture and knowledge' completely avoids the material criminality at hand.

Huawei is charged with literally incentivizing their employees to steal knowledge and IP, and of directly copying designs, on a systematic and widespread scale. These activities are instituted far beyond just Huawei.

This is not a situation of the natural flow of industrial knowledge, it's direct theft.

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

#216

Post by otterley » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:15 AM UTC

sand_castles wrote: post #162

otterley wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument goes that Huawei would not be able to "create better equipment" had they been unable to wrongfully copy others' work in the first place. If the allegations are true, Huawei enjoys a position that resulted from unlawful and immoral behavior, and their ill-gotten gains should be confiscated from them. Who knows what would have happened had Huawei done all their own R&D in the first place. Maybe they'd be i…

relax bro, we all stand in other's shoulders. also, you in what army ? are you going to invade Asia ?

There are two ways to stand on another’s shoulders. One is with consent; the other (to mix legal metaphors) is assault.

It would be one thing if Huawei said, “do you mind if I use this?” and received permission. But if they had to use deception to gather information, that’s a pretty clear indication that it’s wrong and is done without consent.

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

#217

Post by echevil » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:17 AM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #105

tpudlik wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this as a win-win, too, but in a different way. Early on, the US companies cut their costs: good for them, and likely their customers. In the long term, China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress. There's a lot of acrimony over how to divide the surplus, but this shouldn't overshadow the technological and e…

I love the fact that the PEOPLE of China have been able to benefit economically from this. However, less than 9% of China's population are members of the CCP. The other 91% of China's people are locked out of any form of government representation. This is a recipe for tyranny, and the elites of the CCP have oppressed the good citizens of China by developing tech for suppression of speech, identification and targeting…

The other 91% mostly don't have enough interest to become CCP member. It's not that difficult if they want to join.

Moreover, the highest organ of the state is National People's Congress (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_People%27s_Congress), with elected representatives coming from all kinds of professions, including CCP and non-CCP members. The idea is exactly to give everyone representation in government.

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

#218

Post by djrogers » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:20 AM UTC

About a dozen years ago I was working for a small-ish hardware company ($350-400M revenue), which was acquired by a bigger company. BiggerCo had a Joint Venture with Huawei (let’s called it JVco).

About 6 months Post acquisition one of our employees found that Huawei was selling a 100% complete rip-off of one of our products. JVco had access to some of our development resources, but Huawei was never supposed to see any of that per the agreements.

The box looked, acted, and functioned the same - all they did was localize the language, barely rebrand it, and repackage our weekly updates for their customers the day after we released them.

Legal from BiggerCo got involved, and it was all papered over as a ‘misunderstanding’ by the Joint Venture company. Haven’t trusted a thing with their name on it or any company that does business with them since...

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

#219

Post by TeeWEE » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:29 AM UTC

jorblumesea wrote: post #211

throwawei wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the stealing instead of R&D thing is somewhat misled. These guys are definitely spending billions on research as well. I get the concern, and fines and punishment is all fine. But I think they might also have got caught in the geopolitical crossfire. It's a messy world; Samsung and Apple are stealing eachother's billions everyday, Google and Facebook are spying on us, DOD is killing people. I don't know who i…

> But I think they might also have got caught in the geopolitical crossfire I think it's extremely naive to think that Huawei is just an innocent victim. Almost willfully so. > I think the stealing instead of R&D thing is somewhat misled. These guys are definitely spending billions on research as well. If you really think Huawei's R&D theft is blown out of proportion, there's a huge mountain of evidence that suggests…

Could you also react on his arguments that:

- lots of companies, like apple, are stealing from non US companies.

- US companies like Google and Facebook have much more personal data than huawai.

The whole privacy concern regarding Huawai is not well argumented. And its mostly an excuse by trump to attack China that is becoming a big world economy with manufacturing and technology skills rivalling USA.

Huawai is good competition in their field making products across the board cheaper. Competition is in the core of capitalism. May the strongest survive.

5G will be more expensive to rollout without them.

Ok, if they "copy" certain tech youre free to go to court. But a complete ban... thats just bad politics.

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

#220

Post by sumedh » Fri, Feb 14, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

pastime wrote: post #201

Something seems off. If China steals all the US IP, why are US technology companies still so valuable? For example, Apple is a very valuable US technology company that also has extensive dealings in China.

> why are US technology companies still so valuable?

Marketing plays a big role.