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Huawei is dividing Western nations

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21–30 of 153 posts

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#21
post #4

What are the British thinking? Do they think they'll get a better deal from China than the US? Or is their intention to use this as a bargaining chip against the US?

Well, I think it's along the lines of "The US has behaved recklessly for the last 20 years, and any personal or corporate preferment for a US entity has been supported at the cost of the national interest of its allies. We have discovered all sorts of theft and malpractice by US companies and intelligence agencies and yet any complaint made to the US government is met with a smirk and a shrug. Not only does the US ignore our national interest, but US officials are openly contemptuous of it. The Chinese are evil and their values are alien to us, but the US is increasingly more similar to Saudi Arabia in it's values, system of government and international outlook than it is to us. We don't trust the USA and we need to have options."

If the UK goes all in with the USA we will end up looking like Mexico. If we go all in on Europe we will end up looking like Italy, or Greece (as was made clear in the aftermath of the 2011 veto). Many people who are not from the UK seem really keen that the UK is smashed up and humbled, we are supposed to be poor, sardonic and to provide cutting edge humor. This is not a great direction of travel for everyone who lives here though. Fundamentally the UK is alone in the world and needs to grow up and act like it - so we need to make some sort of bargain with the Chinese, and the Russians (which is much harder as they are acting as the perfect irrational player in the game of international relations right now).

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#22
>...the goal of American policy on Huawei is less about security and more about market share – and making sure America, not China, owns the future of 5G.

Bingo. Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Most of the premise for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou was comical at best. 30 years of US companies ignoring ITAR with at most a small fine, only to suddenly watch the US issue an extradition warrant for a chinese CFO accused of doing the same thing? I guess if its the cold war its different.

Huawei made it to market first. Most of this theatricality from the US government is a last-ditch effort to buy time until US communications companies come out with something remotely 5G.

AT&T did their usual tactic with 4g, and rolled out a watered down branded 5GE experience even to phones with no 5G chipset whatsoever in a desperate attempt to brand something they'll likely buy at twice the cost from a US supplier in 2021 just to spite their loss at Huawei.

I hate the term intellectual property and its easy to slander people for theft, but the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education and a public policy that actively persecuted hackers and anyone interested in STEM since the sixties. The US decided to turn their colleges into luxury sports arenas driven by unforgivable student loans and underpaid graduate students as teachers. It drafted legal DMCA and DRM to punish curiousity and reward obedience, and now for the past decade its tried to play both sides of the field. Insisting STEM is something all its citizens must learn, while at the same time branding anyone too interested in technology as aberrant and unlawful, a circumventor in violation of the license for the product they own. Unless and until this changes, im sure China or Korea or some other slave of the international market will own 6, 7 and 8 G as well.

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#23
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What bugs me is that I'm really unsure if I should post anything critical of China, it's scary what that could mean for my family 30 years down the road. I thought the same and I have no family ties there. (Though back in the early 00's I had fun studying in China and had wished to return.) I'm more worried about what happens if we don't speak out. While we need to fix our Western democracies, we can't ignore the b…

I think this rhetoric is a bit over the top. If anything this pandemic is going to buy China goodwill and stature based on their relatively strong posturing on the way out of crisis (vis a vis US) https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the-us-traditionally-le...

Also they have supplied aid to Italy and Spain (although also screwed up with medical supplies to Spain).

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#24

How is it that the west allowed Huawei to gain such a lead in 5G? If this has national security implications, why didn't the US support its domestic telecom firms?

The US hasn't had domestic telecom infrastructure firms for many years. We rely on Nokia and Ericsson, and both have failed to compete with Huawei.

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#26
post #10

China is indeed very divise for our global powerstructures. This Video shows a WHO official battling with this(if you want to look kindly upon him): https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1243889673207832577 What bugs me is that I'm really unsure if I should post anything critical of China, it's scary what that could mean for my family 30 years down the road.

This rhetoric against China, legitimate or not, seems like a precursor to war. I wish somebody would investigate if a troll factory is behind it or if it truly is a popular opinion.

The whole idea behind these trolls is that they repeat stuff until it becomes popular opinion. It's hard to stay objective, we tend to agree with majority (Asch cconformity experiments would be an example but this is way more subtle and harder to control).

You are correct with the war. And what we are talking about is not even a conspiracy theory. You can watch a top US general talking about it [1].

I see almost no comments like yours, only how China is evil. There is propaganda on both sides. But what worries me that here in the west most people don't seem to be aware of it.

I think people accepted that political news they are getting is biased based on who is delivering it, but somehow it is not generalized to politics outside the country.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE&t=841s

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#27

How is it that the west allowed Huawei to gain such a lead in 5G? If this has national security implications, why didn't the US support its domestic telecom firms?

This is the key question! Both Europe and the USA took their eye off the ball.

Europe's overly strict rules on "state aid" (giving public money to fund private sector work) mean that large, publicly traded telecoms companies are outsourcing their own R&D out to China, simply to save money. Few people realise, but that's where Nokia and Ericsson do a lot of their 5G R&D, and this can be verified with a quick dig around jobs and LinkedIn etc.

Huawei is the recipient of large quantities of state aid domestically, as well as the beneficiary of inter-governnental loans from the Chinese government to other countries for the purpose of building a mobile network!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-the-journal-calculated-huaw...

In terms of the USA, they don't have a significant notional domestic player in base stations - if we consider significant players as being Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei, and consider the former 2 as being mostly European.

The obvious existing networking business to enter from the US perspective would be Cisco, and they weren't interested in this kind of low margin stuff (which says a lot about their other pricing!)

https://www.ft.com/content/536d28c8-4e87-11ea-95a0-43d18ec71... (soft paywall, access via Google referrer)

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#28
post #22

>...the goal of American policy on Huawei is less about security and more about market share – and making sure America, not China, owns the future of 5G. Bingo. Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Most of the premise for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou was comical at best. 30 years of US companies ignoring ITAR with at most a small fine, only to suddenly watch the US issue an extradition warrant for a chines…

> the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education

How much has the US cut its education budgets?

Re: Huawei is dividing Western nations

#29
post #11

I think the main issue is that most europeans are just not so hot on a war with China as the americans are; even after a massive media campaign. I believe the next move by the US will be to force TSMC not to supply Huawei. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-huawei-tech-chips-exc... That will be a major blow to Huawei (and TSMC) and will force the Chinese to setup their own chip production as fast as possible. Wil…

The Americans might think of East Asians as their slaves, but experience has showed that even the vassals of the US are generally not as hard as the Americans/Europeans would like. This is but a reprisal of the old colonizers running around wrecking Asia to their will; I wonder if India will serve its old role of being the mercenary for destroying Asia again.

Hmm, what have we Indians ever destroyed?
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