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Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

bloomberg.com

51–60 of 137 posts

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#51
While this article seems compelling, it’s also from Bloomberg Tech. A year and a half ago Bloomberg Tech wrote “the Big Hack”, which seems to have been made up out of whole cloth by a small group of sources that duped Bloomberg. Not only was Bloomberg duped, but they’ve never printed a correction, retraction, or clarification.

I’d much prefer this story was written by a news organization with some credibility.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#52
post #8

Nortel Market Cap Peak per year, in $USD Billions: 1997: $16 1998: $22 1999: $105 2000: $283 2001: $56 2002: $26 The dot com bubble produced insane valuations around the turn of the century. The run-up to the collapse was breathtaking.

Dang, so someone who invested in 1997 would have still made money in 2002, though they would have a lot of psychological pain from the ride down from the peak.

Depends on dilution, Nortel could have easily issued enough shares to cause the stock price to drop over that period. I don’t know about Nortel, but Cisco was a stock printing machine over same period.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be sure to explain to your parents that this particular news outlet (Bloomberg) has a history of playing fast and loose with reality, particularly in regard to supposed Chinese industrial espionage activities. [1] Also you might point out that the company pays bonuses to its "journalists" for successfully affecting financial markets. [2] 1: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/04/editorial-a-year-... 2: https://ww…

Bloomberg's last China hack article was completely discredited, and still no retraction/explaination. They have the appearances of Trump's propaganda machine. Considering the timing of this relative to the election and GOP's sole strategy of China scapegoating we can all take this latest as more of the same

In case you're not a troll and your vision was just clouded by mindless Trump and GOP hate:

Have you ever heard the name Michael 'Mike' Bloomberg[1] before? He was a registered Democrat candidate running against(!) Trump in the presidential race.

The same Mike Bloomberg is also the founder and owner (well, majority shareholder) of Bloomberg L.P.[2].

Why would a Democrat presidential candidate use his company's influence support the strategy of his outspoken opponent?

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Bloomberg [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#54
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article itself suggests that it's a possibility. There's no evidence connecting the hack to Nortel's flagging fortunes, and there's no evidence connecting Huawei's success to the information in the hack. The article makes a much stronger argument that effective Chinese government support of Huawei and the failure of the Canadian government to support Nortel, as well as Huawei's ability to hire away many of Nortel…

getting downvoted for pointing out facts and reiterating the authors own words. The anti-Chinese hysteria on this website really is a sight to behold at this point. Is "China bad" how HN and the US is going to look for the next 20 years as North America goes down the hill? For an actual science based look at Nortel there was a good study done by a team at the Tefler School of Business years ago.[1] Taking an extensiv…

As someone who is neither Chinese nor American and has no horse in this race, I find it amusing how strong the bias against China is on this site. TikTok accesses clipboard, it must be an intelligence operation; LinkedIn and AirBnB do the same, I guess the devs were lazy and didn't do enough testing. Someone find a security hole in a Huawei device, that must be a communist backdoor; a Cisco device has the same security issue, they are just moving fast and breaking things.

You know the old saying that we judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions. If you cut someone off while driving, it's just a simple error and no biggie, you just misjudged the road situation momentarily; but if someone cuts you off, they are a idiot who should not be on the road and deserves to get their license taken away and their car impounded.

The reaction to anything China on HN is like the above, applied at a national scale.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#56
The hacks were not the problem. They engaged in financial shenanigans because they had a bankrupt management culture.

Their decline and fall were the direct result of their human problems. And, briefly, their human problems stemmed from their human problems.

Culture and management matter.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#58
> In 2005 the China Development Bank lent the Nigerian government $200 million to buy Huawei equipment for a national wireless network, offering an absurdly low interest rate, as little as 1%

Why collect an interest rate at all, if it's less than the inflation rate? It's basically free money at that point.

Re: Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

#59
post #28
post #5

My parents lost a small fortune in 2001 riding the tech crash down (Nortel was a good chunk of that). I've been trying to explain to them (1st gen Chinese immigrants) for the past three years that Nortel was killed partly by focused Chinese spying and IP-theft by Huawei. CSIS has know about this for years. They (my parents) just wouldn't believe it until I showed them this article. Their former university classmates…

I find it hard to believe that the company was so incredibly fragile that it, uniquely among its competitors was killed by Huawei stealing some of its IP. Far more likely, there's no shortage of other reasons that led to its downfall, but it's easier for the people responsible to blame spies.

I thought the article did a decent job of explaining that.

Nortel without the IP theft was certainly on shaky ground.

It sounds like the IP gave Huawei an opportunity to catch up more quickly and with Chinese govt cash, pull the rug out from under Nortel.

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