Did a Chinese Hack Kill Nortel?

> willing to invest unlike us in the west

The article says Huawei was given $10 billion or more in free or almost free loans.

Kelley Johnson’s Skunk Works was successful because it rejected government controls and oversight. Read Kelley’s 14 rules of Management.

Johnson had a 15th rule that he passed on by word of mouth. According to the book "Skunk Works" the 15th rule is: "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy.“ because the Navy wouldn’t relinquish control of projects to the Skunkworks.

And it’s “funding” was paid contracts for performance, not an infinite credit line of free cash that Huawei got. Entirely different things. Huawei has sucked up a huge amount of Chinese resources, and there is no guarantee they’ve made a positive return, or ever will.

And SpaceX is a great example, just like the Skunkworks it’s NASA funding was pay for performance. SpaceX would have been out if business without the first contract, and would not be remotely as big today without the others, but those contracts have also saved NASA billions of dollars.

The vast majority of government funded projects are similar to the SLS, which has eaten up $15B+ in taxpayer funds without a launch. And when it finally launches 4+ years late it will be the most expensive launch system ever by a factor of over 2x per launch, and at least 20 times more expensive per pound than commercial launch systems. While reusing 40 year old engines!

Boeing should be forced into Chapter 11 so new ownership with clean hands can fix them. That’s the whole reason we have a bankruptcy code.

I've worked in a similar communications behemoth that was very closely related to the company in question. I have first hand experience with toxic, entitled, self-dealing management culture, poor-me devs, steady stream of clueless interns, oblivious contractors.. Vapid VP's, diddling directors, the works! Definitely suspected there were spies of all colors amongst us, but hey! the coffee was great.

This is the decade old Brian Shields, ex-Nortel security adviser, story that got resuscitated against Huawei for the 5G war. No one took it seriously at the time because it doesn't comport with reality.

Nortel primarily died from poorly conceived massive spending that fucked them during the dotcom/telecom bubble crash, executives started cooking the books, it was discovered, the company imploded. Don't get me wrong, Nortel was definitely the victim of industrial espionage, every telecom vendor in the world was being infiltrated by China at the time, CISCO, Siemens, Nokia, SonyEriccson, Acatel&Lucent etc. But they managed to survive or consolidate after the crash. Companies like Nortel don't implode that hard and fast from espionage - massive corporate incompetence and malfeasance however, will.

BTW Huawei itself didn't hack Nortel, the original reporting blamed Chinese state actors who then passed what they found onto other domestic players like Huawei and ZTE which was actually CPC's original domestic champion before US sanctions crippled them, after which Huawei took the crown. This point is salient, Huawei literally out competed the favourite child. Regardless, if memory serve the tech Huawei used from Nortel was related to optical routing which was a niche segment that wasn't a large part of Nortel's portfolio. So even if Huawei, who was a small player at the time, stole Nortel's tech and took the relevant market shares, it would not have killed or even crippled Nortel. There are entire books and lectures dissecting Nortel's demise, the role of Huawei is never seen as anything but tangential, and playing it up is basically revisionist history / propaganda.

Somewhat related, expat anecdotes of Nortel China in the late 90s - it was a shit place to work. Nortel Guangzhou drove away many of their talent (at least in engineering) because they wouldn't promote PRC nationals, and even Chinese Canadians. A lot of them ended up being poached by rivals or moved over to state enterprises, some with usb sticks full of data because Nortel fucked them. I knew a bunch of engineers with jumped shit with hard drives to Siemens and Lucent who later ended up at ZTE.

Edit: Also for anyone wondering why Bloomberg's reporting on China has shifted in the last few years even before the trade war (prior Bloomberg was a pretty ardent globalist, i.e. pro Chinese engagement like most of big business), this article from 4 years ago speculating Bloomberg was too pro-China and needed to cultivate anti-China bonafides if he wanted to run as president. Prescient.

Michael Bloomberg Has An Achilles Heel And It Is Not Guns Or Age But China https://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2016/01/24/mich...