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FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

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Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#191

Post by throwawaaay129 »

ajkjk wrote: post #184
throwawaaay129 wrote: post #182

This whole things looks more and more embarrassing. From the outside it just looks like the US is struggling to compete and so they create extrajudicial barriers based on "secret evidence" to block competitors. The hypocrisy is that this is the exact anti-competitive behavior the US has been criticizing China for years. It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic…

I feel like I don't really have any moral problem with US passing laws to protect US interests, as long as the laws aren't super unreasonable or evil. They're, like, unfair to some people, but not.. really... morally wrong? The moral complaint about China isn't that they have anti-competitive laws, it's the Orwellian thought-suppression psy-ops stuff.

"it's the Orwellian thought-suppression psy-ops stuff."

I mean that's like a "bigger" issue. I think it's a completely fair to decide you should just not conduct business with companies under authoritarian regimes (see N.Korea Iran Myanmar etc.). If you wanna blacklist the whole country then okay.. but here it's some indefensible middle ground where you continue to do business with them, until it's inconvenient and some bureaucrat decided it's making you look bad so lets just ban some of their strongest companies to cripple them. We will do business with you as long as you only make low end widgets thankyouverymuch.

That might not be what's actually happening, but that's how it looks

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#192

Post by throwawaaay129 »

vorpalhex wrote: post #188
throwawaaay129 wrote: post #182

This whole things looks more and more embarrassing. From the outside it just looks like the US is struggling to compete and so they create extrajudicial barriers based on "secret evidence" to block competitors. The hypocrisy is that this is the exact anti-competitive behavior the US has been criticizing China for years. It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic…

Or just ban the PLA owned companies and go back to working on more important stuff. Keep it simple. No need to bend over backwards to help CCP owned and controlled companies (that are legally mandated to serve the CCP's requests) make a quick buck selling commodity hardware.

I think singling out China or the PLA is kinda the problem... Just any government/military controlled company from any country arguably is an issue. If you make it more country agnostic then it's going to be taken more seriously

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#193

Post by skohan »

throwawaaay129 wrote: post #182

This whole things looks more and more embarrassing. From the outside it just looks like the US is struggling to compete and so they create extrajudicial barriers based on "secret evidence" to block competitors. The hypocrisy is that this is the exact anti-competitive behavior the US has been criticizing China for years. It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic…

It's not just the US which has adopted this approach. Iirc Germany for example doesn't allow Chinese tech for telecom infrastructure over concerns about security.

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#194

Post by rlt »

throwawaaay129 wrote: post #182

This whole things looks more and more embarrassing. From the outside it just looks like the US is struggling to compete and so they create extrajudicial barriers based on "secret evidence" to block competitors. The hypocrisy is that this is the exact anti-competitive behavior the US has been criticizing China for years. It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic…

> It's possible these companies are doing nefarious things. In which case create a country-agnostic legal framework and take them to court and prove your case. If it's all super-secret-spy-stuff then just do the damn parallel construction and show all these secret backdoors you claim to have found.

Are OTA software updates considered a “backdoor”? Because they essentially are one, even if the company is not doing anything nefarious yet.

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#195

Post by ChuckMcM »

I wonder if this covers Baofeng radios. (I'm not sure who their parent company is so hard to tie them to the Covered List)

Trade barriers cloaked in National Security cloth are nothing new, they were common in the old Soviet Union (a lot of US made computers were forbidden from entering, and of course the US refused to sell more advanced computers based on National Security concerns), they have been active on and off with China as well.

But the interesting thing for me is the reversal, which is as good an endorsement that Chinese industry is legitimately reached parity on a development scale with US goods as any press release the PRC would push out to the news wires. What it says is that China can deliver compelling solutions in the communications and surveillance space with entirely organic (and thus not controllable) supply chains resulting in products that US customers want to buy and US security interests can't insure aren't compromising their buyers. Having the shoe on the other foot has got to feel a bit weird right?

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#196

Post by kube-system »

ScoobleDoodle wrote: post #144
flumpcakes wrote: post #81

While I have no doubt than basically anything from China is probably backdoored (and to the fault of western countries outsourcing manufacturing for cheap labour), what exactly has Huawei done? How do we know that the Cisco equipment also isn't backdoored and if I send a few malformed TCP packets it opens up its control plane on the receiving port? Compared to the last few decades, it seems like a strong hand banning…

Do you think Lenovo laptops are back door’s too?

Like Superfish?

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#197

Post by rlt »

jjeaff wrote: post #189
Dalewyn wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I see stories like this I can't help but feel a twisted sense of respect for China, because they know how to read the rulebooks and take advantage of it all for everything we're worth. Defeating the biggest military and geopolitical superpower known to mankind is trivial if you understand you can just ignore all that and instead buy it all up, and it becomes even more trivial if your enemy straight up give…

I'm not quite sure what the long game would be of buying up land. Obviously, in an escalation of contentions between the two countries, the US would simply seize said land.

I think the concern is they could be using it for surveillance of sensitive nearby targets leading up to such an escalation.

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#198

Post by unmole »

blindriver wrote: post #88
flumpcakes wrote: post #81

While I have no doubt than basically anything from China is probably backdoored (and to the fault of western countries outsourcing manufacturing for cheap labour), what exactly has Huawei done? How do we know that the Cisco equipment also isn't backdoored and if I send a few malformed TCP packets it opens up its control plane on the receiving port? Compared to the last few decades, it seems like a strong hand banning…

Huawei singlehandedly destroyed Canada's Nortel Networks through espionage and sabotage. The CIA did an analysis and discovered that Huawei was dumping wireless equipment to small wireless providers in areas around US military basis at a loss. At the very least, the ability to disrupt communication of those military bases were easily achievable.

> Huawei singlehandedly destroyed Canada's Nortel Networks through espionage and sabotage.

Riiiiight. The dotcom crash followed by the accounting scam had absolutely nothing to do with it. It's not like the management pretended that they wouldn't see a downturn and then faked the numbers so that they'd get their bonuses.

Oh, wait.

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#199

Post by kube-system »

flumpcakes wrote: post #81

While I have no doubt than basically anything from China is probably backdoored (and to the fault of western countries outsourcing manufacturing for cheap labour), what exactly has Huawei done? How do we know that the Cisco equipment also isn't backdoored and if I send a few malformed TCP packets it opens up its control plane on the receiving port? Compared to the last few decades, it seems like a strong hand banning…

> While I have no doubt than basically anything from China is probably backdoored (and to the fault of western countries outsourcing manufacturing for cheap labour), what exactly has Huawei done?

Some others have pointed out some Huawei incidents, but that’s not the big problem.

The big problem is, if you build your entire telecom infrastructure on Huawei gear, and then you go to war, it will then be weaponized. In the best case scenario, you have a telecom infrastructure for which you can’t get any parts, patches, or support. Replacing your entire telecom infrastructure is not something you want to do during the opening months of WWIII.

It’s the same reason why we don’t want to rely on Chinese parts for our missiles.

Re: FCC Bans Authorizations for Devices That Pose National Security Threat

#200

Post by unmole »

joemazerino wrote: post #85
flumpcakes wrote: post #81

While I have no doubt than basically anything from China is probably backdoored (and to the fault of western countries outsourcing manufacturing for cheap labour), what exactly has Huawei done? How do we know that the Cisco equipment also isn't backdoored and if I send a few malformed TCP packets it opens up its control plane on the receiving port? Compared to the last few decades, it seems like a strong hand banning…

Look up Nortel.

The bloated tech gaint that refused to acknowledge the reality of the dotcom crash and then was brought down by an accounting scandal? That Nortel?
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