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China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

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Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#71

Post by emodendroket »

fouc wrote: post #57
manuelabeledo wrote: post #50

This just seems like a logical reaction to unknown supply chain attacks. The DoD has restrictions on acquisition of Chinese hardware, for example. Some HN posters believe that this is a tit-for-tat move regarding the Huawei sales ban, which is hardly comparable, as Huawei hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US companies.

> unknown supply chain attacks. Is that the case given that iPhones are manufactured in China? My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack iPhones to monitor their government officials.

Maybe they do but one could just as well apply this logic to bans on Huawei telecom equipment.

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#72

Post by rayval »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #23
flykespice wrote: post #4

uno reverse card play against US ban I see

Yes, except US is not trying to destroy China while China seems to be secretly dreaming of destroying the West and becoming a global authoritarian hegemon. All after the US did for them.

"Secretly dreaming" sounds like a thought-crime.

In terms of real-world actions, the US has more 750 military bases in 80 countries, including 300 in Asia.

China has 8 overseas bases: one in Djibouti and the rest in islands near China.

China is definitely trying to advance its economic interests throughout the world, by investing in infrastructure in Africa and Latin America.

That's what every country does or aspires to do. It's just business.

Better transparent soft power that delivers tangible results for the local populace rather than opaque coups, mercenary armies, and funding dictators and warlords.

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#74

Post by Terretta »

fouc wrote: post #57
manuelabeledo wrote: post #50

This just seems like a logical reaction to unknown supply chain attacks. The DoD has restrictions on acquisition of Chinese hardware, for example. Some HN posters believe that this is a tit-for-tat move regarding the Huawei sales ban, which is hardly comparable, as Huawei hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US companies.

> unknown supply chain attacks. Is that the case given that iPhones are manufactured in China? My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack iPhones to monitor their government officials.

> My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack iPhones to monitor their government officials.

It is a fact that certain US agencies required Blackberry or Android, rather than iOS on iPhone, for this reason.

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#75

Post by mdorazio »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #21
testfrequency wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has a history of giving most of their data to the US government? Did you mean to say “Apple has had to follow federal law when handed subpoena requests”?

Apple doesn't have access to anything remotely to hand over data stored on your phone or in iCould, right? What are they even handing over in subpoenas?

Until very recently, iCloud was not encrypted by default. So in the case of a subpoena, they handed over all your unencrypted iCloud files, chat logs, backups, etc. That's much more difficult due to changes that just happened this year.

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#76

Post by manuelabeledo »

Terretta wrote: post #74
fouc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unknown supply chain attacks. Is that the case given that iPhones are manufactured in China? My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack iPhones to monitor their government officials.

> My tinfoil hat theory is that they find it harder to hack iPhones to monitor their government officials. It is a fact that certain US agencies required Blackberry or Android, rather than iOS on iPhone, for this reason.

I believe this is no longer true. iOS devices are allowed in the DoD, for example.

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#77

Post by Terretta »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #48
seatac76 wrote: post #43

Expect more and more of this. The ultimate prize are technology standards, right now the West dominates that and China is actively trying to dethrone them. The world will sort itself in two camps again, Cold War is back functionally.

>the West dominates You mean the US dominates. I don't see any EU, Canadian or Australian designed smart-phones, Office365, Google, Chat-GPT, AWS, I can buy reaching critical mass. Edit: INB4 the chip hipsters who found out about ASML during the pandemic chip shortage, chime in with "but muh ASML is European!". Yes, it is European(Dutch), it's also based on EUV tech licensed from the US, and has EUV light sources at…

> I don't see any EU, Canadian or Australian designed smart-phones, Office365, Google, Chat-GPT, AWS, I can buy reaching critical mass. ... EU, Canada, and the rest of the west are lacking in world dominating SW companies and rely exclusively on the US, which the US can always use as leverage.

Reached critical mass, or even world-dominating: Nokia, RIM, Figma, Skype, Spotify, Hetzner

> the US dominates

... by buying them.

// Of these, RIM lost critical mass, Spotify is on uncertain ground, and Hetzner seems fine.

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#78

Post by ksec »

baby wrote: post #34
smugma wrote: post #2

“China’s restriction mirrors similar bans in the U.S. against Huawei Technologies as well as against officials using Chinese-owned TikTok”

This is the correct explanation. And that makes sense as well. I think another insight might be that the Chinese gov doesn’t really like when large companies can influence their decisions. I’d imagine that if everyone in the gov has an iPhone it makes it harder to be tough on Tim Apple.

> it makes it harder to be tough on Tim Apple.

Considering China's Biggest Export are Consumer Electronics and its adjacent industry, Apple has been the biggest help to that in the past 15 years. Not just on its products, but also the whole Supply Chain from Display to NAND. I warned about BOE and YMTC in 2016 on SemiWiki before both names enter into mainstream media. And it seems only Financial Times [1] ( or arguably Patrick McGee ) is getting it. Almost every comments on HN hate Qualcomm, during the Apple vs Qualcomm trial, the company that sided with Apple most was interestingly ( or not ) Huawei.

So no, there are still no signs they are tough on Apple. If anything Apple are helping Chinese companies to set up base outside of China to continue their operation. Actively funding and directing resources. This trend has only recently stopped some what after India demanded more local company to be used inside supply chains.

Again, if anything Tim Cook is very much Pro China.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/bf8e3846-2421-4f91-becf-2dfe39ec9...

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#79

Post by thowfaraway »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #65
WillPostForFood wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huawei hardware cannot be legally distributed or sold by US companies. There are bans on Huawei telecom equipment, but their phones, tablets, smartwatches, etc are not banned and are readily available: https://www.newegg.com/Huawei/BrandStore/ID-15388 https://www.amazon.com/stores/Huawei/page/34F6034C-1D34-4913...

These are older devices, and most of them are sold out already. That T3 10 is now over 6 years old, for example.

The p60 pro is released this year and available:

https://www.newegg.com/p/23B-001M-007X6

Re: China Bans iPhone Use for Government Officials at Work

#80

Post by ftxbro »

InitialLastName wrote: post #68
ftxbro wrote: post #3

first they evade the U.S. chip bans, now they ban U.S. phones, how can they be so hypocritical

Both actions are perfectly reasonably justified by self-interest, and I don't see them saying it's anything else.

> Both actions are perfectly reasonably justified by self-interest

If that's a justification then isn't every kind of hypocrisy justified by self-interest?

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