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Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

nytimes.com

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Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#101

Post by yourapostasy »

jerf wrote: post #70
ptaipale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on whether one thinks that democracy and freedom are good things as such. They are not necessarily universal values, even if many in the West tend to think so.

The real utility of democracy isn't really the people getting a say, despite the propaganda on the side of the tin. The real utility of democracy is that it enables a mechanism for bloodless revolution, by essentially hosting them periodically instead of letting the pressures build up for years and decades until the whole thing explodes in a violent, civilization-damaging orgy of blood and destruction. It gives a mec…

I think of it in the following analogy. Democracy is continuous garbage collection. It is messy and inefficient, sometimes unpredictable for the efficiency nuts. Authoritarianism is manually-managed pointer references. Efficient and very predictable at first. Once the complexity gradient rises above a certain level though...

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#102

Post by yourapostasy »

shasheene wrote: post #77
fouc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the demographic situation in the US is highly favorable compared to all other advanced economies How can we determine this? Which economies are we talking about? Does anyone with economics knowledge know if there are formulas/math around demographics in order to determine healthy vs unhealthy demographics (if such a concept is even relevant)?

> How can we determine this? Using a population pyramid graph [0]. You can see the data in [1]. It's a nice way to visualize the amount of working aged people vs dependents (youth and elderly). In short, a bulge of working age people ("demographic dividend") is good for the economy in the short-term, but unsustainable. The 'baby boomer' generation was one such demographic dividend. China talks about the '4-2-1 proble…

> Interstingly, what is ideal depends on the type of economy...

If that is true, then is the growing consensus that older cognitive economy workers in developed economies are increasingly disadvantaged in the job market a signal that "developed" economies are regressing, or the conjecture needs reformulation to account for other factors? I suspect the latter.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#103

Post by gascan »

dmode wrote: post #17
xevb3k wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I’m mistaken, your list contains both semiconductor companies with and without fabs. I think for this discussion semiconductor companies with fabrication facilities are more interesting. How much fab is still done in the US?

I believe almost no Fab manufacturing happens in the US anymore. This is why the article seems a little hyperbolic to me. I understand US companies lead in chip design, but if Asian companies are manufacturing the chips, how long will it take to reverse engineer? To add to this, many engineers working for these American Giants are Asians and can be poached back. Look how it little it took for Chinese manufacturers to…

how long will it take to reverse engineer?

Long enough that by the time they do, the chips they've ripped are behind the times.

Chips march on a pretty fast cadence, and with billions of transistors they are no small feat to reverse engineer.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#104

Post by dnomad »

kinsomo wrote: post #99
dnomad wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual attack vector relies upon drivers signed by Taiwanese chip makers. (Taiwan happens yup be a country whose continued existence depends entirely upon the US.) If you depend upon say a Realtek card reader you're vulnerable.

> The actual attack vector relies upon drivers signed by Taiwanese chip makers. But that's not a hardware attack. IIRC, Stuxnet used driver signing certificates to bypass some OS-level safeguards. It's quite possible that the needed certificates were stolen from a manufacturer that poorly protected them. When you said: >> Their dependence on American silicon may in fact be their greatest security risk. [emphasis mine…

> The implication is that American silicon itself is backdoored.

There was no such implication. Compromising hardware never makes sense unless you can intercept the hardware en route (something the NSA has been known to do [1]).

> It's quite possible that the needed certificates were stolen from a manufacturer that poorly protected them.

It's also possible that unicorns exist. Considering that certificates have been "stolen" from Taiwanese firms multiple times [2] I'd say it's not irrational to consider the possibility that these firms either are directly or via the Taiwanese government cooperating with US cyberattacks.

All of this indicates that yes, relying on such foreign chipsets is huge security threat. China imports an incredible $200 billion a year in such chips so even putting aside the huge technological attack surface associated with such a dependency the dependency constitutes an immediate economic vulnerability.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

[2] https://www.wired.com/2015/06/foxconn-hack-kaspersky-duqu-2/

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#105

Post by sysdashprice »

gumby wrote: post #90
shasheene wrote: post #4

I think history will suggest that the end of Deng Xiaoping's long-term strategy of "hide our capacities and bide our time" around 2015 was too premature to meet the government of China's long-term goals. The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion following the events of the past few years in the region. Because…

> The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion... Are you in the USA? Because I'm sitting in Malaysia (who historically has a fraught relationship with China) where China is greeted with a mix of suspicion and opportunistic welcome (knowing that any cash or other assistant will have many strings attached)... basi…

Speak for yourself. South Koreans love that US has defended them against the maniacal dictators around the country. Taiwanese people love that US has protected them against the Chinese aggression, and support their island of democracy. Even some Chinese people love that US was the main capital provider into the country that lifted Chinese from abject poverty.

While around the world, muslims are angry that China has enacted a concentration camp for millions of muslims. (I'm sure since you're in Malaysia, you should have heard your muslim friends say something about this). Americans are pissed off that China steals trade secrets and doesn't abide by any of the laws in WTO. Vietnamese, Indonesians, and Filipinos are upset about the Chinese aggression in South Sea. Japanese are upset about the perpetual hatred Chinese government has against Japan (tons of WW2 drama portraying Japan as evil).

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#106

Post by sysdashprice »

shasheene wrote: post #4

I think history will suggest that the end of Deng Xiaoping's long-term strategy of "hide our capacities and bide our time" around 2015 was too premature to meet the government of China's long-term goals. The moderate amount of international goodwill that existed seems to have completely evaporated and been replaced with significant amounts of suspicion following the events of the past few years in the region. Because…

I think China had no choice in 2015. The collapse of the stock market, spurring the capital outflow (currently, 3 Trillion of 6 Trillion of China's wealth is overseas) and induced by the 'corruption crackdown' by Xi Jing Ping, exposed the fragile economic condition in China (350% debt/gdp). China realized it was playing a severely weak hand, and it had to act belligerent in its own self interest. So it

- threatened several of its neighbors with occupying and later arming the islands in SCS

- threatened to invade Taiwan

- ramped up hacking efforts to steal IP around the world

- told its citizens to stop buying from Korea after the missile crisis

- told its citizens to stop buying from Japan after the island issue

- propping up dictatorships around the world

this is all in an effort to redirect the world to look away from its demographics decline, growth flatlining, reshoring and factories moving out of China, etc

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#107

Post by kinsomo »

dnomad wrote: post #104
kinsomo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The actual attack vector relies upon drivers signed by Taiwanese chip makers. But that's not a hardware attack. IIRC, Stuxnet used driver signing certificates to bypass some OS-level safeguards. It's quite possible that the needed certificates were stolen from a manufacturer that poorly protected them. When you said: >> Their dependence on American silicon may in fact be their greatest security risk. [emphasis mine…

> The implication is that American silicon itself is backdoored. There was no such implication. Compromising hardware never makes sense unless you can intercept the hardware en route (something the NSA has been known to do [1]). > It's quite possible that the needed certificates were stolen from a manufacturer that poorly protected them. It's also possible that unicorns exist. Considering that certificates have been…

> I'd say it's not irrational to consider the possibility that these firms either are directly or via the Taiwanese government cooperating with US cyberattacks.

But to be totally clear: that's no more than speculation.

It's also not irrational to consider the possibility that there's been no cooperation but that the certificates were stolen.

> It's also possible that unicorns exist. Considering that certificates have been "stolen" from Taiwanese firms multiple times [2]

Malware that uses stolen certificates is less unique than once thought. If a group building a bank trojan can steal certs, I'm sure state intelligence agencies can too.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/11/evasi...

There is also some reason to think their certificates would be targeted for theft, because code signed by those firms would be some of the least conspicuous. There are a lot of Taiwanese firms that make a lot of low-profile specialized support silicon that's literally everywhere (Sound, USB, Wifi, etc), and a driver signed by one will arouse less suspicion. Inconspicuousness would be a high priority for a nation-state hacker trying to avoid detection.

The possibility that the Stuxnet and Duqu certs were stolen is speculation too, but it's less inflammatory and more likely in my judgement.

It's also worth noting that getting explicit cooperation from a company to use their certificate would be risky for clandestine nation-state operation, since the more organizations that know about aspects of it, the more likely it will fail. If word got out that a particular code signing cert was shared, a rival actor could focus attention on suspicious code signed by that cert and be more likely to detect it.

>> The implication is that American silicon itself is backdoored.

> There was no such implication. Compromising hardware never makes sense unless you can intercept the hardware en route (something the NSA has been known to do [1]).

That's wrong. If the silicon is comprised from the get-go, there's no need for an interception step.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#108

Post by nailer »

hawkice wrote: post #60
ptaipale wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on whether one thinks that democracy and freedom are good things as such. They are not necessarily universal values, even if many in the West tend to think so.

Democracy is complicated (we have a complicated democracy because simple democracy doesn't reflect _our_ values, for instance), but freedom? Maybe at-any-costs freedom isn't universal, but freedom generically is. It is tied so deeply into human dignity you might be imagining Chinese culture poorly if you think it's a bad match. Also, I live in Taiwan, so with a data point of 1, I'm pretty sure freedom and democracy a…

For those wondering: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror_(Taiwan)

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#109

Post by SilasX »

gkanai wrote: post #53
fspeech wrote: post #35

While there couldn't be a better case than ZTE for the Chinese government to muster domestic support for its "Made in China 2025" policy, the Sputnik analogy is actually wrong for China. Sputnik was a national security matter and ZTE is a case about commerce. China can actually supply most what ZTE needs to build functional telecom products (for example when the Obama administration cut off Intel sales to Chinese sup…

> Sputnik was a national security matter and ZTE is a case about commerce. China views not having full control of semiconductors and operating systems (desktop and smartphone) as a national security matter.

And not unreasonably, given the possibility of putting backdoors into these.

Re: Near-Collapse of ZTE May Be China’s Sputnik Moment

#110

Post by makomk »

chrischen wrote: post #51

I think this article paints a picture that somehow China is incapable of making semiconductor technology, whereas I think the main problem is that they just focused a bit too much on new technology (internet and software) as opposed to older stuff like processors. That's understandable when you consider that it would be grossly inefficient to reinvent the wheel.

Their lack of working semiconductor technology is definitely not the result of any lack of attempts at it on China's part.
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