41–50 of 65 posts
Looks like AWS finally realized their security offerings like encryption at rest, KMSes, ACM etc were incompatible with China's datacenter laws. None of the AWS offerings would have any credibility if they all had backdoors even in one region. Think some of them can't even be backdoored.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number 1 is especially key, last 2 years US businesses have pulled out of China a lot because of really really sketch actions by the Chinese government. Doesn't hurt to use the totalitarian argument either, but mainly they are losing money. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup sold their stakes last year as well. China will likely start opening up more because Western companies aren't as naive anymore and short term profits for…
> China will likely start opening up more ... Let's not forget that there is an international trend to close down more (to use the same metaphor), including the U.S. and U.K. China could follow that trend too, and certainly the progress of free trade no longer can be assumed. The President of the U.S. just gave an unprecedented speech at the Asian summit, criticizing institutions of rules-based, cooperative internati…
Xi Jinping may know the correct platitudes about free trade to mouth to please an audience, but his vision of trade cooperation has little to do with genuine openness, and everything to do with cementing Chinese economic and political hegemony.
Two things I take away from this. 1. Amazon decided that the risk of doing business in China (handing over information & know-how to the government, helping it suppress the human rights of its citizens, etc) was not worth the revenue that it would make. 2. It sold for $300 million. That means its run-rate was probably only $50 million a year or so annually (or maybe less). That's not very much at all, given that AWS'…
Number 1 is especially key, last 2 years US businesses have pulled out of China a lot because of really really sketch actions by the Chinese government. Doesn't hurt to use the totalitarian argument either, but mainly they are losing money. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup sold their stakes last year as well. China will likely start opening up more because Western companies aren't as naive anymore and short term profits for…
1) force foreign companies to "partner" with local Chinese companies. This leads to the joint ventures using backdoors and surveillance against the users
2) Once the partnership is mature enough, the local partners can steal the technology and know-how of the foreigners, and then start competing with them. And because they are local Chinese companies, Chinese customers tend to prefer them, too, to the detriment of the foreign companies.
This strategy seems to have worked rather well against pretty much anything except super-entrenched foreign products, like say Windows (which is mostly pirated in China anyway, but without that piracy, Windows would have been relegated to a niche OS a long time ago in China).
Even Intel is getting kicked out of China, slowly but surely, as Chinese companies start doing both chip design and chip manufacturing. It didn't help that the U.S. government also recently banned Intel from selling server chips to China in supercomputer contracts because China was doing "nuclear testing" on those supercomputers (Say what? That sounds like a BS reason the Obama administration used to cover-up for something else, but anyways, it still hurts Intel and other American chip companies).
What worries me most is not just that those local Chinese companies are starting to bring in billions and billions of dollars every year, which allows them to expand globally (backdoors and all) and acquire foreign companies from abroad, too, but also that Chinese tech is starting to be preferred by foreign companies (again, with backdoors and all).
Take for instance Baidu's "self-driving platform", Apollo. Volvo is going to adopt that in its self-driving cars, and there are other carmakers that are considering the same, too. Are you FREAKING KIDDING me? They want to build millions and millions of Chinese self-driving cars over which you'll have no control with Chinese backdoors in them? What could possible go wrong?!
I mean I'm sure the NSA will try the same in the U.S. with "lawful intercepts" and whatnot, but I doubt most will accept it and I think those that do will pay the price for it. But the Chinese backdoors are pretty much a certainty.
And yes, I know, Baidu's platform is "open source", but first off, I don't think 100% of it will be open source. They might release certain add-ons that the carmakers will want that aren't open source and public.
And second, if the Chinese spy agencies are anywhere near as smart as the NSA, the backdoors they will put there will look like some "dumb mistake" a programmer made a long time ago. It will be discovered 5 years later, patched as a regular bug, and things will go on as usual (with 3 other backdoors/intentional vulnerabilities thrown into the code).
Two things I take away from this. 1. Amazon decided that the risk of doing business in China (handing over information & know-how to the government, helping it suppress the human rights of its citizens, etc) was not worth the revenue that it would make. 2. It sold for $300 million. That means its run-rate was probably only $50 million a year or so annually (or maybe less). That's not very much at all, given that AWS'…
Unlike west globalization trends, China actually cares about its own interests first, not the interests of mega corp owners.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> China will likely start opening up more ... Let's not forget that there is an international trend to close down more (to use the same metaphor), including the U.S. and U.K. China could follow that trend too, and certainly the progress of free trade no longer can be assumed. The President of the U.S. just gave an unprecedented speech at the Asian summit, criticizing institutions of rules-based, cooperative internati…
In contrast, look at what these countries do rather than what their leaders say. American markets are actually open. Americans can invest their money anywhere. Foreigners can buy property and own companies with few restrictions. China discourages imports by punitively taxing them. Chinese face strict capital controls. Foreigners and their businesses are heavily restricted in what they can buy and what activities they…
The float of the royal mail is one example retail investors in the USA where locked out
Does this deal include datacenter/HW designs? Software? Operational practices? Seems like a pretty massive technology transfer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Number 1 is especially key, last 2 years US businesses have pulled out of China a lot because of really really sketch actions by the Chinese government. Doesn't hurt to use the totalitarian argument either, but mainly they are losing money. Goldman Sachs, Citigroup sold their stakes last year as well. China will likely start opening up more because Western companies aren't as naive anymore and short term profits for…
The sketchy actions are usually a 2-step formula: 1) force foreign companies to "partner" with local Chinese companies. This leads to the joint ventures using backdoors and surveillance against the users 2) Once the partnership is mature enough, the local partners can steal the technology and know-how of the foreigners, and then start competing with them. And because they are local Chinese companies, Chinese customer…
I couldn't find any reference to that on the web?
Two things I take away from this. 1. Amazon decided that the risk of doing business in China (handing over information & know-how to the government, helping it suppress the human rights of its citizens, etc) was not worth the revenue that it would make. 2. It sold for $300 million. That means its run-rate was probably only $50 million a year or so annually (or maybe less). That's not very much at all, given that AWS'…
Mmmm, does China care about who owns the intellectual property? That's a first