This might be an unpopular opinion but I'll post anyway. I'm skeptical of the motivation for this blacklist. Prohibiting the use of Huawei products by governmen

This might be an unpopular opinion but I'll post anyway. I'm skeptical of the motivation for this blacklist. Prohibiting the use of Huawei products by government agencies and contractors is an action one could reasonably justify in respect to national security. Mandating that my private company seek approval from the government before doing business with Huawei is a pretty extreme rule that limits my options on the global marketplace. I am now forced to accept the claim that Huawei devices are "tainted" and significantly more dangerous than other products. I'm having trouble accepting that argument or seeing this as anything more than trade war saber rattling. When I think of American companies that actually care about data privacy only a few come to mind. I do believe Apple makes a good faith effort toward protecting user data, despite the company's many anti-consumer practices. There are a number of smaller companies like Purism and Yubico that go further in making this a part of their core business strategy. But generally my experience has been that American companies give a backseat to these concerns. Remember when Equifax, an American company, leaked the personal data of 143 million U.S. citizens in 2017 [1]? What about the Citrix hack from just a few months ago where 6TB of sensitive information was stolen by Iranian hackers [2]? What makes these companies more trustworthy than Huawei or any other Chinese company? Finally, there's a line you can draw from the decisions of the past to what's happening today. The U.S. is largely responsible for the design of the modern web for both good and bad. The Internet is an amazing thing that has uplifted people around the world, including in developing countries where opportunities are needed [3] [4]. At the same time surveillance and proprietary software has become pedestrian to the point where most people (myself included) just accept it. We used Chinese manufacturing to scale this vision, from cheap Internet-connected devices to the servers that store and deliver our personal information. What kind of example did we set for China or other countries to follow? Where would we be had we followed the advice of people like Richard Stallman who warned us decades in advance? We seem to be moving toward a more isolated world as of late. I hope we can get to a point where we're having productive conversations on a global scale about how tech could make our lives better (and potentially worse). The alternative is to let the chips fall where they may. In a world of IoT, AI and autonomous weapons, that's not a game I'd like to play. [1] https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/07/technology/business/equifax-data-breach/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/09/07/technology/business/equifax... [2] https://www.techradar.com/news/hackers-steal-6tb-citrix-data-haul https://www.techradar.com/news/hackers-steal-6tb-citrix-data... [3] https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2015/July/How-Mobile-Phones-Are-Changing-the-Developing-Worl.aspx https://www.cta.tech/News/Blog/Articles/2015/July/How-Mobile... [4] https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227436 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000227436