9 ms·
U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei
- thinkingkong 7y agoI really hope this sets enough of a precedent / whatever is required so that Canada can not be stuck in the middle of dealing with the Huawei / Iran controversy.
- pishpash 7y agoI always wondered that if everyone broke sanctions then sanctions lose their utility. This includes US financial sanctions, only problematic if most financial entities obey. If most don't then the US would be sanctioning itself.
- cf498 7y agoThe US still follows a might is right approach ignoring transnational rules and regulations, breaking their sanctions is extremely dangerous for other countries let alone companies.
- ETHisso2017 7y agoI wonder if the DoJ investigations against Google and Facebook will now become leverage against them in this context.
- dbetteridge 7y agoThe discussion in the article is mostly around Micron and Intel and their selling of Semiconductors to Huawei. Even then though the title is contradicted somewhat by the article... `American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products until mid-August.` They're not so much side-stepping the ban as they are continuing normal sales after confirming they are allowed to.
- iliketosleep 7y ago> Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American corporations. It clearly does violate the spirit of the law and undermines government efforts, potential jeopardizing US national security. However, any corporations that legally circumvent this ban will have a competitive advantage, leading other corporations to follow.
- deehouie 7y agoThe claim that dealing with Huawei "jeopardizes US national security" has little factual support. It is a political propaganda initiated in the Trump circle. Shame on those who perpetuate it, and shame on those who believe in it.
- lsh 7y agoThere is so much evidence Huawei are a bad actor, and probably marching in lockstep with the Chinese government, that it has it's own very long Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei
- DiogenesKynikos 7y agoThere are "Criticism of" articles for a lot of tech companies: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Apple_Inc * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft_Windows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft_Windows * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_eBay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_eBay * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Myspace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Myspace (surely an important page in this day and age) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Spotify * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google And the whopper is this: there is an entire category devoted to pages criticizing Google: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Criticism_of_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Criticism_of_Google And let's not forget the funnest Wikipedia "Criticism of" page: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia Trump has openly stated that he's using Huawei as a bargaining chip in the trade negotiations: https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/24/tech/donald-trump-huawei-ban/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/24/tech/donald-trump-huawei-ban/.... The "evidence" against Huawei always seems to be two cases that it settled 15+ years ago, plus the "Tappy" robot a few years back. They also may have indirectly done business with Iran, but they're a Chinese company, so doing business with Iran was legal under the laws of their country.
- johnbatch 7y agoHow is Amazon selling Huawei products? https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/34F6034C-1D34-4913-9648-3DBD220C1648 https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/34F6034C-1D34-4913-9648-3...
- Leary 7y agoThere are no bans of Huawei consumer products in the US.
- chrisseaton 7y agoI don't know what you think has been banned? There is a ban on the sale of American technology to Huawei. There is not a ban on selling Huawei technology to Americans.
- whoevercares 7y agoSome deal must have been made:-/ In the end, human make workarounds
- chobytes 7y agoHonestly the US gov is playing with fire here. This sort of behavior will only lead to global corporations avoiding doing important business in the US. This is clearly a step in that direction.
- YayamiOmate 7y agoThat's a desired effect for the decision makers. They want to have selfsustained economy. They were pretty explicit that they want to have production back, I assume they didn't mean it for export. Also it's easier to control local companies because you have a jurisdiction over them. Look at europe, they don't have any major high tech companies, so they can only choose which threats and risks they want to deal with us or chinese. Can't avoid it, unless they drop particular tech at all.
- pinkfoot 7y agoEricsson and Nokia
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoAlso Philips
- pinkfoot 7y agoYip, also off the top of my head: Siemens, BASF, Bosch, Aibus, Leonardo, ARM, Bayer, Sanofi, Saab, ABB, Schneider, BAE, DSM, Infineon, ASML, Thales, Alenia, Aixtron. You have to wonder where some HN posters get educated.
- profquail 7y agoARM is a major tech company based in Europe.
- xorfish 7y agoIsn't the main weapon that China uses in the trade war to lower import duties for competitors of US-companies?
- deehouie 7y agoFrom a google search, this is the first hit. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18264283/huawei-security-threat-experts-china-spying-5g https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18264283/huawei-security-... Some quotes "This may help to explain why Western governments broadly agree that Huawei poses security risks,..." Note the word "risks". A risk is something that may or may not happen. Quote of CEO of OpenVPN "The US is right to treat Huawei as a security threat, but I don’t believe any ban on any equipment is the right solution. No matter what equipment we use for 5G, there will be security risks." Again the word is "risks".
- deehouie 7y agoThis is the 2nd hit from a google search https://www.tomsguide.com/us/us-huawei-ban-op-ed,news-30132.html https://www.tomsguide.com/us/us-huawei-ban-op-ed,news-30132.... "There seems to be something different about Huawei that makes the U.S. government regard the company as a global threat, but government officials need to explain why. Otherwise, without proof, the American government will be able to just ban any company it wants."
- thewileyone 7y agoIt's because Huawei is poised to take over the 5G market ahead of Qualcomm and Ericsson and refuses to give back doors to the NSA or any other US intelligence agency. It's presumed that Huawei will give access to China only. That's what this is all about.
- deehouie 7y agoOh, absolutely. That's precisely why US is so upset!
- deehouie 7y agoThis is article from techcrunch, a fairly reputable SV publication. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/26/is-huawei-a-national-security-threat/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/26/is-huawei-a-national-secur... Title : Without proof, is Huawei still a national security threat? The title gives it away : there is no proof of this allegation.
- bayareanative 7y agoIdiotic tariffs and bans, trade will always find a way. Just ask drug dealers.
- pauljurczak 7y agoUSG issued an arrest warrant for Huawei CFO alleging sanctions violation. It is only fair to issue arrest warrants for Intel and Micron executives based on the same charges now.
- esoterica 7y agoWhere does it say that what they did was illegal? The article talks about them breaking “the spirit of the law”, which suggests that the didn’t break the letter of it.
- Tsubasachan 7y agoWords are cheap. We will see how many patriotic people will gray import Chinese products to avoid the Trump tax.
- erklik 7y agoIs there any actual evidence that says that Huawei is selling nefarious (in terms of providing a hidden backdoor to a third-party which the buyer is unaware of) devices? Is there a continued pattern of them doing so?
- gsich 7y agoNo.
- T-A 7y agoHow do you prove that a vulnerability is intentional? It could just be bad engineering. Lots of it: https://www.channelnews.com.au/huawei-more-vulnerable-to-security-risks-than-rivals-according-to-report/ https://www.channelnews.com.au/huawei-more-vulnerable-to-sec... https://www.crn.com/news/security/british-watchdog-finds-serious-huawei-security-vulnerabilities https://www.crn.com/news/security/british-watchdog-finds-ser... https://fortiguard.com/zeroday/FG-VD-18-017 https://fortiguard.com/zeroday/FG-VD-18-017 https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/03/nsa-inspired_vu.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/03/nsa-inspired_... https://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-sa-20190517-01-share-en https://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-s... https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-5979/Huawei.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-5979...
- makomk 7y agoThere's evidence strongly suggesting that - for example - Juniper Network's use of the NSA's backdoorable Dual EC random number generator in their VPN hardware is an intentional US backdoor. Not only is Dual EC slower, more complex, less random, and worse in every possible way except for the fact that it allows for a backdoor that can only be accessed by the person who has the matching private key to its public key, they also introduced a bunch of other changes at the same time across several levels of their software stack to make this exploitable in practice: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf On top of that, when an attacker broke into Juniper's systems and replaced that public key with their own, they simply changed it back without fixing the "bug" introduced at the same time as Dual EC which meant the countermeasures that they'd claimed prevented this attack never actually ran. (They moved the index variable of their existing PRNG function, which was meant to post-process the Dual EC output, from a local to a global, overwrote it in the Dual EC code so the other PRNG never ran, used the same output buffer for both, and added a hidden on-by-default setting which ran the Dual EC code on every PRNG call. The whole thing stunk.) I don't think anyone has found anything even remotely comparable to this smoking gun in Huawei's hardware and software.
- greatpatton 7y agoThe ban will only come into force mid-August for current product. (https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/05/21/us-delay-to-huawei-ban-gives-tech-sector-time-to-adjust/ https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/05/21/us-delay-to-huawei-ban-...) At the beginning of the article they state: "It’s not clear what percentage of the current sales were for future products.", so 0% can be a valid answer. Frankly US press is really in a bad shape if even NYT is just a clickbait agency.
- rchaud 7y agoLooks like a win-win to me. POTUS will continue to claim at his rallies that he's crushing Huawei, while US corps exercise simple loopholes to continue doing business as usual.