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This is really impressive for Huawei. I do not mean to say that the trade war between China and the US is the same as the Cold War from before, but I have a fu

This is really impressive for Huawei. I do not mean to say that the trade war between China and the US is the same as the Cold War from before, but I have a fun tidbit to share. One of the more interesting theories I heard for why the US won the Cold War is because Russia struggled to develop IC technology. The Russians were masters of espionage, and I would even give them the edge in mechanical engineering, but the United States' ability to master electrical engineering proved more important. They just couldn't build computers like the US, and computers proved to be wildly important for technological breakthroughs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_in_the_So... Now that Huawei has figured out how to do it without us, it's really become autonomous. This is great news for China, and will help them enormously in the ongoing trade war. And obviously it's not so great for the US.

Paraesthetic 7y ago
Yeah thats all good and well until your realise they are a surveillance distopia, which the west dont care about, at least until they decide to start invading the world via military means rather than just lending countries into crippling debt.
papito 7y ago
The United States is still better at technology, and Russia is better at espionage. Never underestimate the underdog. There was a massive article on the modern KGB under Putin in 2017(?), I think in the Atlantic. They basically managed to hack into some offline Pentagon systems by distributing infected USB drives around that location, through different outlets, in the hopes that an unsuspecting target will use a USB drive on a secure system, and then insert it on a wired machine. Boom. It worked.
- sansnomme 7y ago
  So basically the same trick as Stuxnet?
  - t-writescode 7y ago
    Wasn’t Stuxnet the other way around?
- hydrox24 7y ago
  Is the article you are talking about "What Putin Really Wants" by Julia Ioffe[0]? It was published in January 2018. It doesn't have the USB key story you're talking about though. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-...
  - papito 7y ago
    Ah! I was wrong on two counts. This was in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an... And the breach happened in Kabul, NOT the Pentagon.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  I think you may be thinking of Stuxnet, which was created by the US and Israel and targeted Iranian nuclear reactors. If you were trying to steal data this way, how would you get it back out of the infected machine? Stuxnet didn't have this problem, because its goal was purely to sabotage.
lsc 7y ago
>And obviously it's not so great for the US. There's a lot of confusion, I think, about how you "win" a trade war; as far as I can tell, autarchy is pretty bad for all involved; trade wars seem like a thing where everyone loses and the 'win' comes from winding down the trade war and trading again.
- FpUser 7y ago
  I would say that the "winner" is the one who got hurt less and can recover faster/better but it is all relative. While 2 sides are busy killing each other the third one might get the benefits
  - lsc 7y ago
    I'm just saying, from where I stand (and I'm first to recognize I'm not an expert here) it sure looks like my country is trying to make things harder for China, and is paying the price of making things harder for workers in my own country. Even if the Chinese worker is hurt more than the American worker, the American worker is still being hurt, and as far as I can tell, all involved would be better off if we traded in a more free way.
    - onepointsixC 7y ago
      Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? Fundamentally it's time to wake to the fact that the CCP views the very existence of Liberal Democracies as a threat to itself [1]. It will work to undermind or extinguish then where ever it can. Facing the Soviet Union had a cost. Facing Nazi Germany had a cost. And facing the CCP will have a cost. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine
      - lsc 7y ago
        >Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? so you are saying that a trade war is successful if there are fewer barriers at the end than at the beginning? That's a reasonable definition, but that would benefit both parties, so it still doesn't really show a "winner" > And facing the CCP will have a cost. But if you define a successful trade war as one where there are fewer barriers to trade at the end than at the beginning, that will benefit both parties. I mean, one could argue that free trade (well, more trade) is going to make your society more free in general, is going to introduce more ideas and things like that, I suppose, and you could also argue that trading more with a country makes it less likely you will go to war with them, but these things aren't really about crushing your competitor.
ardit33 7y ago
I think that electronics/computers by itself do not have much to do with with the fall of soviet union. USSR fell because: 1. its economic model was dysfunctional and a failure 2. Its moderate leaders (aka Gorbachev and his allies), decided to dismantle it, as they realized the model was a failure, and their only other option was to become extremely repressive, roll out tanks and kill people. (north korea is an example that given enough repression, even an extremely poor economy is not enough to dismantle a bad government.) The soviet union was away behind the US (gdp per capita) in the 50s and early 60s, where computers were less developed and less important (to the general economy at least). The soviet union failed, because centralized, collectivism, and having all the output owned by the state is a failure as a model.... as it goes against basic human nature. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Soviet_Union_USSR_GDP_per_capita.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Soviet_U... Look at Spain's economy, how it is transformed after Franco died and the fascist regime is removed and the country opens up, gets less centralized. Another analogy is Argentina. Where there was too much central planing, and state dictated economy. Compare it against Canada, (open and capitalistic), and you see that the system is the main culprit, and not necessary computers.
- mempko 7y ago
  When there was a referendum asking the people in all reoublics whether to keep the Soviet Union or dismantle it, the overwhelming majority, 70+ percent, voted to keep it. The leadership dismantled it anyway. When asking why, it usually is useful to ask cui bono.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    We're apparently just far enough away from the Berlin wall falling that now people want to re-litigate that the Soviet Union was bad and it was a good thing it collapsed.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      I have seen people who dislike the democratic party in the US on both the left and the right adopt this stance in the context of the Trump-Russia question. The argument goes that all the former Soviet, but current NATO/EU states (and states with factions who might want to join, like Ukraine) never wanted to leave Russian control. I disagree with this, but I would note that it's too simple to say something is simply good/bad here. The Soviet Union despite its problems did have some notable accomplishments.
sebastianconcpt 7y ago
We should not limit our analysis to nations anymore. There are transnational forces that are becoming historical agents. The Cold War might have ended in terms of nations with the collapse of the USSR but it didn't in terms of political struggle of the movements that gave birth to states like USSR or current China.

Paraesthetic 7y ago

Yeah thats all good and well until your realise they are a surveillance distopia, which the west dont care about, at least until they decide to start invading the world via military means rather than just lending countries into crippling debt.

papito 7y ago

The United States is still better at technology, and Russia is better at espionage. Never underestimate the underdog. There was a massive article on the modern KGB under Putin in 2017(?), I think in the Atlantic. They basically managed to hack into some offline Pentagon systems by distributing infected USB drives around that location, through different outlets, in the hopes that an unsuspecting target will use a USB drive on a secure system, and then insert it on a wired machine. Boom. It worked.

sansnomme 7y ago
So basically the same trick as Stuxnet?
- t-writescode 7y ago
  Wasn’t Stuxnet the other way around?
hydrox24 7y ago
Is the article you are talking about "What Putin Really Wants" by Julia Ioffe[0]? It was published in January 2018. It doesn't have the USB key story you're talking about though. [0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-...
- papito 7y ago
  Ah! I was wrong on two counts. This was in the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-an... And the breach happened in Kabul, NOT the Pentagon.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
I think you may be thinking of Stuxnet, which was created by the US and Israel and targeted Iranian nuclear reactors. If you were trying to steal data this way, how would you get it back out of the infected machine? Stuxnet didn't have this problem, because its goal was purely to sabotage.

lsc 7y ago

>And obviously it's not so great for the US. There's a lot of confusion, I think, about how you "win" a trade war; as far as I can tell, autarchy is pretty bad for all involved; trade wars seem like a thing where everyone loses and the 'win' comes from winding down the trade war and trading again.

FpUser 7y ago
I would say that the "winner" is the one who got hurt less and can recover faster/better but it is all relative. While 2 sides are busy killing each other the third one might get the benefits
- lsc 7y ago
  I'm just saying, from where I stand (and I'm first to recognize I'm not an expert here) it sure looks like my country is trying to make things harder for China, and is paying the price of making things harder for workers in my own country. Even if the Chinese worker is hurt more than the American worker, the American worker is still being hurt, and as far as I can tell, all involved would be better off if we traded in a more free way.
  - onepointsixC 7y ago
    Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? Fundamentally it's time to wake to the fact that the CCP views the very existence of Liberal Democracies as a threat to itself [1]. It will work to undermind or extinguish then where ever it can. Facing the Soviet Union had a cost. Facing Nazi Germany had a cost. And facing the CCP will have a cost. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_Number_Nine
    - lsc 7y ago
      >Is it really free when China had much greater tariffs on US goods than Chinese goods had come into the US? Is it really free when Chinese entities get to enjoy massive subsidies to dump products while foreign companies face nonmarket barriers? so you are saying that a trade war is successful if there are fewer barriers at the end than at the beginning? That's a reasonable definition, but that would benefit both parties, so it still doesn't really show a "winner" > And facing the CCP will have a cost. But if you define a successful trade war as one where there are fewer barriers to trade at the end than at the beginning, that will benefit both parties. I mean, one could argue that free trade (well, more trade) is going to make your society more free in general, is going to introduce more ideas and things like that, I suppose, and you could also argue that trading more with a country makes it less likely you will go to war with them, but these things aren't really about crushing your competitor.

ardit33 7y ago

I think that electronics/computers by itself do not have much to do with with the fall of soviet union. USSR fell because: 1. its economic model was dysfunctional and a failure 2. Its moderate leaders (aka Gorbachev and his allies), decided to dismantle it, as they realized the model was a failure, and their only other option was to become extremely repressive, roll out tanks and kill people. (north korea is an example that given enough repression, even an extremely poor economy is not enough to dismantle a bad government.) The soviet union was away behind the US (gdp per capita) in the 50s and early 60s, where computers were less developed and less important (to the general economy at least). The soviet union failed, because centralized, collectivism, and having all the output owned by the state is a failure as a model.... as it goes against basic human nature. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Soviet_Union_USSR_GDP_per_capita.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Soviet_U... Look at Spain's economy, how it is transformed after Franco died and the fascist regime is removed and the country opens up, gets less centralized. Another analogy is Argentina. Where there was too much central planing, and state dictated economy. Compare it against Canada, (open and capitalistic), and you see that the system is the main culprit, and not necessary computers.

mempko 7y ago
When there was a referendum asking the people in all reoublics whether to keep the Soviet Union or dismantle it, the overwhelming majority, 70+ percent, voted to keep it. The leadership dismantled it anyway. When asking why, it usually is useful to ask cui bono.
- rayiner 7y ago
  We're apparently just far enough away from the Berlin wall falling that now people want to re-litigate that the Soviet Union was bad and it was a good thing it collapsed.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    I have seen people who dislike the democratic party in the US on both the left and the right adopt this stance in the context of the Trump-Russia question. The argument goes that all the former Soviet, but current NATO/EU states (and states with factions who might want to join, like Ukraine) never wanted to leave Russian control. I disagree with this, but I would note that it's too simple to say something is simply good/bad here. The Soviet Union despite its problems did have some notable accomplishments.

sebastianconcpt 7y ago

We should not limit our analysis to nations anymore. There are transnational forces that are becoming historical agents. The Cold War might have ended in terms of nations with the collapse of the USSR but it didn't in terms of political struggle of the movements that gave birth to states like USSR or current China.