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Totally unfounded but to me reasonable speculation: it's a means of building a global surveillance network anywhere Huawei does business.

by pc2g4d 7y ago

ShorsHammer 7y ago
Better time than any to start building the means to operate on compromised equipment. Hopefully the NSA is on board this time around rather than pushing cringeworthy-level compromised Cisco products on the world.
threeseed 7y ago
It's not unfounded. It's a fact that (a) Chinese government is dictatorial and lacks any sort of independent oversight via judiciary or media, (b) Chinese governments are heavily intertwined with companies and (c) China has a recent history of unprecedented surveillance.
iudqnolq 7y ago
Limited evidence in support of that: The Polish government recently arrested a Polish government employee and a high-ranking Huawei employee on charges of espionage. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/11/684378595/polish-police-arrest-huawei-executive-accused-of-spying-for-china https://www.npr.org/2019/01/11/684378595/polish-police-arres...
president 7y ago
It's also a potential weapon. Imagine the havoc you can create by shutting down another nation's critical network infrastructure, especially one that is supposed to power the next generation of technology platforms and fleets of internet-connected devices.
- chopin 7y ago
  But what will playing that card have as a consequence? Any technology having the slightest tie to China would be banned. That's very short of economical suicide. That one could only be pulled in an all out war. It's not a credible threat. I'd go with surveillance which is already good enough to get Huawei banned. But that's true of Cisco either...
  - mensetmanusman 7y ago
    That’s an obvious concern. What tends to happen in authoritarian countries is that obvious concerns do not get raised, which is why they tend to make occasional disastrous decisions for their long term stability (e.g. “it probably wont be a good idea to imprison all the Muslims, we might make our trading partners mad”)

Totally unfounded but to me reasonable speculation: it's a means of building a global surveillance network anywhere Huawei does business.

by pc2g4d 7y ago

Totally unfounded but to me reasonable speculation: it's a means of building a global surveillance network anywhere Huawei does business.

ShorsHammer 7y ago

Better time than any to start building the means to operate on compromised equipment. Hopefully the NSA is on board this time around rather than pushing cringeworthy-level compromised Cisco products on the world.

threeseed 7y ago

It's not unfounded. It's a fact that (a) Chinese government is dictatorial and lacks any sort of independent oversight via judiciary or media, (b) Chinese governments are heavily intertwined with companies and (c) China has a recent history of unprecedented surveillance.

iudqnolq 7y ago

Limited evidence in support of that: The Polish government recently arrested a Polish government employee and a high-ranking Huawei employee on charges of espionage. https://www.npr.org/2019/01/11/684378595/polish-police-arrest-huawei-executive-accused-of-spying-for-china https://www.npr.org/2019/01/11/684378595/polish-police-arres...

president 7y ago

It's also a potential weapon. Imagine the havoc you can create by shutting down another nation's critical network infrastructure, especially one that is supposed to power the next generation of technology platforms and fleets of internet-connected devices.

chopin 7y ago
But what will playing that card have as a consequence? Any technology having the slightest tie to China would be banned. That's very short of economical suicide. That one could only be pulled in an all out war. It's not a credible threat. I'd go with surveillance which is already good enough to get Huawei banned. But that's true of Cisco either...
- mensetmanusman 7y ago
  That’s an obvious concern. What tends to happen in authoritarian countries is that obvious concerns do not get raised, which is why they tend to make occasional disastrous decisions for their long term stability (e.g. “it probably wont be a good idea to imprison all the Muslims, we might make our trading partners mad”)