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> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor. And they've since lost their manufacturing ability. Oops. It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time.

nimbius 7y ago
in a lot of cases the low-cost competitors are not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance. They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it.
- tharne 7y ago
  > Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it. Nope. Pretty sure most of the issue has to do with the spying, backdoors, and overall lack of ethics. This is the from same country that brought us a potential global pandemic because they spent weeks lying and covering up a rapidly spreading illness simply because they didn't want to lose face.
  - clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
    b-b-but America bad! /s
  - AYBABTME 7y ago
    Do you think other countries would have done better? I'm personally impressed with how decisively China has been handling this pandemic. Don't mean to go off topic, but general China bashing isn't productive. Lumping together all China related topics as if it was all the grand project of an evil mastermind is only good in the movies.
    - tharne 7y ago
      > I'm personally impressed with how decisively China has been handling this pandemic. You mean like how they muzzled one of the first doctors who tried to warn the public about it, and then that doctor later died of the virus? Very impressive, if that's how you roll.
    - frankharv 7y ago
      Yes. Especially ones with Free Speech. China literally arrested a doctor for warning his colleagues. I have never heard of anything like that in the Free World.
      - colejohnson66 7y ago
        Not exactly the same, but the recent kerfuffle with some pentesters and a courthouse was a thing.
        sidlls 7y ago
        Not even remotely comparable. A better analogy would be Trump's retaliation against good-faith actors raising complaints about his lawbreaking but it's still a weak one. America isn't any angelic nation, to be sure, but even our worst actions (Trump's retaliation, the border family separation issues) aren't even close to the routine, daily, and pernicious violations of human rights and dignity in China.
    - sidlls 7y ago
      Yes, other countries—specifically ones with more open and free societies—tend to do better on this and numerous other issues. Most of China’s current economic position is due to two factors: 1) the population numbers game; 2) the theft of others’ work (it’s debatable which has been more critical). I wouldn’t care about China’s economic ascendance or even that they used thievery to get it if the country weren’t an oppressive dictatorship. This isn’t merely a cultural difference: China’s government is absolutely something anybody who values freedom and egalitarianism should be in opposition to.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  > not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance Yeah, many of these vendors do improve upon the original products quite a bit so even while initial versions can be shoddy knockoffs, later editions are often times improved compared to the original. > Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. They're definitely profiting, and they're doing it partially through lower worker standards and looser laws on pollution. They are acting for profit, not to fix the flaws of Western capitalism.
  - wcarron 7y ago
    If they're exposing the flaws of western capitalism, I view that as a positive. That they are also acting for profit doesn't negate the value of forcing incumbent US megacorps to actually get off their butts and invest in improving products. You said it yourself: later editions are improved often times. Yes, some of this gain is due to lower worker standard, but I highly doubt ATT, VZ, etc. are really maximizing for worker standards, either.
    - travisgriggs 7y ago
      It's basically wild wild west anarchism. It's like take "western capitalism" and extrapolate to a worse place. I get that western capitalism (whatever that actually means anymore) has gone off the rails some. But seeing the Chinese approach as a just come-uppance is like being glad that killers have showed up to get rid of all of the bullies. It just gets worse.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      Those ATT workers sleeping 8 to a garage and pitching themselves off buildings sure is a dang tragedy.
- andreilys 7y ago
  ” They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. ” They also “side-step” the capital and years of research required to come up with the products. Why invest in R&D when you can invest in corporate espionage for a fraction of the cost?
  - mNovak 7y ago
    Not here to debate whether IP theft happens, but to be clear Huawei does also invest billions into R&D (domestic and abroad)
  - karavelov 7y ago
    If they didn't invest in research, how were they first to market with 5G solutions?
    - richk449 7y ago
      They even stole the stuff we haven’t invented yet !!
      - blackrock 7y ago
        OMG.. Huawei has a time machine too? Damn it, that’s it! That’s just not fair. We must ban them now. Won’t somebody think of the children?
  - chrischen 7y ago
    That's a separate issue. If Huawei violated some IP patents then why aren't they suing for that? Any meaningful R&D developments would be patented and would be publicly available and described anyways. And if your product is so weakly innovative that a picture of the circuity or some power point slides basically give away significant trade secrets, then your product probably sucks. These charges sound like they're for non-innovation based trade secrets, whatever those may be.
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  As a consumer, that may be good in the short term. But innovation isn’t free. In a world where people can just copy other people’s hard work with impunity, what incentive is there to invest in innovation?
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    Being first to market has its advantages.
    - sidlls 7y ago
      Shrinking advantages as the delta-t between release and the appearance of dozens of stolen cheap knockoffs decreases.
  - benaadams 7y ago
    I hear OSS is doing well when it comes to innovation...
    - mdorazio 7y ago
      I hear most OSS contributions come from people who make a living working at proprietary software companies...
    - bcrosby95 7y ago
      Most people working on OSS are paid by companies that rely heavily on closed source innovation in other areas of business. They are commoditizing their compliments.
      - effie 7y ago
        Even if that claim about "most people" was true, the point is still valid - OSS contributors _are_ "innovating" (creating new things to make money on), despite the innovations being freely copied. In part, the innovation happens _because_ or _with_help_ of free copying. Free sharing of some ideas/knowledge can be benefitial to innovation. Nobody is claiming _all_ ideas business finds / works on should be immediately shared freely with the world. The benefactors of a business are naturally motivated to protect their know-how. But it should be the business' responsibility to protect its secrets, not HN commenters or governments'. If an idea can't be kept secret, then government issues patents, which should be time limited and regional.
- kube-system 7y ago
  Why would US carriers want to pot-bang about this? They would only lose money by doing so. AT&T and Huawei are not competitors.
- chrisjc 7y ago
  Aren't most of the other 5G infrastructure manufactures European (Siemens, Nokia)? Do the US carriers really care where their equipment comes from? Handset manufactures probably don't care since they're sourcing from others. Perhaps Samsung (Exynos) being the exception, but they're Korean. Apple bought Intel's 5G division. The only chip company that I could imagine cares is Qualcomm.
- Koremat6666 7y ago
  > On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it. This one sentence summarized everything.
  - creato 7y ago
    I don't think that sentence actually makes any sense. AT&T and other US carriers probably don't care who manufactures their equipment. They make money on the service they sell. The US doesn't actually have any vendor for most of this kind of equipment, the competitors here are either European or Chinese.
- jariel 7y ago
  This is not true and implies a misunderstanding of the industry. AT&T, like most carriers, is perfectly happy to get super cheap and gear from China, at a fraction of the price they'd pay otherwise. In fact, carriers around the world are the one's pushing to use Huawei. Second - the US doesn't really have any capabilities in the 5G space, for the most part. It's European companies: Erikson and Nokia that have capabilities. Cisco, Lucent etc. are not even on the radar on this issue. Given that your position is completely at odds with the reality of the market, you'll have to provide some material evidence of your claim that the US is just up in a fuss over their lack of dominance of 5G, otherwise, they just don't seem true. Once again, all of this narrative misleads us from the real underlying issue, which is that Huawei and others have been systematically and openly stealing property.
  - effie 7y ago
    > real underlying issue, which is that Huawei and others have been systematically and openly stealing property. Issue for whom? Most people are perfectly happy with one company learning and mimicking products of another company, if they get cheaper and better versions. This is perfectly natural. If some rich guys feel like China got ahead of them too much too quickly, that's too bad - they should have protected their stuff, not teach Chinese to manufacture it.
    - jariel 7y ago
      Sending in spies to steal protected information is blatant theft by any definition. The number of people here trying to downplay what's going on is astonishing, I can only imagine they themselves are not legit posters.
      - effie 7y ago
        State and corporate espionage isn't anything new. As well as learning and copying business (your "theft"). Japanese did the same with semiconductors. I don't know what _exactly_ has been going on with Huawei and other companies, but I understand that the publicized outrage about Huawei and other Chinese companies stealing from America isn't natural. Most people were fine with Chinese advancing and copying, since everybody benefited from cheap labor/products. Until the powerful in the West realized american economy is in bad shape, power balance in the world is shifting and it's time to do something about it. I guess shaping public opinion on China is part of that.
oh_sigh 7y ago
These American companies thought that having them sign a confidentiality agreement would mean they would actually follow through with the agreement. It wasn't just a "send em the plans and get our widgets for cheap!"
jdc 7y ago
I'm sure the quarterly reports looked good though!
- Derek_MK 7y ago
  Not so much the yearlies, but the quarterlies!
- complianceowl 7y ago
  Cough Cough .....short-termism.....Cough Cough
AsyncAwait 7y ago
> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates You mean every developing nation? Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing. Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.
- crispinb 7y ago
  Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous All the vast majority of people in the "West" know about China is whatever happens to be propagated by mainstream propagandists for current purposes. Ignorance is much more common (and hence likely) than disingenuity.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. It's not disingenuous to single out China for this behavior since China is one of the biggest player doing it and reaping so much from it in our time. Plus, whataboutism.
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.
    - pinkfoot 7y ago
      > it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events? Yes
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      It all depends of what you make of that comparison. Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? That it shouldn't be debated ? What's the position ? What is the point of preventing people from saying China is playing the IP theft game hard at the moment ?
tharne 7y ago
> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time. I see this as a win-win. These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China and they got burned. China engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior in the process and will (hopefully) get burned.
- goodcjw2 7y ago
  Isn't this a lose-lose situation instead?
  - tlbsofware 7y ago
    I think they mean win-win because they are giving the impression that these companies are not doing the right thing so for them to fail by trying this sets the precedent for others. Then since China loses the US may benefit from this
  - deleted 7y ago
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- tpudlik 7y ago
  I see this as a win-win, too, but in a different way. Early on, the US companies cut their costs: good for them, and likely their customers. In the long term, China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress. There's a lot of acrimony over how to divide the surplus, but this shouldn't overshadow the technological and economic development happening before our very eyes.
  - thefounder 7y ago
    >> China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress. Depends how China uses the technology. More censorship wouldn't be that good for humanity.
  - 7y ago
chrisjc 7y ago
> These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. Perhaps a bit of an over generalization. Some were interested in licensing technology to Huawei as was the case with Akhan. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190204005211/en/AKHAN-Statement-IP-Theft https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190204005211/en/AKH... This case was especially alarming considering the dual-purpose potential of the IP.
Koremat6666 7y ago
It is a DoJ allegation and that department has lower credibility than gas station sushi. It is perfectly possible that as Chinese companies continue to prove to be more competitive across the tech value chain USA will increasingly take irrational positions to hurt Chinese companies. This is an old American model that as long as Americans can control you (la South Korea, Japan,etc.), Americans treat you as business partners but since American influence on China is next to none, American come up with all these allegations. > They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor. This is pretty obvious and highly desirable. I think if all other countries adopt this chinese model they will be more competitive and earn more without engaging in wars and American companies will be forced to be lot more competitive. Note that China is already making pretty big moves in other areas of Tech. Tiktok happens to be incredibly popular and I would expect DoJ to make more delinquent claims about Tiktok soon.
- chillacy 7y ago
  I think this is just the way the world works. Samsung was found to infringe on Apple's design patents in the US... but not South Korea. Europe battling the US over raising digital taxes on US companies. Etc, it's just some economic nationalism.
ricw 7y ago
It’s not just China that does this. This is a proven path for developing economies, that still have a labor price advantage. It’s the reason “Made in Germany” exists as a label, forced by the brits to mark “inferior goods” that turned out to be cheaper and better. Just like China now...
- dmoy 7y ago
  US theft of UK IP back in the day (early 19th century textiles especially) was a big deal.
  - tatrajim 7y ago
    Why not mention the rest of the story: that the U,S. and Great Britain engaged at the time in two bitter wars? Are you claiming that China is justified is stealing U.S. IP because the two nations are at war currently?
    - dmoy 7y ago
      The specific timing on your allegations is off. A lot of the IP theft occurred in peacetime. The US and UK were at war for a total of like 11 years, and there was a period many decades of IP theft. It wasn't as state sponsored as it was during the period between the two wars, but it still happened. Hell as late as 1850 the US straight up didn't recognize copyright of non US citizens. I forget exactly when that changed.
  - chillacy 7y ago
    Hollywood exists in California because Edison's patents weren't respected there https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drove-film-industry-california https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drov...
appleshore 7y ago
I don’t feel sorry for them because those companies are engaged in something else that’s intrinsically bad. But that doesn’t diminish my criticism for China and their culpability in egregious acts. Our greatest sin is ever working with any authoritarian country but their sin is they fundamentally deny what it means to be a human being.
cmroanirgo 7y ago
Exactly. All's fair in love and war... Provided you play by our rules, is what the companies are espousing. Going out to plunder foreign countries for cheap labour and materials and then complaining when they begin to 'return the favour' so to speak, is just being woefully ignorant.
- heartbeats 7y ago
  This disregards the fact that countries' leaders have obligations only to their own citizenry and thus not to foreign countries. China is justified in their actions from their perspective, but not ours. We should never have allowed their ascendancy.
- jariel 7y ago
  Completely false. 1) The 'rules' are agreed upon and mutual. 2) Providing 100's of millions of people with jobs is not 'plunder' it's a win for both sides. "is just being woefully ignorant" - your comment.
deleted 7y ago
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TheRealPomax 7y ago
You mean "for a few decades"? Modern China hasn't even existed for 50 years yet (and the revolution made sure that there is absolutely no way to even pretend that China's way of life before the revolution has _any_ bearing on modern China).
hxyhsjsxycy 7y ago
How silly of them to fail to account for the Chinese being a bunch of thieves.
heartbeats 7y ago
That might be the case for the companies, but what about the rest of us? There's two ways this can end: 1. China becomes the global #1, we all get social credit scores, etc 2. Something is done to stop the ascendancy of China Our losses far exceed the companies' short-term gains.
derefr 7y ago
I would note that these companies were likely paying a Chinese company's American subsidiary for these services. Paying an American company—and such a subsidiary shell company, despite being purely a legal fiction, is still an American company—for its services, no matter who owns it, should not result in China being taught how to build your tech; and it's not the responsibility of other American corporations to ensure it is. If such bad things happen, that's the fault of the American government for allowing the business relationship between the foreign company and its American subsidiary to exist, in light of clear treaties (WIPO, for one) that require the American government to embargo trade with countries that don't comply with them. By analogy: it's not your web browser's responsibility to protect its memory from other processes snooping on it. That's the OS's job. If another process can read your process's memory, it was a failure on the OS's part. The process shouldn't be expected to be spending resources securing its memory; it should be expected only to pay its dues to the OS (in e.g. context switches) such that this gets handled for it.
- Canada 7y ago
  But a program has to request access to any resource from the OS so that the kernel is able to enforce those rules. That's not a good analogy to how individuals and companies in an open society interact with government and each other.
  - derefr 7y ago
    Corporations exist at a state's sufferance. If a Chinese company wants to create an American subsidiary that's going to predictably going to break the law, the state can (and, in fact, is probably legally obligated to) just not grant them a business license. Or, after the fact, when the state realizes what is happening, they can dissolve the subsidiary's business license—just like with the DMCA, where the state can require local DNS resolvers to not resolve the domains of foreign companies found to be breaking local laws.
Vinnl 7y ago
I guess the question is: how did the companies that did not do this fare? i.e. was it really an option not to do it?
chalst 7y ago
It's also surprising to see this classed as racketeering. Has IP piracy ever been prosecuted under RICO laws before?
addicted 7y ago
These US companies are making more money than ever before. So I’m not sure what they have to complain about.

nimbius 7y ago

in a lot of cases the low-cost competitors are not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance. They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it.

tharne 7y ago
> Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it. Nope. Pretty sure most of the issue has to do with the spying, backdoors, and overall lack of ethics. This is the from same country that brought us a potential global pandemic because they spent weeks lying and covering up a rapidly spreading illness simply because they didn't want to lose face.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  b-b-but America bad! /s
- AYBABTME 7y ago
  Do you think other countries would have done better? I'm personally impressed with how decisively China has been handling this pandemic. Don't mean to go off topic, but general China bashing isn't productive. Lumping together all China related topics as if it was all the grand project of an evil mastermind is only good in the movies.
  - tharne 7y ago
    > I'm personally impressed with how decisively China has been handling this pandemic. You mean like how they muzzled one of the first doctors who tried to warn the public about it, and then that doctor later died of the virus? Very impressive, if that's how you roll.
  - frankharv 7y ago
    Yes. Especially ones with Free Speech. China literally arrested a doctor for warning his colleagues. I have never heard of anything like that in the Free World.
    - colejohnson66 7y ago
      Not exactly the same, but the recent kerfuffle with some pentesters and a courthouse was a thing.
      - sidlls 7y ago
        Not even remotely comparable. A better analogy would be Trump's retaliation against good-faith actors raising complaints about his lawbreaking but it's still a weak one. America isn't any angelic nation, to be sure, but even our worst actions (Trump's retaliation, the border family separation issues) aren't even close to the routine, daily, and pernicious violations of human rights and dignity in China.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    Yes, other countries—specifically ones with more open and free societies—tend to do better on this and numerous other issues. Most of China’s current economic position is due to two factors: 1) the population numbers game; 2) the theft of others’ work (it’s debatable which has been more critical). I wouldn’t care about China’s economic ascendance or even that they used thievery to get it if the country weren’t an oppressive dictatorship. This isn’t merely a cultural difference: China’s government is absolutely something anybody who values freedom and egalitarianism should be in opposition to.
vorpalhex 7y ago
> not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance Yeah, many of these vendors do improve upon the original products quite a bit so even while initial versions can be shoddy knockoffs, later editions are often times improved compared to the original. > Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. They're definitely profiting, and they're doing it partially through lower worker standards and looser laws on pollution. They are acting for profit, not to fix the flaws of Western capitalism.
- wcarron 7y ago
  If they're exposing the flaws of western capitalism, I view that as a positive. That they are also acting for profit doesn't negate the value of forcing incumbent US megacorps to actually get off their butts and invest in improving products. You said it yourself: later editions are improved often times. Yes, some of this gain is due to lower worker standard, but I highly doubt ATT, VZ, etc. are really maximizing for worker standards, either.
  - travisgriggs 7y ago
    It's basically wild wild west anarchism. It's like take "western capitalism" and extrapolate to a worse place. I get that western capitalism (whatever that actually means anymore) has gone off the rails some. But seeing the Chinese approach as a just come-uppance is like being glad that killers have showed up to get rid of all of the bullies. It just gets worse.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Those ATT workers sleeping 8 to a garage and pitching themselves off buildings sure is a dang tragedy.
andreilys 7y ago
” They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. ” They also “side-step” the capital and years of research required to come up with the products. Why invest in R&D when you can invest in corporate espionage for a fraction of the cost?
- mNovak 7y ago
  Not here to debate whether IP theft happens, but to be clear Huawei does also invest billions into R&D (domestic and abroad)
- karavelov 7y ago
  If they didn't invest in research, how were they first to market with 5G solutions?
  - richk449 7y ago
    They even stole the stuff we haven’t invented yet !!
    - blackrock 7y ago
      OMG.. Huawei has a time machine too? Damn it, that’s it! That’s just not fair. We must ban them now. Won’t somebody think of the children?
- chrischen 7y ago
  That's a separate issue. If Huawei violated some IP patents then why aren't they suing for that? Any meaningful R&D developments would be patented and would be publicly available and described anyways. And if your product is so weakly innovative that a picture of the circuity or some power point slides basically give away significant trade secrets, then your product probably sucks. These charges sound like they're for non-innovation based trade secrets, whatever those may be.
cycrutchfield 7y ago
As a consumer, that may be good in the short term. But innovation isn’t free. In a world where people can just copy other people’s hard work with impunity, what incentive is there to invest in innovation?
- mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
  Being first to market has its advantages.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    Shrinking advantages as the delta-t between release and the appearance of dozens of stolen cheap knockoffs decreases.
- benaadams 7y ago
  I hear OSS is doing well when it comes to innovation...
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    I hear most OSS contributions come from people who make a living working at proprietary software companies...
  - bcrosby95 7y ago
    Most people working on OSS are paid by companies that rely heavily on closed source innovation in other areas of business. They are commoditizing their compliments.
    - effie 7y ago
      Even if that claim about "most people" was true, the point is still valid - OSS contributors _are_ "innovating" (creating new things to make money on), despite the innovations being freely copied. In part, the innovation happens _because_ or _with_help_ of free copying. Free sharing of some ideas/knowledge can be benefitial to innovation. Nobody is claiming _all_ ideas business finds / works on should be immediately shared freely with the world. The benefactors of a business are naturally motivated to protect their know-how. But it should be the business' responsibility to protect its secrets, not HN commenters or governments'. If an idea can't be kept secret, then government issues patents, which should be time limited and regional.
kube-system 7y ago
Why would US carriers want to pot-bang about this? They would only lose money by doing so. AT&T and Huawei are not competitors.
chrisjc 7y ago
Aren't most of the other 5G infrastructure manufactures European (Siemens, Nokia)? Do the US carriers really care where their equipment comes from? Handset manufactures probably don't care since they're sourcing from others. Perhaps Samsung (Exynos) being the exception, but they're Korean. Apple bought Intel's 5G division. The only chip company that I could imagine cares is Qualcomm.
Koremat6666 7y ago
> On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it. This one sentence summarized everything.
- creato 7y ago
  I don't think that sentence actually makes any sense. AT&T and other US carriers probably don't care who manufactures their equipment. They make money on the service they sell. The US doesn't actually have any vendor for most of this kind of equipment, the competitors here are either European or Chinese.
jariel 7y ago
This is not true and implies a misunderstanding of the industry. AT&T, like most carriers, is perfectly happy to get super cheap and gear from China, at a fraction of the price they'd pay otherwise. In fact, carriers around the world are the one's pushing to use Huawei. Second - the US doesn't really have any capabilities in the 5G space, for the most part. It's European companies: Erikson and Nokia that have capabilities. Cisco, Lucent etc. are not even on the radar on this issue. Given that your position is completely at odds with the reality of the market, you'll have to provide some material evidence of your claim that the US is just up in a fuss over their lack of dominance of 5G, otherwise, they just don't seem true. Once again, all of this narrative misleads us from the real underlying issue, which is that Huawei and others have been systematically and openly stealing property.
- effie 7y ago
  > real underlying issue, which is that Huawei and others have been systematically and openly stealing property. Issue for whom? Most people are perfectly happy with one company learning and mimicking products of another company, if they get cheaper and better versions. This is perfectly natural. If some rich guys feel like China got ahead of them too much too quickly, that's too bad - they should have protected their stuff, not teach Chinese to manufacture it.
  - jariel 7y ago
    Sending in spies to steal protected information is blatant theft by any definition. The number of people here trying to downplay what's going on is astonishing, I can only imagine they themselves are not legit posters.
    - effie 7y ago
      State and corporate espionage isn't anything new. As well as learning and copying business (your "theft"). Japanese did the same with semiconductors. I don't know what _exactly_ has been going on with Huawei and other companies, but I understand that the publicized outrage about Huawei and other Chinese companies stealing from America isn't natural. Most people were fine with Chinese advancing and copying, since everybody benefited from cheap labor/products. Until the powerful in the West realized american economy is in bad shape, power balance in the world is shifting and it's time to do something about it. I guess shaping public opinion on China is part of that.

oh_sigh 7y ago

These American companies thought that having them sign a confidentiality agreement would mean they would actually follow through with the agreement. It wasn't just a "send em the plans and get our widgets for cheap!"

jdc 7y ago

I'm sure the quarterly reports looked good though!

Derek_MK 7y ago
Not so much the yearlies, but the quarterlies!
complianceowl 7y ago
Cough Cough .....short-termism.....Cough Cough

AsyncAwait 7y ago

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates You mean every developing nation? Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing. Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.

crispinb 7y ago
Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous All the vast majority of people in the "West" know about China is whatever happens to be propagated by mainstream propagandists for current purposes. Ignorance is much more common (and hence likely) than disingenuity.
johnchristopher 7y ago
We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. It's not disingenuous to single out China for this behavior since China is one of the biggest player doing it and reaping so much from it in our time. Plus, whataboutism.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  > We left the 18th and 19th century a long time ago. So? It's not like the US didn't know that it was breaking British laws back then. IP protectionism is nothing new, it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events.
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    > it is is fair to make comparisons to 18th/19th century events? Yes
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    It all depends of what you make of that comparison. Are you saying it's okay because others did it before ? That it shouldn't be debated ? What's the position ? What is the point of preventing people from saying China is playing the IP theft game hard at the moment ?

tharne 7y ago

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time. I see this as a win-win. These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China and they got burned. China engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior in the process and will (hopefully) get burned.

goodcjw2 7y ago
Isn't this a lose-lose situation instead?
- tlbsofware 7y ago
  I think they mean win-win because they are giving the impression that these companies are not doing the right thing so for them to fail by trying this sets the precedent for others. Then since China loses the US may benefit from this
- deleted 7y ago
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tpudlik 7y ago
I see this as a win-win, too, but in a different way. Early on, the US companies cut their costs: good for them, and likely their customers. In the long term, China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress. There's a lot of acrimony over how to divide the surplus, but this shouldn't overshadow the technological and economic development happening before our very eyes.
- thefounder 7y ago
  >> China developed the expertise needed to contribute to the development of advanced technologies: good for them, and for humanity's aggregate progress. Depends how China uses the technology. More censorship wouldn't be that good for humanity.
- 7y ago

chrisjc 7y ago

> These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. Perhaps a bit of an over generalization. Some were interested in licensing technology to Huawei as was the case with Akhan. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190204005211/en/AKHAN-Statement-IP-Theft https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190204005211/en/AKH... This case was especially alarming considering the dual-purpose potential of the IP.

Koremat6666 7y ago

It is a DoJ allegation and that department has lower credibility than gas station sushi. It is perfectly possible that as Chinese companies continue to prove to be more competitive across the tech value chain USA will increasingly take irrational positions to hurt Chinese companies. This is an old American model that as long as Americans can control you (la South Korea, Japan,etc.), Americans treat you as business partners but since American influence on China is next to none, American come up with all these allegations. > They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor. This is pretty obvious and highly desirable. I think if all other countries adopt this chinese model they will be more competitive and earn more without engaging in wars and American companies will be forced to be lot more competitive. Note that China is already making pretty big moves in other areas of Tech. Tiktok happens to be incredibly popular and I would expect DoJ to make more delinquent claims about Tiktok soon.

chillacy 7y ago
I think this is just the way the world works. Samsung was found to infringe on Apple's design patents in the US... but not South Korea. Europe battling the US over raising digital taxes on US companies. Etc, it's just some economic nationalism.

ricw 7y ago

It’s not just China that does this. This is a proven path for developing economies, that still have a labor price advantage. It’s the reason “Made in Germany” exists as a label, forced by the brits to mark “inferior goods” that turned out to be cheaper and better. Just like China now...

dmoy 7y ago
US theft of UK IP back in the day (early 19th century textiles especially) was a big deal.
- tatrajim 7y ago
  Why not mention the rest of the story: that the U,S. and Great Britain engaged at the time in two bitter wars? Are you claiming that China is justified is stealing U.S. IP because the two nations are at war currently?
  - dmoy 7y ago
    The specific timing on your allegations is off. A lot of the IP theft occurred in peacetime. The US and UK were at war for a total of like 11 years, and there was a period many decades of IP theft. It wasn't as state sponsored as it was during the period between the two wars, but it still happened. Hell as late as 1850 the US straight up didn't recognize copyright of non US citizens. I forget exactly when that changed.
- chillacy 7y ago
  Hollywood exists in California because Edison's patents weren't respected there https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drove-film-industry-california https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drov...

appleshore 7y ago

I don’t feel sorry for them because those companies are engaged in something else that’s intrinsically bad. But that doesn’t diminish my criticism for China and their culpability in egregious acts. Our greatest sin is ever working with any authoritarian country but their sin is they fundamentally deny what it means to be a human being.

cmroanirgo 7y ago

Exactly. All's fair in love and war... Provided you play by our rules, is what the companies are espousing. Going out to plunder foreign countries for cheap labour and materials and then complaining when they begin to 'return the favour' so to speak, is just being woefully ignorant.

heartbeats 7y ago
This disregards the fact that countries' leaders have obligations only to their own citizenry and thus not to foreign countries. China is justified in their actions from their perspective, but not ours. We should never have allowed their ascendancy.
jariel 7y ago
Completely false. 1) The 'rules' are agreed upon and mutual. 2) Providing 100's of millions of people with jobs is not 'plunder' it's a win for both sides. "is just being woefully ignorant" - your comment.

deleted 7y ago

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TheRealPomax 7y ago

You mean "for a few decades"? Modern China hasn't even existed for 50 years yet (and the revolution made sure that there is absolutely no way to even pretend that China's way of life before the revolution has _any_ bearing on modern China).

hxyhsjsxycy 7y ago

How silly of them to fail to account for the Chinese being a bunch of thieves.

heartbeats 7y ago

That might be the case for the companies, but what about the rest of us? There's two ways this can end: 1. China becomes the global #1, we all get social credit scores, etc 2. Something is done to stop the ascendancy of China Our losses far exceed the companies' short-term gains.

derefr 7y ago

I would note that these companies were likely paying a Chinese company's American subsidiary for these services. Paying an American company—and such a subsidiary shell company, despite being purely a legal fiction, is still an American company—for its services, no matter who owns it, should not result in China being taught how to build your tech; and it's not the responsibility of other American corporations to ensure it is. If such bad things happen, that's the fault of the American government for allowing the business relationship between the foreign company and its American subsidiary to exist, in light of clear treaties (WIPO, for one) that require the American government to embargo trade with countries that don't comply with them. By analogy: it's not your web browser's responsibility to protect its memory from other processes snooping on it. That's the OS's job. If another process can read your process's memory, it was a failure on the OS's part. The process shouldn't be expected to be spending resources securing its memory; it should be expected only to pay its dues to the OS (in e.g. context switches) such that this gets handled for it.

Canada 7y ago
But a program has to request access to any resource from the OS so that the kernel is able to enforce those rules. That's not a good analogy to how individuals and companies in an open society interact with government and each other.
- derefr 7y ago
  Corporations exist at a state's sufferance. If a Chinese company wants to create an American subsidiary that's going to predictably going to break the law, the state can (and, in fact, is probably legally obligated to) just not grant them a business license. Or, after the fact, when the state realizes what is happening, they can dissolve the subsidiary's business license—just like with the DMCA, where the state can require local DNS resolvers to not resolve the domains of foreign companies found to be breaking local laws.

Vinnl 7y ago

I guess the question is: how did the companies that did not do this fare? i.e. was it really an option not to do it?

chalst 7y ago

It's also surprising to see this classed as racketeering. Has IP piracy ever been prosecuted under RICO laws before?

addicted 7y ago

These US companies are making more money than ever before. So I’m not sure what they have to complain about.