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>...the goal of American policy on Huawei is less about security and more about market share – and making sure America, not China, owns the future of 5G. Bingo

>...the goal of American policy on Huawei is less about security and more about market share – and making sure America, not China, owns the future of 5G. Bingo. Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Most of the premise for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou was comical at best. 30 years of US companies ignoring ITAR with at most a small fine, only to suddenly watch the US issue an extradition warrant for a chinese CFO accused of doing the same thing? I guess if its the cold war its different. Huawei made it to market first. Most of this theatricality from the US government is a last-ditch effort to buy time until US communications companies come out with something remotely 5G. AT&T did their usual tactic with 4g, and rolled out a watered down branded 5GE experience even to phones with no 5G chipset whatsoever in a desperate attempt to brand something they'll likely buy at twice the cost from a US supplier in 2021 just to spite their loss at Huawei. I hate the term intellectual property and its easy to slander people for theft, but the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education and a public policy that actively persecuted hackers and anyone interested in STEM since the sixties. The US decided to turn their colleges into luxury sports arenas driven by unforgivable student loans and underpaid graduate students as teachers. It drafted legal DMCA and DRM to punish curiousity and reward obedience, and now for the past decade its tried to play both sides of the field. Insisting STEM is something all its citizens must learn, while at the same time branding anyone too interested in technology as aberrant and unlawful, a circumventor in violation of the license for the product they own. Unless and until this changes, im sure China or Korea or some other slave of the international market will own 6, 7 and 8 G as well.

champagneben 7y ago
> the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education How much has the US cut its education budgets?
- DeonPenny 7y ago
  It as the worlds highest education budget.
  - pas 7y ago
    Efficacy matters. US has a cost disease. Also, in terms of GDP it's far from the highest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_on_education_(%25_of_GDP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...
redis_mlc 7y ago
> Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Yes, it's a national security issue. The rest of your post is nonsense as well. And by the way, you forgot to mention that "a chinese CFO" is related to the president of Huawei, a member of the PLA. You can always spot the Huawei apologists because they never seem to mention the PLA connection.
- baybal2 7y ago
  > a member of the PLA If China were to ban retired US army officers from running companies, I think a double digit of American tech companies should start thinking of liquidation Moreover, Chinese military is in remarkably bad relationship with the party at large after, if you didn't know. Even a flag rising ceremony in Beijing was done not by military, but police up until recently
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
guacamole4 7y ago
This post is arguing that US is extremely behind in technological advancement because of historically insufficient focus on STEM education. However one might argue that US isn't actually that weak when it comes to tech. There are a good number of technology companies and research that came out of the US in the past 50 years.
NicoJuicy 7y ago
The average reader of HN would rather have their data shared with the US, then with China. Not many good things have come out of China privacy related. It's against what a lot of readers here value in our "digital Life". Who here truelly believes the "0" Covid case numbers that China is publishing? :)
- matsemann 7y ago
  > The average reader of HN would rather have their data shared with the US, then with China. Why is that? If anything I'm a bit at the opposite. Prism, cambridge analytica and the likes means that my western data is actively being used against me, by our own governments etc. It may be naive but it almost feels safer having my data in hands not cooperating with western intelligence...
  - NicoJuicy 7y ago
    No one in the West will put you in concentration camps for having your opinion. They won't censor it also
    - matsemann 7y ago
      No one in China will put me in a camp either, as I don't live or travel there. Which is my point. Not saying usa will put me in a camp, but currently they have more options to screw me over. (and us do put children in camps) It may be a bit hyperbole. But I just don't want to be so quick to accept the narrative that west=good east=bad
      - NicoJuicy 7y ago
        I'm not saying the east is bad. Don't change my words, jees! If you haven't noticed. The protests in Hong Kong are related to the extradiction law from China that was forced on to them. And yes, people already disappeared. And finally, if you want a statement, it's that democracy leads to a fairer society and communism leads to abuse of power.
zobzu 7y ago
My personal take is: Huawei belongs to CCP. Korean and US companies do not belong to their governments. This should be an issue by default, in my opinion. That said it's not why I distrust Huawei (not that I trust Google, Cisco, Qualcomm all that much more - but I give them more benefit of the doubt). I don't even care about ATT because if you trust your carrier you're already toast, and I do not know any carrier that I respect as a company (despite them having great employees). Here's why I distrust Huawei and similar companies: From my 20y incident response experience in the field at very large companies, we've never caught the NSA or similar US agencies. Either because they're too good, we're unlucky, they're too bad at it, or because they don't actually need to, or do not backdoor. Who knows. What does bother me is that we caught other countries several times, sometimes using terribly bad tactics (where the defense was bad for various reasons that are usually also bad) and sometimes using relatively novel stuff that we'd never see before. Thankfully you do not have to trust me, ask any security engineer at any big company (amazon, fb, uber, google, lockheed, etc.). They'll either say they're not allowed to speak about it or give you an answer that's similar to the above (or break their NDAs, alternatively, I guess?!)
- londons_explore 7y ago
  > US companies do not belong to their governments. Did you see the news last week that GM is being forced to switch manufacturing to produce ventilators... Not paid to do it... Forced to... When that kind of thing happens, it's clear there isn't a separation line between company management and their governments.
  - joaomacp 7y ago
    You are overgeneralizing: the US did this in a crisis. China has been doing this frequently. It's not valid to equate them.
- bildung 7y ago
  What do you think about Ciscos security history? They have had literally hundreds of remote code execution vulnerabilities. https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-16/Cisco.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-16/C... (sort by severity, right now there are 450 flaws with severity 9.0 or more in the list) I can't imagine that it is only incompetence that makes them implement new remote backdoors on an almost monthly basis.
state_less 7y ago
All the wireless companies spend their money on shareholder dividends and purchasing restricted access to the airwaves. And now the US government doesn't like the new gatekeeper (i.e. China) controlling these companies. Due to government selling the rights to our airwaves to the highest bidder, the modern portable computer + radios are locked down and obscured under layers of corporate control and constraint. I'd much rather have the software and network be required to be more open and radio waves more unrestricted for the public to use (e.g. sell me a better CB). Give me that over 5G, telecom companies and "unlimited" data. I'm following meshtastic and disaster.radio projects. I like these little low bandwidth programmable long range transceivers running on the unlicensed bands. I bought a pair for $60 to play with. One could imagine P2P networks sprouting up on houses, cars, trees, etc with free low bandwidth services like weather info, email, chat, etc...
- KozmoNau7 7y ago
  If/when the corporate grip on the internet is tightened enough that even VPNs and onion routing become impractical or sabotaged, I could absolutely see low-bandwidth mesh networks provide a primarily text-based unfiltered communications channel. The caveat of course being that strong encryption would be absolutely mandatory.
thdrdt 7y ago
The question is also: how much would China/Huawei loose when something like a backdoor was discovered? They are one of the biggest companies in the world generating billions of income. They would loose a lot if not all of this when there is proof of espionage. Would they risk this? I don't think so. I am not saying China isn't spying on us (every country does) but I doubt they use Huawei for this.
op03 7y ago
It wont change. There is too much inertia. But its not all bad. Maybe in future the West will play to its real strengths - provide entertainment/content, reality tv, sports, celebs and of course porn for those 5G, 6G, 7G...networks. While tech and science moves elsewhere. The best and brightest in science and tech will just move to where ever its happening.
- DeonPenny 7y ago
  And people are moving to china?
- mantas 7y ago
  Your social score has increased! If West was reduce to entertainment provider, I doubt we'll get to keep or flawed democracy and freedoms. I'd rather have slower cellular network rather than CCP-style government...

champagneben 7y ago

> the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education How much has the US cut its education budgets?

DeonPenny 7y ago
It as the worlds highest education budget.
- pas 7y ago
  Efficacy matters. US has a cost disease. Also, in terms of GDP it's far from the highest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_on_education_(%25_of_GDP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_spending_...

redis_mlc 7y ago

> Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Yes, it's a national security issue. The rest of your post is nonsense as well. And by the way, you forgot to mention that "a chinese CFO" is related to the president of Huawei, a member of the PLA. You can always spot the Huawei apologists because they never seem to mention the PLA connection.

baybal2 7y ago
> a member of the PLA If China were to ban retired US army officers from running companies, I think a double digit of American tech companies should start thinking of liquidation Moreover, Chinese military is in remarkably bad relationship with the party at large after, if you didn't know. Even a flag rising ceremony in Beijing was done not by military, but police up until recently
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

guacamole4 7y ago

This post is arguing that US is extremely behind in technological advancement because of historically insufficient focus on STEM education. However one might argue that US isn't actually that weak when it comes to tech. There are a good number of technology companies and research that came out of the US in the past 50 years.

NicoJuicy 7y ago

The average reader of HN would rather have their data shared with the US, then with China. Not many good things have come out of China privacy related. It's against what a lot of readers here value in our "digital Life". Who here truelly believes the "0" Covid case numbers that China is publishing? :)

matsemann 7y ago
> The average reader of HN would rather have their data shared with the US, then with China. Why is that? If anything I'm a bit at the opposite. Prism, cambridge analytica and the likes means that my western data is actively being used against me, by our own governments etc. It may be naive but it almost feels safer having my data in hands not cooperating with western intelligence...
- NicoJuicy 7y ago
  No one in the West will put you in concentration camps for having your opinion. They won't censor it also
  - matsemann 7y ago
    No one in China will put me in a camp either, as I don't live or travel there. Which is my point. Not saying usa will put me in a camp, but currently they have more options to screw me over. (and us do put children in camps) It may be a bit hyperbole. But I just don't want to be so quick to accept the narrative that west=good east=bad
    - NicoJuicy 7y ago
      I'm not saying the east is bad. Don't change my words, jees! If you haven't noticed. The protests in Hong Kong are related to the extradiction law from China that was forced on to them. And yes, people already disappeared. And finally, if you want a statement, it's that democracy leads to a fairer society and communism leads to abuse of power.

zobzu 7y ago

My personal take is: Huawei belongs to CCP. Korean and US companies do not belong to their governments. This should be an issue by default, in my opinion. That said it's not why I distrust Huawei (not that I trust Google, Cisco, Qualcomm all that much more - but I give them more benefit of the doubt). I don't even care about ATT because if you trust your carrier you're already toast, and I do not know any carrier that I respect as a company (despite them having great employees). Here's why I distrust Huawei and similar companies: From my 20y incident response experience in the field at very large companies, we've never caught the NSA or similar US agencies. Either because they're too good, we're unlucky, they're too bad at it, or because they don't actually need to, or do not backdoor. Who knows. What does bother me is that we caught other countries several times, sometimes using terribly bad tactics (where the defense was bad for various reasons that are usually also bad) and sometimes using relatively novel stuff that we'd never see before. Thankfully you do not have to trust me, ask any security engineer at any big company (amazon, fb, uber, google, lockheed, etc.). They'll either say they're not allowed to speak about it or give you an answer that's similar to the above (or break their NDAs, alternatively, I guess?!)

londons_explore 7y ago
> US companies do not belong to their governments. Did you see the news last week that GM is being forced to switch manufacturing to produce ventilators... Not paid to do it... Forced to... When that kind of thing happens, it's clear there isn't a separation line between company management and their governments.
- joaomacp 7y ago
  You are overgeneralizing: the US did this in a crisis. China has been doing this frequently. It's not valid to equate them.
bildung 7y ago
What do you think about Ciscos security history? They have had literally hundreds of remote code execution vulnerabilities. https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-16/Cisco.html https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-16/C... (sort by severity, right now there are 450 flaws with severity 9.0 or more in the list) I can't imagine that it is only incompetence that makes them implement new remote backdoors on an almost monthly basis.

state_less 7y ago

All the wireless companies spend their money on shareholder dividends and purchasing restricted access to the airwaves. And now the US government doesn't like the new gatekeeper (i.e. China) controlling these companies. Due to government selling the rights to our airwaves to the highest bidder, the modern portable computer + radios are locked down and obscured under layers of corporate control and constraint. I'd much rather have the software and network be required to be more open and radio waves more unrestricted for the public to use (e.g. sell me a better CB). Give me that over 5G, telecom companies and "unlimited" data. I'm following meshtastic and disaster.radio projects. I like these little low bandwidth programmable long range transceivers running on the unlicensed bands. I bought a pair for $60 to play with. One could imagine P2P networks sprouting up on houses, cars, trees, etc with free low bandwidth services like weather info, email, chat, etc...

KozmoNau7 7y ago
If/when the corporate grip on the internet is tightened enough that even VPNs and onion routing become impractical or sabotaged, I could absolutely see low-bandwidth mesh networks provide a primarily text-based unfiltered communications channel. The caveat of course being that strong encryption would be absolutely mandatory.

thdrdt 7y ago

The question is also: how much would China/Huawei loose when something like a backdoor was discovered? They are one of the biggest companies in the world generating billions of income. They would loose a lot if not all of this when there is proof of espionage. Would they risk this? I don't think so. I am not saying China isn't spying on us (every country does) but I doubt they use Huawei for this.

op03 7y ago

It wont change. There is too much inertia. But its not all bad. Maybe in future the West will play to its real strengths - provide entertainment/content, reality tv, sports, celebs and of course porn for those 5G, 6G, 7G...networks. While tech and science moves elsewhere. The best and brightest in science and tech will just move to where ever its happening.

DeonPenny 7y ago
And people are moving to china?
mantas 7y ago
Your social score has increased! If West was reduce to entertainment provider, I doubt we'll get to keep or flawed democracy and freedoms. I'd rather have slower cellular network rather than CCP-style government...