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U.S. telecoms are going to start physically removing Huawei gear

outside1234 5y ago
This is good policy. One of the few things I think Trump did good on.
tomhunters 5y ago
The US is really against Huawei; this war has been happening since the rise of the 5G technology. They did various things against Huawei, like removing the Android OS and Google Playstore.
- fomine3 5y ago
  It's fine to remove Huawei from important network equipment in western world, but it shouldn't be banned from Android phone market in worldwide.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    And it wasn't.
jmacd 5y ago
I fail to understand why the press in western countries gives this story so much air time. It's a regular fixture in the Canadian, UK and NZ press as well. I think it speaks to the lobbying effort and quality of PR retained by Huawei. There are certain things that a country, or group of allies, absolutely should retain control over. Communications infrastructure is absolutely one of those things. There is a reason China and Russia both have their own GPS alternative. There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei. But equally there is no good reason to trust Huawei.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I think it speaks to the lobbying effort and quality of PR retained by Huawei. Speaking of which, Huawei ads have been all over the NYT app for the last week or so.
- sithadmin 5y ago
  >There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei Backdoors? Being caught red handed doing espionage? Cozying up to bad actors like North Korea and Iran?
  - blitzar 5y ago
    > Backdoors? Being caught red handed doing espionage? Cozying up to bad actors like North Korea and Iran? Are we talking about Huawei here or any number of US companies?
  - sofixa 5y ago
    What backdoors? Didn't the UK audit telecoms and networking equipment and say that they have shoddy security in some places ( like having telnet) but aren't worse than the shoddy security in "good" vendors like Cisco and Juniper.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      No audit is guaranteed to find a backdoor if one is present. It simply isn't possible - any more than you could get an audit guaranteeing the Linux kernel is bug-free.
      - sofixa 5y ago
        But if nobody has found any backdoors, including with an audit by a security agency, how can OP use "backdoors" as an argument against Huawei?
        cute_boi 5y ago
        In the realm of no experts, everybody is expert.
EarthIsHome 5y ago
https://archive.md/F5FUk https://archive.md/F5FUk > All over the country, hardware from Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. keeps American telecom networks humming. In the coming months, many of those networks are going to start ripping it all out. I'm curious how this is going to affect the end user. Are some users going to have slower speeds?
- fabianhjr 5y ago
  Probably will only affect cost, the US already has high costs for fiber and cellular internet. (Cellular is about 3 USD/GB in the US vs less than 2 USD/GB in most of Europe and Asia according to https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/ https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/)
eyear 5y ago
Huawei has been accused for many years; yet I have not seen any concrete evidence presented by the accusers.
- ergocoder 5y ago
  Good luck finding a concrete evidence in a geopolitical issue between 2 global super powers. Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3. It is suboptimal but probably the best that it can be. Remember the Malaysian airline that was shot down? I remember.
  - kipchak 5y ago
    >Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3. Isn't this arguably what happened with the SuperMicro hack and the subsequent denials?
    - freeflight 5y ago
      Do you mean the story about tiny super spy chips, so advanced that not even the US could manufacture them, allegedly being planted on thousands of US server boards? Remind me: How many of these chips were actually found and presented as evidence? Not a single one, yet to this day this story remains alive and repeated...
  - freeflight 5y ago
    > Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3. Did Snowden incite WW3 when he blew the whistle and delivered literally troves of evidence? > It is suboptimal but probably the best that it can be. That's just the same old "You just have to trust the government/intelligence services, they can't reveal their evidence/sources without endangering them!". After decades of civilians getting droned and innocents getting tortured I think we should maybe have learned something from trusting such accusations from institutions who do not only have a history of lying, but literally a agenda to do so. Particularly when timing wise most of these accusations fit very neatly into a pivot from the ME to Asia while also serving as a bit of "whataboutism" for the recent nasty reveals coming out of the Five Eyes camps in regards to human rights abuses and mass surveillance.
nimbius 5y ago
This is less newsworthy when you find out the government basically gifted telco's 2bn USD to do this. https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-details-1-9-billion-program-to-rip-out-huawei-and-zte-gear-in-the-us/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-details-1-9-billion-progra...
- deelowe 5y ago
  I thought some form of reciprocity/incentivization was implied.
  - hanniabu 5y ago
    Only because government loves to find reasons to bail out big business
    - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
      This isn't a "bail out". Government is essentially paying telcos to replace all of this gear, after previously having no problem with the fact that they installed it in the first place.
      - hanniabu 5y ago
        If you make a poor business decision and the government pays to fix it then that's a bail out, where smaller businesses would need to eat those costs themselves.
- OrvalWintermute 5y ago
  The US government is required to do this. It is called the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution > .... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. The US government decided to make a judgment call on the legality of Huawei; the US government in keeping with the Law, paid just compensation to the owners of the equipment. It is the right call to make.
liotier 5y ago
ANSSI, the French agency for information systems security, has severely tightened authorizations for vital infrastructure. Though Huawei is still kosher in many network functions, French telcos have had to remove a few thousand nodes they had already deployed, especially in network cores. All authorizations are temporary - between three and eight years. This is not just about security in a narrow definition, but in a large part about ensuring that mastery of strategic functions remains with European firms. Like armaments, telecommunication infrastructures are not a normal market.
- wyager 5y ago
  > Like armaments, telecommunication infrastructures are not a normal market. I don’t disagree, but how far are we going to take this? Under the strategic regime of 超限战, is any sector a “normal market”, or do all sectors take on strategic significance?
cinntaile 5y ago
Strange title. How else would they remove hardware if not physically?
- hn8788 5y ago
  Could be to emphasize that they didn't "remove them" by just turning them off and collecting a re-imbursement from the government. The article says the removed devices must be taken to approved destruction facilities, so the govt really doesn't want the devices popping up on ebay or in internal networks.
- fomine3 5y ago
  soft brick?
pessimizer 5y ago
This is just a way for the government to subsidize telco equipment upgrades, using popular-with-voters nationalism and anti-Chinese racism as a pretext.
- adventured 5y ago
  The US and China having a great power conflict - which will last for many decades, or longer - is not based on racism. The US conflicting with the USSR throughout the Cold War was also was not about racism. It would be exceptionally irrational for the US to utilize the telecom equipment of a quasi enemy nation that is all but guaranteed to be a future enemy. It doesn't matter whether anyone likes those terms or not, that's how the US Government is increasingly viewing China - and vice versa - and that's what is coming.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
toomuchtodo 5y ago
If anyone is in the know, looking for pointers on where to pick this gear up on the used market for use in underserved developing areas.
- mtnGoat 5y ago
  guess you didnt read the article, its all being destroyed.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I did, but lots of things that are supposed to be destroyed end up on secondary markets.
    - mtnGoat 5y ago
      probably not when part of the requirements to get the subsidy are destroying the old equipment.
      - slim 5y ago
        Maybe your definition of "destroyed" is maintaining this misunderstanding. Their definition of "destroyed" is some paper saying that the destruction is being handled by a specialized company. That company can "outsource the destruction overseas" without being liable.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        You’d be surprised.
        jeffrallen 5y ago
        I'd be surprised if you'd be willing to risk the sanctions for buying equipment you knew was defrauding the US government. The feds play for keeps...
        deleted 5y ago
PrinceRichard 5y ago
It's never a good sign when the government mandates the destruction (or abandonment) of usable goods.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
libpcap 5y ago
About time!
Ajay-p 5y ago
If I could put on my conspiracy hat... Perhaps this is related to Canada's detention of he Huawei executive. Someone put their foot down and said Chinese hardware is spying on us, and perhaps they forced China to give up how. At it's core, the world absolutely cannot trust China. Because Huawei is a de facto company owned by the Chinese government, it stands to reason that the distrust must be extended to Huawei. The product may be good, but China has very little credibility anymore, and should absolutely not be trusted.
- gonational 5y ago
  [flagged]
  - klarstrup 5y ago
    What is an ideologue?
    - gonational 5y ago
      Somebody who is dogmatically following an ideology; think of an ideologue as somebody who is running an abstract program in place of their normal ability to think about information using the principles they have naturally acquired through their life experiences. Having ideas that map 1:1 to those of an ideology does not intrinsically make you an ideologue. Forming those ideas, based on conformity to an ideology that you have subscribed to, does.
      - pvg 5y ago
        This matches 'red scare' quite nicely and might give you some food for further thought.
        gonational 5y ago
        The definition of ideologue matches the red scare? Are you sure you meant to reply to that comment?
twobitshifter 5y ago
All my knowledge about this has come from Media articles Covering the dangers of using huawei tech, but I haven’t seen anything that describes Chinese attacks using huawei equipment. We do know the long history of China sponsored hacking and it’s not a leap to go so far as to think Huawei could be compelled to backdoor equipment. For that reason not using Huawei is safer for national security one way or the other. However, on Capitol Hill, I think the idea is more to harm China than protect. I remember that the Washington metro trains were almost blocked because they are built by a Chinese company. Someone in congress dreamed up a Tom Clancy plot where the Chinese could bring down Washington by hijacking their transit system.
- gonational 5y ago
  Just about every data center in the US has a decent percent of its servers running as nodes of botnets for entities inside of China, not to mention the hundreds of millions of "smart" devices. That leaves out of the equation TickTock and Reddit and every other above-board Chinese communist party partly owned tech in the US. Assuming that you know what your exact attack surface is is a pretty clear sign that you are very vulnerable to attack.
  - jcun4128 5y ago
    That one time tiny chips in AWS servers Elemental/Supermicro/Apple 2018
    - freeflight 5y ago
      Too bad that nobody ever managed to find any of those tiny super spy chips, even three years later. But hey: The poop was thrown, some of it stuck, and now you are repeating it as established fact, when even the sources named in the Bloomberg piece found it quite lacking after publication [0] So the narrative successfully did it's FUD job, and here we are under a post about yet another Bloomberg headline that nobody even questions in the slightest. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/
awill 5y ago
as opposed to virtually removing?....
thedigitalone 5y ago
https://archive.md/F5FUk https://archive.md/F5FUk
adamrezich 5y ago
this is a good move. from the beginning, the Huawei 5G push was full of cause for suspicion. John C. Dvorak quit PC Magazine [0] after they took down his entirely reasonable (especially for Dvorak lol) 5G-skeptical column [1] and replaced it with a pro-5G column, accessed from the same URL as the deleted column. once covid hit, the narrative shifted further and anyone who was skeptical of Chinese 5G infrastructure in the US and elsewhere elicited responses of "lol you think 5G causes covid, ok Alex Jones lmao." the whole thing was shady from the start and the cries of "conthpirathy theorieth" were extremely odd given that the subject being discussed was the telecommunications infrastructure of the country being replaced/augmented by a new technology from a rival superpower. plus, I don't know about anyone else, but I personally haven't seen an actual use case for 5G to date. and then when you throw in the last administration's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks at the 2020 National Governors Association with regards to Chinese influence on our States' leadership [2]... [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20180901090946/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-problem-with-5g https://web.archive.org/web/20180901090946/https://in.pcmag.... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.com/@dvorak/5g-got-me-fired-ce407e584c4a https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.co... [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/08/mike-pompeo-governors-china-112539 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/08/mike-pompeo-governo...
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Wow, I was not aware of this. I used to read Dvorak a lot when I was younger. It also appears that he did not quit but was, in fact, fired - according to [1]: > As many of you know, I was unceremoniously fired from PC Magazine on Sept. 20th, 2018 after over 30 years of service. I just figured it was the new people coming in and I was an unneeded throwback to the old regime. Edit: > but I personally haven't seen an actual use case for 5G to date Incidentally, the most "compelling" use cases I've seen for 5g are always-connected smart devices that don't rely on WiFi. E.g. a smart TV where you can't pihole its advertising or view-tracking "features".
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    that's right, I misremembered and thought he quit when in fact he was fired.
voz_ 5y ago
What always disgusts me about news and dealings with the CCP is the double standard. They can play ball in western markets with impunity, enjoying our egalitarian legal systems and protections, while we cannot do so in theirs. I'd love to see an equivalent anti-ccp stance taken across every field.
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  This is true of every company headquartered in a country with an oppressive government. You can buy Emirates air line t-shirts all over the place, but the country is a monarchy with a poor human rights track record. For better or worse we've decided that we're ok with treating foreign companies basically equally to our own up until now.
- dragonelite 5y ago
  There is a reason Ericsson threaten to move from Sweden if they would block Huawei from having market access. Because it would mean Ericsson would lose a lot of tenders, they went from getting 12% of the 5G tenders to like 2%. Part of their tenders went to domestic companies and Nokia scored some 5G tenders. Same for a lot of other sectors and western companies on the background the Chinese market is by far their biggest market. I'm all for it that western companies lose their Asian market share means more internal consumption for Asian made products. https://www.asiafinancial.com/ericsson-vow-to-win-back-china-market-share-as-5g-row-rumbles-on https://www.asiafinancial.com/ericsson-vow-to-win-back-china...
  - voz_ 5y ago
    Sorry, I have no idea what point you are making. Are you responding to the correct comment?
betimsl 5y ago
Not against anyone, and I know -- given the state of company -- this is not the time to ask, but because of climate crisis, should Huawei be slapped a climate tax too? Imagine all those resources used to produce spying hardware that now will be decommissioned.
theincredulousk 5y ago
The way the last administration rolled this out was certainly with a political narrative, but my guess is it originated with people that weren't thinking at all about politics. The simple story is that core infrastructure is of strategic national importance, and an elevated risk that infrastructure is compromised can never be worth whatever the benefits are of using a particular supplier's equipment. There is no practical way to 100% ensure that every piece of software, and every chip, in every piece of equipment is clean. Chips are especially scary (the push to have domestic chip fab by the US and other countries is about more than just supply chain). This is true when it comes from what are considered trustworthy suppliers as well, but you're dealing with probabilities. I think that regardless of whether this move fits into a political narrative about China, or "economic warfare", the practical basis is that for some types of equipment, the risk is just too large and the ability to mitigate too limited, in general. Unfortunately this was figured out with Huawei/ZTE after the fact, but tbh I don't think the specific company matters at all, it just happened to be they were in this business at the time & based in the wrong country.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- martinald 5y ago
  I don't know exactly the US story, but the UK has forced operators to remove "5G" huawei equipment. This becomes pretty farcical when you realise they are still allowed to use it for 4G (and indeed most 5G configurations bands 4G+5G signals together), and they are used in nearly every single fibre to the cabinet deployment (and at least some of the newer FTTH). It's clearly political. If it was a real threat then they'd be forcing operators to throw at all Huawei equipment, OR banning future installs, but at getting them to trash just 5G equipment is a political stunt, IMO.
  - ixfo 5y ago
    Openreach in the UK are deploying 0% new Huawei for FTTP and have basically stopped using them for FTTC because of the 30% rule. EE still use Huawei for new 5G deployments - but only in the access leg and for no more than 30% of their new builds. They've already forced removal from core/security-critical roles, but that takes serious time to actually implement.
sdfasf 5y ago
I need an expert to explain something to me: If we enable E2E encryption on the end points, why do we care if Huawei makes it since the local gov't retains local monopoly of force? The reasons I can think of are: - meta-data - denial of infrastructure. This is a big reason and a good enough reason. Aside from reason number two, I really don't see the security threat. Not to minimize the threat of meta-data, but I think, on a national level, it too is solvable for the sovereign (by, for example, having phones make fake random calls to each other to poison the information) EDIT: For the record, my question is genuine - I really want to understand this - and not some backhanded way to defend Huawei
- Beached 5y ago
  encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term, but not long term. all major state actors vacuum up and retain encrypted communications and store them until the time it is possible to crack. the average Joe's vacation planning with his friends over txt won't matter too much. but a senators phone call, or a ceo phone call, or even an engineers txt, email and phone calls can lead to io theft, Intel leak, etc. once encryption is cracked a few years later.
  - sdfasf 5y ago
    "encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term" Very interesting. I knew that state actors syphon everything, but I assumed it was since they can afford and it's a Hail Mary if they stumble on a breakthrough or a side channel. Some further Qs: - What's near term? - What's in the far term? - I thought that encryption could be made arbitrarily more difficult to crack at little cost. Is this not the case? - Does this future assume quantum computing is feasible? Finally, if encryption is no longer believed to be safe in the long term, shouldn't we be moving towards making one-time pads practical? Given modern data storage densities, it's not that unpractical for many use cases (say embassy communication, etc)
    - nradov 5y ago
      In theory if large scale quantum computing becomes practical then it might become possible to decrypt traffic encrypted using certain public key algorithms. Basically by using Shor's algorithm to factor large numbers. But there's no guarantee that will ever work in practice, and even if it does there are alternative encryption algorithms which are resistant to quantum computing attacks. It's also not easy to identify and exfiltrate high bandwidth data streams even if you compromise a piece of network equipment. If Chinese intelligence services want information on a certain politician or business leader they're more likely to skip the decryption nonsense and just recruit one of the target's associates as a spy.
jeffrallen 5y ago
Swisscom installed a Huawei box on a leased line between two Cisco sites. I found that.... surprising.
- freeflight 5y ago
  Interesting how you find the single Huawei box surprising but not the two Cisco sites [0] in Switzerland? [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-accounts-software,37480.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-a...
cvzu 5y ago
Not sure I trust US more than HW. But why not.
egberts1 5y ago
oooh cheap fire sales coming up!
squarefoot 5y ago
> The U.S. is about to start destroying tons of Huawei and ZTE equipment. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? Tons of perfectly good, top notch quality and 100% reliable RF gear are going to be destroyed because they fear there is spyware contained in the digital chips? I totally understand the arguments, but it's like throwing away a car because one doesn't trust the brakes. Just strip out the logic and sell the rest! Pollution aside, this is an insult to those who struggle to buy RF parts because of the shortage prices.
firen777 5y ago
[flagged]
cheese_van 5y ago
Somewhere, an ex-Nortel production engineer is nodding with delayed satisfaction.
m0zg 5y ago
I'm surprised by this. I vividly remember that the mere suggestion of these common sense national security measures a couple of years ago would lead to others having a stroke. Ban Tik Tok next, too. It's ridiculous that we allow foreign intelligence to operate social networks in the US. And before anyone says "ackshually" in response, yes, I think it's ridiculous that other countries let FB, Google and YT operate within their borders largely unimpeded, rather than force them to create local subsidiares whose execs could be hauled off to jail for violation of local laws.
xmodem 5y ago
While I get the geopolitical reasons for this, I just want to say that it sucks. E-wasting kilotons of functioning hardware, in the middle of a global silicon shortage, is not a good state of affairs.
leptoniscool 5y ago
It's a waste of tax payer money tbh, those are perfectly good equipment. Huawei is making better equipment than Ericsson, Nokia, and Cisco since Huawei has out spent these companies in R&D. Also, these companies all source from a global supply chains centered in China.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Last I checked (2 years ago) no one else was actually offering 5G kit. Cisco's "5G" kit was just slightly improved 4G and at least 10 times slower. Has that changed?
ngcc_hk 5y ago
It is strategic competition and china and Russia (and USA to then) is actively active. And there could be war even. It is just have to wake up on both sides not to rely upon each other. China should not use USA thing as well … if they can choose.
ineedasername 5y ago
"it’ll likely take a four-person crew a week to overhaul each of his 67 towers" Am I being too cynical? This seems high. Searching around about how long it takes once work begins, it appears that upgrade time is roughly half of that. Which leads me to believe that network operators will be perfectly happy to take the money while padding their expenses significantly.

This is good policy. One of the few things I think Trump did good on.

The US is really against Huawei; this war has been happening since the rise of the 5G technology. They did various things against Huawei, like removing the Android OS and Google Playstore.

fomine3 5y ago
It's fine to remove Huawei from important network equipment in western world, but it shouldn't be banned from Android phone market in worldwide.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  And it wasn't.

jmacd 5y ago

I fail to understand why the press in western countries gives this story so much air time. It's a regular fixture in the Canadian, UK and NZ press as well. I think it speaks to the lobbying effort and quality of PR retained by Huawei. There are certain things that a country, or group of allies, absolutely should retain control over. Communications infrastructure is absolutely one of those things. There is a reason China and Russia both have their own GPS alternative. There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei. But equally there is no good reason to trust Huawei.

tablespoon 5y ago
> I think it speaks to the lobbying effort and quality of PR retained by Huawei. Speaking of which, Huawei ads have been all over the NYT app for the last week or so.
sithadmin 5y ago
>There is probably no good reason to distrust Huawei Backdoors? Being caught red handed doing espionage? Cozying up to bad actors like North Korea and Iran?
- blitzar 5y ago
  > Backdoors? Being caught red handed doing espionage? Cozying up to bad actors like North Korea and Iran? Are we talking about Huawei here or any number of US companies?
- sofixa 5y ago
  What backdoors? Didn't the UK audit telecoms and networking equipment and say that they have shoddy security in some places ( like having telnet) but aren't worse than the shoddy security in "good" vendors like Cisco and Juniper.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    No audit is guaranteed to find a backdoor if one is present. It simply isn't possible - any more than you could get an audit guaranteeing the Linux kernel is bug-free.
    - sofixa 5y ago
      But if nobody has found any backdoors, including with an audit by a security agency, how can OP use "backdoors" as an argument against Huawei?
      - cute_boi 5y ago
        In the realm of no experts, everybody is expert.

EarthIsHome 5y ago

https://archive.md/F5FUk https://archive.md/F5FUk > All over the country, hardware from Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. keeps American telecom networks humming. In the coming months, many of those networks are going to start ripping it all out. I'm curious how this is going to affect the end user. Are some users going to have slower speeds?

fabianhjr 5y ago
Probably will only affect cost, the US already has high costs for fiber and cellular internet. (Cellular is about 3 USD/GB in the US vs less than 2 USD/GB in most of Europe and Asia according to https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/ https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/)

eyear 5y ago

Huawei has been accused for many years; yet I have not seen any concrete evidence presented by the accusers.

ergocoder 5y ago
Good luck finding a concrete evidence in a geopolitical issue between 2 global super powers. Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3. It is suboptimal but probably the best that it can be. Remember the Malaysian airline that was shot down? I remember.
- kipchak 5y ago
  >Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3. Isn't this arguably what happened with the SuperMicro hack and the subsequent denials?
  - freeflight 5y ago
    Do you mean the story about tiny super spy chips, so advanced that not even the US could manufacture them, allegedly being planted on thousands of US server boards? Remind me: How many of these chips were actually found and presented as evidence? Not a single one, yet to this day this story remains alive and repeated...
- freeflight 5y ago
  > Even if the government finds one, they won't say it out loud. Nobody would hold them accountable. You cannot just incite WW3. Did Snowden incite WW3 when he blew the whistle and delivered literally troves of evidence? > It is suboptimal but probably the best that it can be. That's just the same old "You just have to trust the government/intelligence services, they can't reveal their evidence/sources without endangering them!". After decades of civilians getting droned and innocents getting tortured I think we should maybe have learned something from trusting such accusations from institutions who do not only have a history of lying, but literally a agenda to do so. Particularly when timing wise most of these accusations fit very neatly into a pivot from the ME to Asia while also serving as a bit of "whataboutism" for the recent nasty reveals coming out of the Five Eyes camps in regards to human rights abuses and mass surveillance.

nimbius 5y ago

This is less newsworthy when you find out the government basically gifted telco's 2bn USD to do this. https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-details-1-9-billion-program-to-rip-out-huawei-and-zte-gear-in-the-us/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-details-1-9-billion-progra...

deelowe 5y ago
I thought some form of reciprocity/incentivization was implied.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  Only because government loves to find reasons to bail out big business
  - hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
    This isn't a "bail out". Government is essentially paying telcos to replace all of this gear, after previously having no problem with the fact that they installed it in the first place.
    - hanniabu 5y ago
      If you make a poor business decision and the government pays to fix it then that's a bail out, where smaller businesses would need to eat those costs themselves.
OrvalWintermute 5y ago
The US government is required to do this. It is called the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution > .... nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. The US government decided to make a judgment call on the legality of Huawei; the US government in keeping with the Law, paid just compensation to the owners of the equipment. It is the right call to make.

liotier 5y ago

ANSSI, the French agency for information systems security, has severely tightened authorizations for vital infrastructure. Though Huawei is still kosher in many network functions, French telcos have had to remove a few thousand nodes they had already deployed, especially in network cores. All authorizations are temporary - between three and eight years. This is not just about security in a narrow definition, but in a large part about ensuring that mastery of strategic functions remains with European firms. Like armaments, telecommunication infrastructures are not a normal market.

wyager 5y ago
> Like armaments, telecommunication infrastructures are not a normal market. I don’t disagree, but how far are we going to take this? Under the strategic regime of 超限战, is any sector a “normal market”, or do all sectors take on strategic significance?

cinntaile 5y ago

Strange title. How else would they remove hardware if not physically?

hn8788 5y ago
Could be to emphasize that they didn't "remove them" by just turning them off and collecting a re-imbursement from the government. The article says the removed devices must be taken to approved destruction facilities, so the govt really doesn't want the devices popping up on ebay or in internal networks.
fomine3 5y ago
soft brick?

pessimizer 5y ago

This is just a way for the government to subsidize telco equipment upgrades, using popular-with-voters nationalism and anti-Chinese racism as a pretext.

adventured 5y ago
The US and China having a great power conflict - which will last for many decades, or longer - is not based on racism. The US conflicting with the USSR throughout the Cold War was also was not about racism. It would be exceptionally irrational for the US to utilize the telecom equipment of a quasi enemy nation that is all but guaranteed to be a future enemy. It doesn't matter whether anyone likes those terms or not, that's how the US Government is increasingly viewing China - and vice versa - and that's what is coming.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

toomuchtodo 5y ago

If anyone is in the know, looking for pointers on where to pick this gear up on the used market for use in underserved developing areas.

mtnGoat 5y ago
guess you didnt read the article, its all being destroyed.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I did, but lots of things that are supposed to be destroyed end up on secondary markets.
  - mtnGoat 5y ago
    probably not when part of the requirements to get the subsidy are destroying the old equipment.
    - slim 5y ago
      Maybe your definition of "destroyed" is maintaining this misunderstanding. Their definition of "destroyed" is some paper saying that the destruction is being handled by a specialized company. That company can "outsource the destruction overseas" without being liable.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      You’d be surprised.
      - jeffrallen 5y ago
        I'd be surprised if you'd be willing to risk the sanctions for buying equipment you knew was defrauding the US government. The feds play for keeps...
        deleted 5y ago

PrinceRichard 5y ago

It's never a good sign when the government mandates the destruction (or abandonment) of usable goods.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

libpcap 5y ago

About time!

Ajay-p 5y ago

If I could put on my conspiracy hat... Perhaps this is related to Canada's detention of he Huawei executive. Someone put their foot down and said Chinese hardware is spying on us, and perhaps they forced China to give up how. At it's core, the world absolutely cannot trust China. Because Huawei is a de facto company owned by the Chinese government, it stands to reason that the distrust must be extended to Huawei. The product may be good, but China has very little credibility anymore, and should absolutely not be trusted.

gonational 5y ago
[flagged]
- klarstrup 5y ago
  What is an ideologue?
  - gonational 5y ago
    Somebody who is dogmatically following an ideology; think of an ideologue as somebody who is running an abstract program in place of their normal ability to think about information using the principles they have naturally acquired through their life experiences. Having ideas that map 1:1 to those of an ideology does not intrinsically make you an ideologue. Forming those ideas, based on conformity to an ideology that you have subscribed to, does.
    - pvg 5y ago
      This matches 'red scare' quite nicely and might give you some food for further thought.
      - gonational 5y ago
        The definition of ideologue matches the red scare? Are you sure you meant to reply to that comment?

twobitshifter 5y ago

All my knowledge about this has come from Media articles Covering the dangers of using huawei tech, but I haven’t seen anything that describes Chinese attacks using huawei equipment. We do know the long history of China sponsored hacking and it’s not a leap to go so far as to think Huawei could be compelled to backdoor equipment. For that reason not using Huawei is safer for national security one way or the other. However, on Capitol Hill, I think the idea is more to harm China than protect. I remember that the Washington metro trains were almost blocked because they are built by a Chinese company. Someone in congress dreamed up a Tom Clancy plot where the Chinese could bring down Washington by hijacking their transit system.

gonational 5y ago
Just about every data center in the US has a decent percent of its servers running as nodes of botnets for entities inside of China, not to mention the hundreds of millions of "smart" devices. That leaves out of the equation TickTock and Reddit and every other above-board Chinese communist party partly owned tech in the US. Assuming that you know what your exact attack surface is is a pretty clear sign that you are very vulnerable to attack.
- jcun4128 5y ago
  That one time tiny chips in AWS servers Elemental/Supermicro/Apple 2018
  - freeflight 5y ago
    Too bad that nobody ever managed to find any of those tiny super spy chips, even three years later. But hey: The poop was thrown, some of it stuck, and now you are repeating it as established fact, when even the sources named in the Bloomberg piece found it quite lacking after publication [0] So the narrative successfully did it's FUD job, and here we are under a post about yet another Bloomberg headline that nobody even questions in the slightest. [0] https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/ https://9to5mac.com/2018/10/09/bloomberg/

awill 5y ago

as opposed to virtually removing?....

thedigitalone 5y ago

https://archive.md/F5FUk https://archive.md/F5FUk

adamrezich 5y ago

this is a good move. from the beginning, the Huawei 5G push was full of cause for suspicion. John C. Dvorak quit PC Magazine [0] after they took down his entirely reasonable (especially for Dvorak lol) 5G-skeptical column [1] and replaced it with a pro-5G column, accessed from the same URL as the deleted column. once covid hit, the narrative shifted further and anyone who was skeptical of Chinese 5G infrastructure in the US and elsewhere elicited responses of "lol you think 5G causes covid, ok Alex Jones lmao." the whole thing was shady from the start and the cries of "conthpirathy theorieth" were extremely odd given that the subject being discussed was the telecommunications infrastructure of the country being replaced/augmented by a new technology from a rival superpower. plus, I don't know about anyone else, but I personally haven't seen an actual use case for 5G to date. and then when you throw in the last administration's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's remarks at the 2020 National Governors Association with regards to Chinese influence on our States' leadership [2]... [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20180901090946/https://in.pcmag.com/opinion/124983/the-problem-with-5g https://web.archive.org/web/20180901090946/https://in.pcmag.... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.com/@dvorak/5g-got-me-fired-ce407e584c4a https://web.archive.org/web/20181007013846/https://medium.co... [2] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/08/mike-pompeo-governors-china-112539 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/08/mike-pompeo-governo...

AlexandrB 5y ago
Wow, I was not aware of this. I used to read Dvorak a lot when I was younger. It also appears that he did not quit but was, in fact, fired - according to [1]: > As many of you know, I was unceremoniously fired from PC Magazine on Sept. 20th, 2018 after over 30 years of service. I just figured it was the new people coming in and I was an unneeded throwback to the old regime. Edit: > but I personally haven't seen an actual use case for 5G to date Incidentally, the most "compelling" use cases I've seen for 5g are always-connected smart devices that don't rely on WiFi. E.g. a smart TV where you can't pihole its advertising or view-tracking "features".
- adamrezich 5y ago
  that's right, I misremembered and thought he quit when in fact he was fired.

voz_ 5y ago

What always disgusts me about news and dealings with the CCP is the double standard. They can play ball in western markets with impunity, enjoying our egalitarian legal systems and protections, while we cannot do so in theirs. I'd love to see an equivalent anti-ccp stance taken across every field.

AlexandrB 5y ago
This is true of every company headquartered in a country with an oppressive government. You can buy Emirates air line t-shirts all over the place, but the country is a monarchy with a poor human rights track record. For better or worse we've decided that we're ok with treating foreign companies basically equally to our own up until now.
dragonelite 5y ago
There is a reason Ericsson threaten to move from Sweden if they would block Huawei from having market access. Because it would mean Ericsson would lose a lot of tenders, they went from getting 12% of the 5G tenders to like 2%. Part of their tenders went to domestic companies and Nokia scored some 5G tenders. Same for a lot of other sectors and western companies on the background the Chinese market is by far their biggest market. I'm all for it that western companies lose their Asian market share means more internal consumption for Asian made products. https://www.asiafinancial.com/ericsson-vow-to-win-back-china-market-share-as-5g-row-rumbles-on https://www.asiafinancial.com/ericsson-vow-to-win-back-china...
- voz_ 5y ago
  Sorry, I have no idea what point you are making. Are you responding to the correct comment?

betimsl 5y ago

Not against anyone, and I know -- given the state of company -- this is not the time to ask, but because of climate crisis, should Huawei be slapped a climate tax too? Imagine all those resources used to produce spying hardware that now will be decommissioned.

theincredulousk 5y ago

The way the last administration rolled this out was certainly with a political narrative, but my guess is it originated with people that weren't thinking at all about politics. The simple story is that core infrastructure is of strategic national importance, and an elevated risk that infrastructure is compromised can never be worth whatever the benefits are of using a particular supplier's equipment. There is no practical way to 100% ensure that every piece of software, and every chip, in every piece of equipment is clean. Chips are especially scary (the push to have domestic chip fab by the US and other countries is about more than just supply chain). This is true when it comes from what are considered trustworthy suppliers as well, but you're dealing with probabilities. I think that regardless of whether this move fits into a political narrative about China, or "economic warfare", the practical basis is that for some types of equipment, the risk is just too large and the ability to mitigate too limited, in general. Unfortunately this was figured out with Huawei/ZTE after the fact, but tbh I don't think the specific company matters at all, it just happened to be they were in this business at the time & based in the wrong country.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
martinald 5y ago
I don't know exactly the US story, but the UK has forced operators to remove "5G" huawei equipment. This becomes pretty farcical when you realise they are still allowed to use it for 4G (and indeed most 5G configurations bands 4G+5G signals together), and they are used in nearly every single fibre to the cabinet deployment (and at least some of the newer FTTH). It's clearly political. If it was a real threat then they'd be forcing operators to throw at all Huawei equipment, OR banning future installs, but at getting them to trash just 5G equipment is a political stunt, IMO.
- ixfo 5y ago
  Openreach in the UK are deploying 0% new Huawei for FTTP and have basically stopped using them for FTTC because of the 30% rule. EE still use Huawei for new 5G deployments - but only in the access leg and for no more than 30% of their new builds. They've already forced removal from core/security-critical roles, but that takes serious time to actually implement.

sdfasf 5y ago

I need an expert to explain something to me: If we enable E2E encryption on the end points, why do we care if Huawei makes it since the local gov't retains local monopoly of force? The reasons I can think of are: - meta-data - denial of infrastructure. This is a big reason and a good enough reason. Aside from reason number two, I really don't see the security threat. Not to minimize the threat of meta-data, but I think, on a national level, it too is solvable for the sovereign (by, for example, having phones make fake random calls to each other to poison the information) EDIT: For the record, my question is genuine - I really want to understand this - and not some backhanded way to defend Huawei

Beached 5y ago
encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term, but not long term. all major state actors vacuum up and retain encrypted communications and store them until the time it is possible to crack. the average Joe's vacation planning with his friends over txt won't matter too much. but a senators phone call, or a ceo phone call, or even an engineers txt, email and phone calls can lead to io theft, Intel leak, etc. once encryption is cracked a few years later.
- sdfasf 5y ago
  "encryption is good at ensuring data confidentiality in the near term" Very interesting. I knew that state actors syphon everything, but I assumed it was since they can afford and it's a Hail Mary if they stumble on a breakthrough or a side channel. Some further Qs: - What's near term? - What's in the far term? - I thought that encryption could be made arbitrarily more difficult to crack at little cost. Is this not the case? - Does this future assume quantum computing is feasible? Finally, if encryption is no longer believed to be safe in the long term, shouldn't we be moving towards making one-time pads practical? Given modern data storage densities, it's not that unpractical for many use cases (say embassy communication, etc)
  - nradov 5y ago
    In theory if large scale quantum computing becomes practical then it might become possible to decrypt traffic encrypted using certain public key algorithms. Basically by using Shor's algorithm to factor large numbers. But there's no guarantee that will ever work in practice, and even if it does there are alternative encryption algorithms which are resistant to quantum computing attacks. It's also not easy to identify and exfiltrate high bandwidth data streams even if you compromise a piece of network equipment. If Chinese intelligence services want information on a certain politician or business leader they're more likely to skip the decryption nonsense and just recruit one of the target's associates as a spy.

jeffrallen 5y ago

Swisscom installed a Huawei box on a leased line between two Cisco sites. I found that.... surprising.

freeflight 5y ago
Interesting how you find the single Huawei box surprising but not the two Cisco sites [0] in Switzerland? [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-accounts-software,37480.html https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-a...

cvzu 5y ago

Not sure I trust US more than HW. But why not.

egberts1 5y ago

oooh cheap fire sales coming up!

squarefoot 5y ago

> The U.S. is about to start destroying tons of Huawei and ZTE equipment. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!? Tons of perfectly good, top notch quality and 100% reliable RF gear are going to be destroyed because they fear there is spyware contained in the digital chips? I totally understand the arguments, but it's like throwing away a car because one doesn't trust the brakes. Just strip out the logic and sell the rest! Pollution aside, this is an insult to those who struggle to buy RF parts because of the shortage prices.

firen777 5y ago

[flagged]

cheese_van 5y ago

Somewhere, an ex-Nortel production engineer is nodding with delayed satisfaction.

m0zg 5y ago

I'm surprised by this. I vividly remember that the mere suggestion of these common sense national security measures a couple of years ago would lead to others having a stroke. Ban Tik Tok next, too. It's ridiculous that we allow foreign intelligence to operate social networks in the US. And before anyone says "ackshually" in response, yes, I think it's ridiculous that other countries let FB, Google and YT operate within their borders largely unimpeded, rather than force them to create local subsidiares whose execs could be hauled off to jail for violation of local laws.

xmodem 5y ago

While I get the geopolitical reasons for this, I just want to say that it sucks. E-wasting kilotons of functioning hardware, in the middle of a global silicon shortage, is not a good state of affairs.

leptoniscool 5y ago

It's a waste of tax payer money tbh, those are perfectly good equipment. Huawei is making better equipment than Ericsson, Nokia, and Cisco since Huawei has out spent these companies in R&D. Also, these companies all source from a global supply chains centered in China.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Last I checked (2 years ago) no one else was actually offering 5G kit. Cisco's "5G" kit was just slightly improved 4G and at least 10 times slower. Has that changed?

ngcc_hk 5y ago

It is strategic competition and china and Russia (and USA to then) is actively active. And there could be war even. It is just have to wake up on both sides not to rely upon each other. China should not use USA thing as well … if they can choose.

ineedasername 5y ago

"it’ll likely take a four-person crew a week to overhaul each of his 67 towers" Am I being too cynical? This seems high. Searching around about how long it takes once work begins, it appears that upgrade time is roughly half of that. Which leads me to believe that network operators will be perfectly happy to take the money while padding their expenses significantly.