Rather short article, loaded with ambiguity and very short on useful information. In hopes of saving you a click, here's my own summary: Basically, China's gov

Rather short article, loaded with ambiguity and very short on useful information. In hopes of saving you a click, here's my own summary: Basically, China's government has ordered government agencies AND "state-backed" (which I think means, "government owns some portion of shares") corporations to dump any technology - hardware and software - not domestically-produced. Bloomberg cites anonymous sources only, received no reply when contacting officials. Order is likely to exempt stuff they can't replace with their own equivalents realistically for the foreseeable future, like CPUs from Intel or AMD (example cited in article). Source claims Linux to replace Windows for most use cases. Multiple Chinese companies saw shares up in Hong Kong and Mainland exchanges on the news. --- Discussion: If China intends to have folks drop Windows for Linux, does that signal an official and total shift in future policy for TIA efforts? (TIA = total informational awareness; their domestic spying, dissent monitoring, and information control campaigns.) Since Linux source code can be audited by the entire world at will, does that policy shift signal that they intend to target hardware-based backdoors and related vulnerabilities/exploitation almost exclusively in the future? Seems that's the trend anyway, but does this signal an official shift in future policy? And if so, what are the larger implications for software security on Linux in the future, if any? Will a reduction in vulnerability research for Linux kernel and adjacent projects inadvertently allow more exploitable bugs to worm their way in over time? If it's not actively targeted, how are we going to detect new, emerging vulnerabilities? (Other efforts and lack of existing disclosure - aka "private exploits" - withstanding, of course.) If indeed an official shift in policy is happening, will the re-allocation of efforts toward hardware backdoors functionally increase the risk borne by citizens of western democracies (and their governments) when using PC/server hardware components manufactured in China? (E.g. if you buy some RAM for a new rig, and that RAM was manufactured in China, will you have more risk of that RAM being stuffed with backdoors in the firmware than you already do? Swap in any basic component for "RAM" here, you get the idea.) Admittedly some of these questions might be a little bit tinfoil hat territory, or reading too much into things, and their reasons for doing this are obvious and well-founded. I think we in the US should bar all Chinese-made components for the same reasons. And as governments start doing that, I worry about the long-term implications of the lack of cooperation between people/researchers/engineers worldwide, and what narrow-minded, myopic outcomes might result over the next ~25-50 years. Will we wind up so isolated in our own little silos, so militant in believing "our tribe is the best tribe", that cooperation/interop between the two cultures and technologies will become nearly impossible?