7 ms·

Why do we trust to buy every computer then?

• lenerdenator 3y ago
  There's at least some incentive for China to not place snooping gear in products made in their country by other nations' companies. Let's say the factories that make MacBooks get infiltrated by Chinese intelligence and they somehow managed to put some sort of technology in the product that allowed for them to compromise it. Sooner or later US intelligence is going to find out, at which point someone in the US government is going to have a very stern talk with Tim Cook about terminating any and all business with their Chinese suppliers now. This causes ripple effects as other countries drop Chinese suppliers, causing economic problems for the country. The CCP, for all of its faults, knows that it can't continue to piss on the basic rights of Chinese citizens if the economy goes south there. It's a careful balancing act of bread, circuses, and brutally repressive totalitarian single-party politics. If you start buying Huawei infrastructure en masse, you lose that leverage over the Chinese to keep their snooping gear out of the stuff you buy from them. Again, when the mainland Chinese developed any real computer-based telecommunications in their country between 2000 and 2010, the first thing they decided to do with it was start tearing into other countries' networks and infrastructure. They did this before even creating recognizable Chinese brand names for consumer devices. They used their chance at a first impression to brand themselves as state-backed black hats, and they're going to suffer from that until there's major reforms in the Chinese government.