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Completely do not understand this play. We make money from selling consumer chips to China, possibly put backdoors in their laptops, and now we want to remove t

Completely do not understand this play. We make money from selling consumer chips to China, possibly put backdoors in their laptops, and now we want to remove that? Makes 0 sense from an economic AND national security standpoint considering these are laptop chips the US is banning. Huawei is already banned from selling, why would they kick the dead horse so to say. If anyone has any ideas, genuinely please let me know! I'm curious.

whamlastxmas 2y ago
Random baseless speculation: intel and Qualcomm refused to add back doors as demanded by US government, probably because the companies believed they couldn’t stop China from finding out that they did. US gov said fine, no more sales. You can sell again when you add back doors.
- karma_pharmer 2y ago
  This is actually highly credible and should not be downvoted. Ptychographic X-ray laminography has come a long way and can image even the latest chips at the transistor level: https://spectrum.ieee.org/xray-tech-lays-chip-secrets-bare https://spectrum.ieee.org/xray-tech-lays-chip-secrets-bare True, it requires a synchrotron (one of the few things that actually costs more than a chip fab), but China has those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Synchrotron_Radiation_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Synchrotron_Radiation... China might not be able to make bleeding-edge 2nm chips, but it has the equipment needed to expose any backdoors in them. Publicly, worldwide, with proof. That is an existential threat to any hardware manufacturer -- getting caught doing that is a bankruptcy-level event. Until recently they didn't have to be afraid of getting caught. Being able to image chips at the gate level or better is a critical lever in fixing the balance of power between hardware manufacturers and their customers. It's why Bunnie Huang's work on IRIS is so important: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39657936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39657936
  - whamlastxmas 2y ago
    My speculation was a lot more simple: China can blackmail or bribe internal employees to disclose the back door. Significantly less expensive and easier
    - karma_pharmer 2y ago
      The backdoors (more often, bugdoors) are known only to a very, very small number of people at each company. People with security clearances. Things like the Intel ME are what make this arrangement work. The fact that the ME exists is public knowledge; there is a huge team of engineers at Intel who are responsible for designing it. The flaw that lets you tickle it in just the right way can be added by and known to only one or two people. Just this year a spectacular example of one of these bugdoors was revealed in Apple's mobile chips, where an EL1 (kernel) attacker could tickle an undocumented L2 cache debugging mechanism to elevate to hypervisor/bootloader (EL2, EL3) level, and completely bypass Pointer Authentication: https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11859-operation_triangulation_what_you_get_when_attack_iphones_of_researchers https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11859-operation_triangulation_wh... This hardware bugdoor (CVE-2023-38606) was discovered only because it was used against security researchers who were good enough to capture a trace of exactly what it was doing. Otherwise we would never know. We got very lucky here; there's no telling how many more of these things go undiscovered.
- hulitu 2y ago
  >intel and Qualcomm refused to add back doors as demanded by US government, Intel ME ? Qualcomm blobs ?
sour-taste 2y ago
Maybe Huawei is used as a conduit for trade secret theft? Using the information they get from negotiations for Intel chips or whatever to funnel that stuff to Chinese companies?
pbalcer 2y ago
I'm gonna go with Occam's razor. There's no real goal here other than political pandering.
- wordofx 2y ago
  Political pandering? Or not giving tech to an arm of the CCP known to be accessing networks it helped build for mobile network?
  - cm2187 2y ago
    Tech? You mean a CPU you can buy in any supermarket?
  - pbalcer 2y ago
    These are consumer-grade mobile and laptop chips. That are going into products that won't get sold in the US anyway. Oh, and other Chinese companies, that do sale their products in the US, like Lenovo or Oppo, can get these same chips no problem. So all this is doing is harming Intel and Qualcomm, while incentivizing Huawei to invest even more in domestic chips.
  - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
    Huawei is a private company, and there's no known case of it spying on mobile networks.
- dudeinjapan 2y ago
  Political panda-ing
questhimay 2y ago
might have to do with the increasing blatant Chinese military supply to russia - China Providing 90% of Chips Used in Russia, Despite Sanctions https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-providing-90-of-chips-used-in-russia-despite-sanctions https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-providing-90-of-chips-us...
- hulitu 2y ago
  > Despite Sanctions What sanctions ? You do realize that US jurisdiction is in US and some vasal states.
  - zihotki 2y ago
    And they revoke the license in US and basal states, isn't it?
  - questhimay 2y ago
    Sanctions on Russia, it's in the article "Russia had been forced to repeatedly establish new supply chains for acquiring chips. As sanctions disrupted existing smuggling routes, it had set up new ones, likening these outcomes to a game of “whack-a-mole”, that was frustrating for both Western governments as well as “supply-chain managers at Russian missile and drone factories”. The biggest failure in enforcing the controls is not that Russia continues to have some success in smuggling — that’s not a surprise — but that China continues shamelessly to sell Russia so much via normal trade routes."
    - skeledrew 2y ago
      There is 0 reason for China to care about US sanctions. The US doesn't own China.
      - rPlayer6554 2y ago
        Well the US is making them care by punishing China with this move.
  - 2y ago

whamlastxmas 2y ago

Random baseless speculation: intel and Qualcomm refused to add back doors as demanded by US government, probably because the companies believed they couldn’t stop China from finding out that they did. US gov said fine, no more sales. You can sell again when you add back doors.

karma_pharmer 2y ago
This is actually highly credible and should not be downvoted. Ptychographic X-ray laminography has come a long way and can image even the latest chips at the transistor level: https://spectrum.ieee.org/xray-tech-lays-chip-secrets-bare https://spectrum.ieee.org/xray-tech-lays-chip-secrets-bare True, it requires a synchrotron (one of the few things that actually costs more than a chip fab), but China has those: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Synchrotron_Radiation_Facility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Synchrotron_Radiation... China might not be able to make bleeding-edge 2nm chips, but it has the equipment needed to expose any backdoors in them. Publicly, worldwide, with proof. That is an existential threat to any hardware manufacturer -- getting caught doing that is a bankruptcy-level event. Until recently they didn't have to be afraid of getting caught. Being able to image chips at the gate level or better is a critical lever in fixing the balance of power between hardware manufacturers and their customers. It's why Bunnie Huang's work on IRIS is so important: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39657936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39657936
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  My speculation was a lot more simple: China can blackmail or bribe internal employees to disclose the back door. Significantly less expensive and easier
  - karma_pharmer 2y ago
    The backdoors (more often, bugdoors) are known only to a very, very small number of people at each company. People with security clearances. Things like the Intel ME are what make this arrangement work. The fact that the ME exists is public knowledge; there is a huge team of engineers at Intel who are responsible for designing it. The flaw that lets you tickle it in just the right way can be added by and known to only one or two people. Just this year a spectacular example of one of these bugdoors was revealed in Apple's mobile chips, where an EL1 (kernel) attacker could tickle an undocumented L2 cache debugging mechanism to elevate to hypervisor/bootloader (EL2, EL3) level, and completely bypass Pointer Authentication: https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11859-operation_triangulation_what_you_get_when_attack_iphones_of_researchers https://media.ccc.de/v/37c3-11859-operation_triangulation_wh... This hardware bugdoor (CVE-2023-38606) was discovered only because it was used against security researchers who were good enough to capture a trace of exactly what it was doing. Otherwise we would never know. We got very lucky here; there's no telling how many more of these things go undiscovered.
hulitu 2y ago
>intel and Qualcomm refused to add back doors as demanded by US government, Intel ME ? Qualcomm blobs ?

sour-taste 2y ago

Maybe Huawei is used as a conduit for trade secret theft? Using the information they get from negotiations for Intel chips or whatever to funnel that stuff to Chinese companies?

pbalcer 2y ago

I'm gonna go with Occam's razor. There's no real goal here other than political pandering.

wordofx 2y ago
Political pandering? Or not giving tech to an arm of the CCP known to be accessing networks it helped build for mobile network?
- cm2187 2y ago
  Tech? You mean a CPU you can buy in any supermarket?
- pbalcer 2y ago
  These are consumer-grade mobile and laptop chips. That are going into products that won't get sold in the US anyway. Oh, and other Chinese companies, that do sale their products in the US, like Lenovo or Oppo, can get these same chips no problem. So all this is doing is harming Intel and Qualcomm, while incentivizing Huawei to invest even more in domestic chips.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  Huawei is a private company, and there's no known case of it spying on mobile networks.
dudeinjapan 2y ago
Political panda-ing

questhimay 2y ago

might have to do with the increasing blatant Chinese military supply to russia - China Providing 90% of Chips Used in Russia, Despite Sanctions https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-providing-90-of-chips-used-in-russia-despite-sanctions https://www.asiafinancial.com/china-providing-90-of-chips-us...

hulitu 2y ago
> Despite Sanctions What sanctions ? You do realize that US jurisdiction is in US and some vasal states.
- zihotki 2y ago
  And they revoke the license in US and basal states, isn't it?
- questhimay 2y ago
  Sanctions on Russia, it's in the article "Russia had been forced to repeatedly establish new supply chains for acquiring chips. As sanctions disrupted existing smuggling routes, it had set up new ones, likening these outcomes to a game of “whack-a-mole”, that was frustrating for both Western governments as well as “supply-chain managers at Russian missile and drone factories”. The biggest failure in enforcing the controls is not that Russia continues to have some success in smuggling — that’s not a surprise — but that China continues shamelessly to sell Russia so much via normal trade routes."
  - skeledrew 2y ago
    There is 0 reason for China to care about US sanctions. The US doesn't own China.
    - rPlayer6554 2y ago
      Well the US is making them care by punishing China with this move.
- 2y ago