UK and US governments warn against using ZTE hardware

[Smudger]

The US warning seems to be about sanctions due to ZTE selling to NK, but the UK one seems to be around security.

Only the yanks and our own people are allowed to spy on us.

[peterb]

Only the yanks and our own people are allowed to spy on us.

There are three issues with National security in general:

The first is at the political level - how the UK might react to certain situations, both international and at a national level (for example civil defence precautions). Economic forecasts be of interest to foreign governments.

The second is at the military level, states of readiness, orders of battle, logistics levels, military capability (and linking to the above, political will)

The third is industrial espionage, research projects, industrial processes and so on.

All those areas are of interest to hostile intelligence services and need to be protected.

[Moonister]

.....Behind the scenes you might find its Cisco, Apple, IBM and many other American companies are pushing for such a legislation and why? because Chinese companies are producing affordable but competitive products and are becoming a threat to their market share.

Finally someone without wool over his eyes. I bet this is exactly what is happening. Since when Yanks and Brit governments cares about our privacy?! They are the biggest violators of privacy (just watch Citizen Four)

[lumireleon]

the BIGGEST threat is the USA government to their own people. CORRUPTION: ~2.4 Trillion Dollars spent on the Iraq-Afgan war then in 2018 they say its Chinese companies which are a threat! People are dying of poverty in this first world country. Current state of affairs caused by US/UK + other NATO governments is Syria and Libya (Dig deep you will find top people in these governments are benefiting financially from this war).

[jimbouk]

I'm guessing there will be a practical solution to this if everyone was willing to sit round a table and discuss it. For example having UK cleared companies reviewing and auditing the hardware and software going on the chips, and the build and load of the software happening in the UK. ZTE still have the IP, UK gets some jobs and a little factory, and we don't end up in a situation where we can't develop critical projects due to a lack of hardware.

[3dcandy]

the BIGGEST threat is the USA government to their own people. CORRUPTION: ~2.4 Trillion Dollars spent on the Iraq-Afgan war then in 2018 they say its Chinese companies which are a threat! People are dying of poverty in this first world country. Current state of affairs caused by US/UK + other NATO governments is Syria and Libya (Dig deep you will find top people in these governments are benefiting financially from this war).

A war is the best thing for an economy. Might take a while but always helps in the end. Gets rid of spare people too so labour costs go down. Gets rid of innocent people so you can effectively reset. Win win win (for the govts that is)

[peterb]

I'm guessing there will be a practical solution to this if everyone was willing to sit round a table and discuss it. For example having UK cleared companies reviewing and auditing the hardware and software going on the chips, and the build and load of the software happening in the UK. ZTE still have the IP, UK gets some jobs and a little factory, and we don't end up in a situation where we can't develop critical projects due to a lack of hardware.

There are a lot of people reviewing the software and hardware - which is probably why the warning has been issued. But I know that doesn't sit well with conspiracy theorists.

[MercutioUK]

There's going to be a decent chunk of this about "they won't have the US friendly back doors in any more!" too.
We're all quite aware of the amount of snooping the US (and UK) like to do, these will obviously not be as... "friendly to their needs".

This and market share will be a thing.

All that said, China and Russia are both stepping up quite considerably in "online warfare" capabilities. There's a pretty good chance they'll have learnt plenty about where to hide back doors etc from reverse engineering the stuff made out there for US companies. I'd think some of the fear-mongering is knowing EXACTLY what "holes" foreign powers will now be able to exploit.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Yet we are fine with Chinese firms investing in more critical things like our energy infrastructure,ie, nuclear power plants. It also shows a lack of basic understanding by people of how things are produced. All the stuff we palmed off to China,etc is made by the same factories that the Chinese design companies used.

So at any point in the last few decades it would have been easy for China,etc to compromise stuff before it left the country.

Yet when Chinese DESIGN companies use the SAME factories in the SAME factory cities it's all panic stations - the yellow peril conspiracy is out to get us. Sorry if they wanted to get us they already probably have.

The fact is if you care about security you need to source things locally.

Then ofc ignore the bigger realworld threat of PRIVATE companies data mining huge amounts of info about people and selling it to anyone around the world.

The Onion summed it up perfectly.

[peterb]

Yet we are fine with Chinese firms investing in a more critical things like our energy infrastructure,ie, nuclear power plants. .

Investing in means putting up some capital and then gaining a return on that investment. It doesn't mean operating, or necessarily using components or control equipment built in China - and even if it did, the project is subject of oversight by the nuclear inspectorate and the ONR.

Hinckley point is being built by EDF, a French company with Chinese investment.

Whether that is the best way of building the next generation of nuclear power plant is a different argument, but security is not necessarily a concern in this instance. It may be in other instances, but there is a large organisation involved in the security and protection of the Critical National Infrastructure - which goes far beyond the National Grid and power generation.

[Wh00pS]

I suspect the security threat is real.

There was a case in 2008 where counterfeit Cisco routers were sold to the US government which were said to have security flaws, either leaking data or providing a back door entry to the systems.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/cisco-...o-us-military/

No back doors were found in that equipment, what they said was that the Chinese had the technology to do so.
Also at the end of the day, none of that had anything to do with ZTE or Huawei which is the other company the US Gov is going after. It all boils down to protectionism, firms like Huawei have now surpassed the likes of Cisco tech wise and are putting out products that are superior at half the price.Cisco cannot compete and what we are seeing is lobbying dollars at work.the UK as uasual are just being the US's lapdog as usual with thier security warning.
Also why didn't the UK Gov put out a warning about Huawei like the US did?.
It's because a very large chunk of the UK internet structure is already running on Huawei built equipment and has been for the last 5 years or so.
Trump wants a trade war with China and he's pushing every button he can think of to get it.

[Yura Ethel]

The same was said about Japanese made stuff,Taiwanese made stuff and South Korean made stuff decades ago. Plenty of Chinese made stuff,especially made for the Asian markets is fine,since people earn less and they can't afford to dispose of stuff like we do here every 5 seconds,to get the latest tech toy.

Its like with some of the Chinese power tools in Asia,which were not as sophisticated/refined as a Bosch,but could take a lot of punishment in the hot and humid conditions. In fact I remember talking to someone a while back,and they said often companies over here specify the quality of Chinese products made for import here,and its not too uncommon for them to be of worse quality since it drops costs for them and increases margins.

After all look at Dyson,he fired all his workers here and moved production to Malaysia to cut on labour costs,and at the same time reliability went down too(apparently).

Look at how many products have inherent design issues like batteries exploding,etc and many of these are not down to Chinese production or design,but its generally down to cost cutting and poor QA/QC,etc during the design process.

Examples included bendy iPhones,the iPhone you needed to touch in a particular way,exploding Samsungs,overheating laptops due to lack of cooling,GPUs coming off their PCBs,airbag issues with many cars due to faulty mechanisms,etc. None of these are budget products from cheap companies either.

Its all about dropping costs,including R and D costs,to maximise margins,but like the Japanese,Taiwanese and South Korean firms before them,Chinese firms will operate at lower margins. The same accusations of Japanese,Taiwanese and South Korean products being cheap copied rubbish was also made,even their cars. Yet,look at how these companies managed to catch the market.

Basically its down to the company doing the work - if they want to make a quality product its fine,if they don't it won't be. It doesn't matter where it is made,otherwise why did companies like Rover suffer,but Japanese cars made here were perfectly fine??

Also considering China has plenty of intelligent people,with a history going back 1000s of years,and great technological leaps made even back then,to literally say they are incapable of building anything decent is daft.

Why did the Allies take all that German tech like V2 rockets and take it to bits?? We wanted to know how it worked,ie,we reverse engineered what we could to improve the stuff we were making and then we hired loads of scientists,and quietly made sure none of them ever got into legal issues.

Or should we start saying that all those German scientists employed in the US,UK and USSR after WW2 were responsible for all the big jumps and we were copying German innovations too?? Wernher von Braun was the head of the V2 programme and was responsible for the Saturn V.

Things like delta wings,flying wings,swept wings to reduce drag,forward swept wings,production axial flow jet engines(basically all modern jet engines and turbofans tend to be axial flow),etc were all implemented by German scientists first.

The father behind modern stealth was a Soviet researcher and yet the US implemented his findings to a much bigger degree than Russia ever did. So was the US copying Soviet research??

Basically if you look at scientific research and engineering as whole,all those ideas are not done in isolation in one country or by one people,its always been a worldwide thing. Even the concept of being able to reverse engineer something is indicative of being clever enough and having enough of an engineering and scientific base to do so,and ALL largish countries have done it to some degree in the last 200 years.

If countries are that paranoid of other countries copying their stuff,then they only have their selves to blame - they should have kept production locally then and dropped their margins? Instead they want to charge high prices and pay their workers the least amount they can get away with, to increase margins,firing local workers whenever they can(like Dyson),whilst enriching the board of directors and owners who pat themselves on the back for a job well done,etc. Its like trying to catch the horse after its bolted.

interesting。。