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About LinkBacksYes, do not underestimate the Chinese Communist Party.Originally Posted by Percy1983
Yes, do not underestimate the Chinese Communist Party.
It seems a bit hypocritical of our government to say that the Chinese government could order Huawei to interfere with our equipment and there's nothing they could do about it when those are the exact same powers our own government has got.
Authoritarian regimes have been copying the so called west democracies powers on state surveillance for decades, pretty much since 9/11, as they know by copying us it's harder for us to be critical of them.
Yep, that's the issue. Not only can the US and UK spy on their own people, they do. (plus US spy on everyone, UK to an extent too)
Issue is they don't want other, potentially threatening states to do the same. Whilst I find it hypocritical, I can also understand.
The entire world is much more dependent on China than it realised, China knows this and have a plan for world dominance.
Major countries know of this and have done for some time. It's very difficult, but serious effort should be made in accelerating reduction of this dependence.
I guess things are already too far gone now, China is self sufficient, so can get by.
If the west tries to play hard ball China will just get tough, as they have already. Things like natural resources and minerals can be sourced elsewhere, but not in the quantities and cost they are from China.
Ultimately we'll be forced to accept that cheap mass produced products via cheap Chinese labour is a thing of the past. There are other poor countries the west could exploit, but not with "everything on one place", as China has.
All of this, plus there's Russia stirring the pot. Russia has no place of genuine power. They require instability and chaos within the established powers of the world, to allow them to try and take some power themselves.
Other than the usual posts that never change, above, repeating the same old same old, I'm just wondering if I should sell my Mate 20 x before the price falls off of a cliff.
Also remember that a lot of this gets extensively used for industrial espionage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELO...rial_espionage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELO...%E2%80%932001)
So there is of course concern in the US that they no longer be able to use this for economic advantages.
However, as private citizen who would you rather have spy on you? Your local government with whom you have to interact, or one so remote you most likely will never come in contact with them?
Politically spy agencies may have dirt on everyone, buy they get to decide what to leak and when - and these agencies tend to be politically very conservatives.
As for Huawei and 5G: the main reason they are so far ahead in 5G is because China poured billions into R&D for this. So they mostly played by the rules here, and this is their reward?
I imagine they won't forget this and China still remembers the Opium Wars unlike Bengal who mostly seem to have forgotten that they were starved to grow those drugs
Just out of interest, whats the point in this ban?
Surely anything we get, even if its home grown these days, will have some sort of Chinese input?
They poured billions into it but did it in a highly anticompetitive way. In terms of their patent production they produced less than 80 high quality patents last year which weren't bought from mostly US based companies, the number that they bought from US based companies was about 15 time that if I remember correctly. In contrast, Qualcomm produced half the total number of patents that Huawei did but ~440 were high quality and done in-house. Other Western companies like Intel were in similar situations to Qualcomm.
Huawei's technology is good, but it's really not from their own R&D and talent, it's basically all from buying technologies from small Western companies. That's why the US's original Huawei ban targeted companies who worked with Huawei, because that hits them the hardest.
I'm guessing i can't choose option three, nobody.
Sure there's an argument to be made that we're the good guys so it's OK to spy on our own citizens but bad actions don't change based on who's doing it or their motivations. There's also the chance that we won't always be the good guys as it's not beyond the realms of possibility for an extreme left or right wing government to be elected or for them to become more extreme once elected.
Most progress China has made has been, has been made this way, atleast they bought some companies and ip.They poured billions into it but did it in a highly anticompetitive way. In terms of their patent production they produced less than 80 high quality patents last year which weren't bought from mostly US based companies, the number that they bought from US based companies was about 15 time that if I remember correctly. In contrast, Qualcomm produced half the total number of patents that Huawei did but ~440 were high quality and done in-house. Other Western companies like Intel were in similar situations to Qualcomm.
Huawei's technology is good, but it's really not from their own R&D and talent, it's basically all from buying technologies from small Western companies. That's why the US's original Huawei ban targeted companies who worked with Huawei, because that hits them the hardest.
Usually they used to mandate a western corporation worked with a local Chinese corporation, which was created for this purpose.
Once they've an understanding of the ip and underlying technology, they lock the western corporation out and offer the services under the Chinese corporation. I guess the small ip purchases are to have some cover for when they try to sell to western side of the world.
I used to sympathise with then greatly (I still do with the people of China and Hong Kong, even other Asian countries under pressure from them). Whilst western countries are quick to stick their nose in and are very hypocritical, what China is doing, despite their own views is wrong and in violation of previous agreements.
How is that any different from US companies buying up other companies though? Apple does it all the time.IBM does it all the time. Intel does it all the time.Nvidia does it. You seemingly also forgot Intel and Apple tried to copy Qualcomm 5G technology too,and got caught doing it. So that means Intel didn't bother investing enough money into 5G too,so decided to copy its competitor.
Apple tried to bankrupt Imagination Technlogies on purpose,so they could hire away their engineers and probably try and buy up their patents cheaply. The Chinese bought them instead. If you want to blame anyone for China buying our companies - look at own greedy companies making the relevant conditions. They have learnt the ways of acquiring stuff from our lot. This is what even AMD did - the K6 and Athlon,was derived from Nextgen and the remnants of DEC.
I think you falling into the same trope,that we thought about Japan decades ago,ie,all they can do is copy,etc so if we restrict them it will all work out. It only lead to complacency and tons of hubris. Except,if all they are doing is using our technology there would be zero reasons to worry about using tech(we developed),or to consider them any threat. Do you think it's weird,there are so many China students in our universities? For the last few decades they have been investing more and more into science and engineering education.
We need to wake up and put more priority in funding science and engineering. Over the next few decades the rest of the world is starting to catch up.
Yet,who seems to be ahead of actually implementing 5G technology....it isn't Qualcomm. Its Huawei and Samsung.....two asian companies,followed by Nokia and Ericsson two European companies. If it were a simple case of just buying some small US companies up,why didn't Qualcomm and Intel do this?? Seems an epic missed chance if you ask me and they are both very wealthy companies.
This is all just deja vue. This same scenario happened with another big asian tech company and rising star.....Toshiba. They were targetted in the 1980s in the same way as part of the US-Japan trade war. However,it didn't really stop Japan being a leader in many industries to this day.
Asia(Japan,South Korea and China) and Europe(Sweden and Finland) are ahead of the US in 5G in essential patents,which wasn't so much the case with 4G.
So are you telling me Samsung,LG,Ericsson,Nokia,etc all just bought up US companies to be ahead?? If so many countries are ahead of the US in 5G,then it tells me US companies de-prioritised 5G R and D.
The fact is the US didn't invest enough into 5G,and for the percentage of essential 5G patents,the US has less than even Asia or Europe. They basically got complacent.
This is what happens when hubris comes along,and companies care more about stock prices,then actually bothering to spend more money. Apple,Intel,Qualcomm all have far more financial means than Huawei,but spend less R and D money than Huawei let alone Samsung.
TSMC is ahead of Intel in fab technology,IBM gave up,GF is owned by Abu Dhabi,and the key EUV technology is Dutch. It's more that the rest of the world is taking these things seriously and actually investing money with government backing. Samsung and TSMC have huge backing from their governments. The same goes with Japanese companies too.
It's utterly criminal US tech firms have allowed their short termism,to push them behind smaller countries in key technologies.
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 15-07-2020 at 02:12 PM.
Pleiades (17-07-2020)
This.
All of this and the rest of your comment.
People are focusing so much on the Chinese government they are forgetting that just like any American/UK company, their own respective governments can invest in private business. This doesn't mean that they all of a sudden have an infiltrative control over the products they manufacturer, if at all or ever.
I'm surprised Cisco still exists as a "trusted" company because they have had categorised flaws put in upon request of the US Government and have more critical vulnerabilities flopping around than any other networking organisation on the planet.
Additionally, anything (edit: clarify, as far as I have read and researched) that has been brought out about Huawei has been fundamentally disproven and if I remember correctly, GCHQ were literally given the source code and HDL of the Huawei equipment and they turned around and said it wasn't a problem.
Nothing says to me more that this is just American posturing to protect American businesses because they are being crapped on by Huawei in the performance, outlook and capabilities of their 5G equipment. What better way to ensure sales for your industry? Block everyone else and America has strong armed everyone into thinking China is a big bad nasty guy through an exceptional propaganda campaign.
Every time a Chinese based company is brought up, it's 0-100 how quickly you can see peoples ingrained racism suddenly bleed out to the surface. It's from Chinese people, it must be malicious!
Their Government sucks and they do horrible things (no more than Saudi Arabia or certain others...) but should their countries businesses be dragged over the coals? No, they shouldn't.
Anyone remember the obviously private/state funded hit piece against Supermicro that heavily leveraged anti-chinese racist sentiment and their only proof was literally "it's from China, it must be malicious".
I trust Huawei a hell of a lot more than Cisco right now but I would have neither in place of Juniper or Sophos.
Pleiades (17-07-2020)
There has to be a geopolitical element to it, by virtue of us not existing in isolation. There is also a parallel with prosecutors offering "deals" for those ratting out bigger fish. It's great getting the bigger fish (if you do) but it does mean some pretty nasty criminals getting away with nasty sh .... stuff, either unduly lightly or scot-free.
Is it worth it? Do the "good guys" sully themselves by doing deals like that?
In an ideal world, there are a lot of regimes I wouldn't chose to aid in any way. But the geopolitical argument is that while they're nasty, they're not as nasty as <insert bbogey-man state du jour>. For instance, arms to Saudi? No ... but they do counter-balance Iran.
It comes down to the same 'deaal with the devil' those prosecutors do, and the same moral ball-juggling.
In that perfect world, we not only wouldn't sell arms to Saudi, even though the direct result of us not doing so would be that someone even less scrupulous than us would immediately step into the vacuum. Either way, Saudi would get their arms. But in that perfect world, we wouldn't sell arms to anybody, mainly because we wouldn't need and therefore be making arms ourselves. And if we and everybody else spent our time and treasure developing medicines not warplanes, we could all live in peace and harmony, solve poverty and get a cure for cancer, while we all "hold hands and sing Kumbaya".
Sadly, the evidence of history suggests there are enough nasty people that doing so, that pacifistic tendencies, are a good way to get your butt kicked by someone more inclined to the ''might is right' view of things than peace to mankind. Personally, I'm not inclined to be particularly trusting of the likes of Putin's Russia, the CCP or ISIS (by whatever the current name is for that odious movement.
So a degree of geo-politicising is inevitable, as it was when deciding too oppose rather than join Hitler's Nazis, even if it meant working with Stalin, because the alternative is .....
And that leads to the proxy wars, hot and cold, of the last few decades and, it seems, of current times.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Well said sir, I'll also input my personal, first hand observation from having been actually involved in some of the 5G Standards work & meetings. Huawei invested heavily in this forum both in terms of man power, resources and working collaboratively with the other members and their success in the 5G space reflects this.
Now some countries seem to be hostile & resentful of this success, well you reap what you sow.
This is my main problem - "human rights" is increasingly used as a geopolitical weapon especially against small non-superpower nations. So in this modern information age,when we excuse make for horrible regimes,then shout at so many countries(who are even democractic and have better records),using "human rights" it's becoming a joke worldwide. The problem is increasingly the rest of the world,is seeing it for this,and you can see how various countries(dozens) are on purpose voting against our own resolutions. Africa and Asia(outside China) is basically criticising the use of the human rights law courts,since they feel they are being disportionately targetted whilst ALL of the superpowers get away scots free. Then those same international courts try to investigate ANY superpower they get threatened.
Instead of just being honest about our intentions,we just wrap it up in buzz words. The problem is when there are real human rights abuses to be investigated,so many countries just don't bother as it's like crying wolf all the time. So China and Russia basically use it as cover.
We made judgements of countries with their own problems in Africa,Asia and South Amercia,to the extent we allow groups,who even used suicide bombs to actively fund raise in our countries,and then castigated the governments at the same time. The issue is then China,and Russia step into the void,or these very rebel groups,exchange cliff notes with other groups which are against us,then it leads to problems for our own countries.
Plus so many of "interventions" were against "perceived threats" which in hindsight we realised were not real.An example is Iran,did we really need to kick out a democratically elected PM,who only really wanted more of their oil wealth to be for his own people? They not only ended up with the Shah of Iran,but the current Ayatollahs for 67 years. Now China has stepped into the void and is signing agreements with them. So who created that problem then?? Saudi Arabia due to its financial clout is actually going to smaller and poorer countries,and using their finances to spread ultra conservative religious thinking.
Look in South America,with all the pushing out of democractic governments in favour of dictatorships such as Pinochet? Was that really needed either? All because they "might" go a bit left,but looking at Chile's own history after he stepped down,they swung between both sides,so all of it was not required in the end. Basically in many of these cases the general public couldn't be "trusted" with democracy apparently. How is that strengthening democracy and a free world?
Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 15-07-2020 at 03:33 PM.
China has behaved as a hostile state with government sanctioned (and enabled) espionage and DOS attacks on our allies. This is well documented.
The CCP works by giving people it trusts permission to run companies. They must do as asked or they disappear, ala every other authoritarian, in power for life, dictatorship.
The CCP is engaging in concentration camp style "re-education" and almost certainly harvesting organs from oppressed minorities for use in the preferred race. Anyone who looks at pictures from the end of WW2, or reads the Gulag Archipelago and says "never again" is lying to themselves. It is happening now. On a huge scale. We just close our eyes to it because we like cheap trainers.
The UK government is definitely sitting as the man in the middle (MITM) of internet communications. Analysis of the traffic can tell you that there's a MITM sifting data. They have done this since the installation of the first undersea cables. They also had a huge network of radio towers around the Empire to sniff radio traffic.
The UK government spies on US citizens for the US (to bypass constitutional rights) and the US does the same.
The UK government has a lot of powers but there tends to be checks and balances as well as media outrage for abuse (tends).
Neither the US or UK government are actively imprisoning on a large scale and attempting to re-educate citizens because of their race or religion. Whilst they spy on people, they are morally not equivilant to the Chinese government.
Analysis of the source code by GCHQ tells us nothing. How do you think those firmware updates are going to be put onto the hardware? Huawei equipment and likely via a Huawei bootloader. In the field. So, you run an MD5 on the file before uploading it to verify it's the same software as checked and validated by GCHQ. They you use your Huawei equipment (I wonder how well secured that is on site) to upload it. If I can patch a back door or trojan into a file as it passes through from someone else's computer to another by being the MITM (in this case on the kit used to interface with the cell kit, the bootloader in the cell kit or some microcode which can't be verified after installation) then the Chinese government certainly can.
If the Chinese government did activate a backdoor, they become the MITM for all our traffic on that infrastructure. That's password sniffing, DNS spoofing, throwing trojans into downloaded files and compromising every company using that infrastructure. The potential severity of a MITM attack such as this can not be understated. And you'd not detect it by ARP spoofing or anything as the traffic is all going where it should be going, it's just the kit that is compromised.
Given the hostile actions by the Chinese government, their previous history of hacking for industrial espionage and so on, do you really think it is sensible to put their kit in our communications infrastructure? Do you really think they would pass up the opportunity?
I'd be going "we'll gain their trust, then we'll compromise the maintenance kit later on, letting that upload a backdoor into the cell towers, etc". Because I'm an evil person.
Yes, the US has backdoors in software and hardware but, the difference is that if we catch the US screwing us, they do actually have value in their relationship with us. They have vast amounts of infrastructure on our land and we alse share huge amounts of intel. They have something to lose. The Chinese however could just shrug and say "meh, you've already paid us for the kit, you sort out your malware issue". They might lose a few business deals but they have us by the balls commercially.
Now, I'll sit back and wait for someone to tell me how wrong I am. My spelling is quite bad also.
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