
U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei - Despegar
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/technology/huawei-trump-ban-technology.html
======
iliketosleep
> Some officials feel that the sales violate the spirit of the law and
> undermine government efforts to pressure Huawei, while others are more
> supportive because it lightens the blow of the ban for American
> corporations.

It clearly does violate the spirit of the law and undermines government
efforts, potential jeopardizing US national security. However, any
corporations that legally circumvent this ban will have a competitive
advantage, leading other corporations to follow.

~~~
thefounder
This is all about the trade war. The espionage pretext is just that: a
pretext. US wants to keep everybody hostage to its military, its technology
and its economy.

This is not something new. The only change is that now the US admin uses a
kind of zero tolerance policy and I believe it will fire back.

The free trade is replaced by America First trade: we have the biggest
military power and economy so you do it our way or you deal with the
consequences.

Personally I believe the policy reflects Trump's personality.

~~~
mark_l_watson
While I agree with you, I would also like to point out that to protect our
economy President George W Bush’s administration came up with the ‘axis of
evil’ to economically fight three oil producing countries who had announced
willingness to trade oil for currencies other than the US dollar. I think this
is close to the same thing, really. Using our military might and pressure on
allies to maintain an advantage.

I personally believe that we must spend less on our military and more on
education, new technologies, more efficient industrial systems, have firm but
fair laws governing corporations. Capitalism can work long term if we have
laws that are guardrails on what corporations can do and fight hard to be
competitive with other countries on merits, not coercion.

~~~
JetSpiegel
North Korea produces oil? Iran and Iraq, I totally agree, but DPKR is a snub
to China.

------
deehouie
From a google search, this is the first hit.

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18264283/huawei-
security-...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18264283/huawei-security-
threat-experts-china-spying-5g)

Some quotes

"This may help to explain why Western governments broadly agree that Huawei
poses security risks,..." Note the word "risks". A risk is something that may
or may not happen.

Quote of CEO of OpenVPN

"The US is right to treat Huawei as a security threat, but I don’t believe any
ban on any equipment is the right solution. No matter what equipment we use
for 5G, there will be security risks." Again the word is "risks".

------
chobytes
Honestly the US gov is playing with fire here. This sort of behavior will only
lead to global corporations avoiding doing important business in the US. This
is clearly a step in that direction.

~~~
YayamiOmate
That's a desired effect for the decision makers. They want to have
selfsustained economy. They were pretty explicit that they want to have
production back, I assume they didn't mean it for export.

Also it's easier to control local companies because you have a jurisdiction
over them. Look at europe, they don't have any major high tech companies, so
they can only choose which threats and risks they want to deal with us or
chinese. Can't avoid it, unless they drop particular tech at all.

~~~
pinkfoot
Ericsson and Nokia

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Also Philips

~~~
pinkfoot
Yip, also off the top of my head: Siemens, BASF, Bosch, Aibus, Leonardo, ARM,
Bayer, Sanofi, Saab, ABB, Schneider, BAE, DSM, Infineon, ASML, Thales, Alenia,
Aixtron.

You have to wonder where some HN posters get educated.

------
deehouie
This is the 2nd hit from a google search

[https://www.tomsguide.com/us/us-huawei-ban-op-
ed,news-30132....](https://www.tomsguide.com/us/us-huawei-ban-op-
ed,news-30132.html)

"There seems to be something different about Huawei that makes the U.S.
government regard the company as a global threat, but government officials
need to explain why. Otherwise, without proof, the American government will be
able to just ban any company it wants."

~~~
thewileyone
It's because Huawei is poised to take over the 5G market ahead of Qualcomm and
Ericsson and refuses to give back doors to the NSA or any other US
intelligence agency. It's presumed that Huawei will give access to China only.

That's what this is all about.

~~~
deehouie
Oh, absolutely. That's precisely why US is so upset!

------
erklik
Is there any actual evidence that says that Huawei is selling nefarious (in
terms of providing a hidden backdoor to a third-party which the buyer is
unaware of) devices? Is there a continued pattern of them doing so?

~~~
T-A
How do you prove that a vulnerability is intentional? It could just be bad
engineering. Lots of it:

[https://www.channelnews.com.au/huawei-more-vulnerable-to-
sec...](https://www.channelnews.com.au/huawei-more-vulnerable-to-security-
risks-than-rivals-according-to-report/)

[https://www.crn.com/news/security/british-watchdog-finds-
ser...](https://www.crn.com/news/security/british-watchdog-finds-serious-
huawei-security-vulnerabilities)

[https://fortiguard.com/zeroday/FG-
VD-18-017](https://fortiguard.com/zeroday/FG-VD-18-017)

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/03/nsa-
inspired_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/03/nsa-
inspired_vu.html)

[https://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-
advisories/huawei-s...](https://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-
advisories/huawei-sa-20190517-01-share-en)

[https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-
list/vendor_id-5979...](https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-
list/vendor_id-5979/Huawei.html)

~~~
makomk
There's evidence strongly suggesting that - for example - Juniper Network's
use of the NSA's backdoorable Dual EC random number generator in their VPN
hardware is an intentional US backdoor. Not only is Dual EC slower, more
complex, less random, and worse in every possible way except for the fact that
it allows for a backdoor that can only be accessed by the person who has the
matching private key to its public key, they also introduced a bunch of other
changes at the same time across several levels of their software stack to make
this exploitable in practice:
[https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf](https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/376.pdf)

On top of that, when an attacker broke into Juniper's systems and replaced
that public key with their own, they simply changed it back without fixing the
"bug" introduced at the same time as Dual EC which meant the countermeasures
that they'd claimed prevented this attack never actually ran. (They moved the
index variable of their existing PRNG function, which was meant to post-
process the Dual EC output, from a local to a global, overwrote it in the Dual
EC code so the other PRNG never ran, used the same output buffer for both, and
added a hidden on-by-default setting which ran the Dual EC code on every PRNG
call. The whole thing stunk.)

I don't think anyone has found anything even remotely comparable to this
smoking gun in Huawei's hardware and software.

------
greatpatton
The ban will only come into force mid-August for current product.
([https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/05/21/us-delay-to-huawei-
ban-...](https://www.snopes.com/ap/2019/05/21/us-delay-to-huawei-ban-gives-
tech-sector-time-to-adjust/))

At the beginning of the article they state: "It’s not clear what percentage of
the current sales were for future products.", so 0% can be a valid answer.

Frankly US press is really in a bad shape if even NYT is just a clickbait
agency.

------
johnbatch
How is Amazon selling Huawei products?
[https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/34F6034C-1D34-4913-9648-3...](https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/34F6034C-1D34-4913-9648-3DBD220C1648)

~~~
chrisseaton
I don't know what you think has been banned?

There is a ban on the sale of American technology to Huawei.

There is not a ban on selling Huawei technology to Americans.

------
ETHisso2017
I wonder if the DoJ investigations against Google and Facebook will now become
leverage against them in this context.

~~~
dbetteridge
The discussion in the article is mostly around Micron and Intel and their
selling of Semiconductors to Huawei.

Even then though the title is contradicted somewhat by the article...

`American companies may sell technology supporting current Huawei products
until mid-August.`

They're not so much side-stepping the ban as they are continuing normal sales
after confirming they are allowed to.

------
thinkingkong
I really hope this sets enough of a precedent / whatever is required so that
Canada can not be stuck in the middle of dealing with the Huawei / Iran
controversy.

~~~
pishpash
I always wondered that if everyone broke sanctions then sanctions lose their
utility. This includes US financial sanctions, only problematic if most
financial entities obey. If most don't then the US would be sanctioning
itself.

~~~
cf498
The US still follows a might is right approach ignoring transnational rules
and regulations, breaking their sanctions is extremely dangerous for other
countries let alone companies.

------
bayareanative
Idiotic tariffs and bans, trade will always find a way. Just ask drug dealers.

------
deehouie
This is article from techcrunch, a fairly reputable SV publication.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/26/is-huawei-a-national-
secur...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/26/is-huawei-a-national-security-
threat/)

Title : Without proof, is Huawei still a national security threat?

The title gives it away : there is no proof of this allegation.

------
rchaud
Looks like a win-win to me. POTUS will continue to claim at his rallies that
he's crushing Huawei, while US corps exercise simple loopholes to continue
doing business as usual.

------
pauljurczak
USG issued an arrest warrant for Huawei CFO alleging sanctions violation. It
is only fair to issue arrest warrants for Intel and Micron executives based on
the same charges now.

~~~
esoterica
Where does it say that what they did was illegal? The article talks about them
breaking “the spirit of the law”, which suggests that the didn’t break the
letter of it.

------
Tsubasachan
Words are cheap. We will see how many patriotic people will gray import
Chinese products to avoid the Trump tax.

