
Analysis: Why the Best Android Phones of 2018 Will Not Be Available in the U.S - cmurf
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/03/31/why-the-best-android-phones-of-2018-will-not-be-available-in-the-u-s/
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cmurf
Summary: Huawei has the best offering for 2018 and may even surpass Apple on
units shipped by end of year, but they have no sales agreements with service
providers in the U.S. And the U.S. government is anti-Huawei (specifically the
intelligence agencies advise against buying Huawei). Therefore Huawei is going
the path of least resistance and will focus on other markets, which is
literally the entire rest of the world.

I wonder how other countries either don't believe, aren't worried, or don't
care, about Huawei or ZTE devices spying on their citizens? OK, so what has
the FBI director actually said?

"It provides the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information," Wray
said. "And it provides the capacity to conduct undetected espionage."

Aha so it's a potential threat, not an active one. They're worried the devices
might be a Trojan horse. This is actually an old concern about these two
companies, going back to 2012. This approximates a summary of a draft report
produced by House Intel committee about these two companies:

[http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/08/congressional-
repor...](http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/08/congressional-report-u-s-
should-view-with-suspicion-two-chinese-companies/?iid=EL)

This is the actual draft.
[https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/...](https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/huawei-
zte%20investigative%20report%20\(final\).pdf)

Here's the problem. These House Intel committee people are bought and paid for
politicians, this substantially reduces their credibility on the face of it
for the identical logical argument that Huawei is distrusted: Huawei's money
connection to the Chinese government makes them beholden to political will; in
the same way politicians' money connection makes them beholden to the
political will of where their money comes from which is not Huawei or ZTE but
rather all the other tech and telecom companies making competing products.

And then this is also the same committee whose chairman went on TV almost
exactly a year ago, claiming he had discovered evidence the Trump
administration was under surveillance by intel agencies, which he then had to
walk back after it was revealed this narrative and evidence was in fact
supplied by the White House.

These people are caught in these kinds of gymnastics and even if they were
telling the truth in 2012, and have some facts backing them up, makes it a lot
harder to understand their real motives and take them seriously. And this
makes the country arguably less safe from real threats, but also it's anti-
competitive.

