
Huawei is dividing Western nations - ajaviaad
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/28/how-huawei-is-dividing-western-nations/
======
shasheene
Huawei is in large part built upon technology stolen from Cisco and Canada's
Nortel Networks. In the latter case, there is strong evidence China was able
to maintain access to Nortel's internal networks for over a decade (!!) which
helped kill the 117 year old company. [1]

The government of China is systematically hacking corporations through the
Ministry of State Security, and attempting to the switch the allegiances of
all ethnically Chinese people across the world through the well-funded
overseas political interference organization called the "United Front Work
Department" [2]. In both the Australian and New Zealand parliaments, China has
actually succeeded in installing individuals with _undeclared links_ to
government of China political interference and espionage organizations: Gladys
Liu and Jian Yang. While there is no smoking gun that they are directly acting
as spies, there is significant amounts of circumstantial evidence that they
have been compromised by government of China influence operations. I don't
need to explain the risk of politicians compromised by an adversarial
government making key national defense decisions.

With this reality, why would any government risk allowing Huawei in their
networks?

[1] [https://www.afr.com/technology/how-chinese-hacking-felled-
te...](https://www.afr.com/technology/how-chinese-hacking-felled-
telecommunication-giant-nortel-20140526-iux6a)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTXPxWtl8Zw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTXPxWtl8Zw)

~~~
hrktb
> stolen from

That kind of issue is solved in court with proofs and compensations. Cisco is
no small bullied kid and should deal with it without us crying a river about
it. They also infringe patents, get caught, pay up settlement fees and
continue business as usual.

Not going down this route in this specific case makes it look way more dirty
on US side IMO.

> hacking

Cisco has been caught countless times spreading NSA backdoors to the world,
they shouldn’t get any moral pass.

I think it comes down to who’s wrongdoing you are willing to turn a blind eye
on. If you’re not an US citizen nor don’t see US gov as a reliable ally, the
whole Huawei vs the US feud has no clear moral or ethical split.

~~~
pas
The US gov - despite all the terrible deeds in its short history - builds upon
a very strong civil liberties foundation, whereas China is a one-party
totalitarian dictatorship.

Sure, there's no "clear" ethical split, but just putting both of them into the
naughty bin won't do anyone much good. Most of the people on HN don't want
anyone spying on them, but that doesn't mean there is no point in clearly
stating that Huawei products somehow represent a greater risk than Cisco's
overpriced every-year-re-branded legacy junk.

~~~
hrktb
It’s hard to argue an entity does terrible things while putting aside all
their terrible deeds.

How would you judge if what they’re doing regarding Huawei is not one of them
? To my knowledge nothing of interest has been put on table as proof or
objective justification of the ban at this point.

The point is not if the US gov is better than the Chinese one, it’s how other
countries deal with the US gov having a beef against a foreign company.

------
nimbius
>...the goal of American policy on Huawei is less about security and more
about market share – and making sure America, not China, owns the future of
5G.

Bingo. Most HN readers saw this for exactly what it was. Most of the premise
for the arrest of Meng Wanzhou was comical at best. 30 years of US companies
ignoring ITAR with at most a small fine, only to suddenly watch the US issue
an extradition warrant for a chinese CFO accused of doing the same thing? I
guess if its the cold war its different.

Huawei made it to market first. Most of this theatricality from the US
government is a last-ditch effort to buy time until US communications
companies come out with something remotely 5G.

AT&T did their usual tactic with 4g, and rolled out a watered down branded 5GE
experience even to phones with no 5G chipset whatsoever in a desperate attempt
to brand something they'll likely buy at twice the cost from a US supplier in
2021 just to spite their loss at Huawei.

I hate the term intellectual property and its easy to slander people for
theft, but the US paved this road in my opinion with massive cuts to education
and a public policy that actively persecuted hackers and anyone interested in
STEM since the sixties. The US decided to turn their colleges into luxury
sports arenas driven by unforgivable student loans and underpaid graduate
students as teachers. It drafted legal DMCA and DRM to punish curiousity and
reward obedience, and now for the past decade its tried to play both sides of
the field. Insisting STEM is something all its citizens must learn, while at
the same time branding anyone too interested in technology as aberrant and
unlawful, a circumventor in violation of the license for the product they own.
Unless and until this changes, im sure China or Korea or some other slave of
the international market will own 6, 7 and 8 G as well.

~~~
zobzu
My personal take is: Huawei belongs to CCP. Korean and US companies do not
belong to their governments.

This should be an issue by default, in my opinion. That said it's not why I
distrust Huawei (not that I trust Google, Cisco, Qualcomm all that much more -
but I give them more benefit of the doubt). I don't even care about ATT
because if you trust your carrier you're already toast, and I do not know any
carrier that I respect as a company (despite them having great employees).

Here's why I distrust Huawei and similar companies:

From my 20y incident response experience in the field at very large companies,
we've never caught the NSA or similar US agencies. Either because they're too
good, we're unlucky, they're too bad at it, or because they don't actually
need to, or do not backdoor. Who knows.

What does bother me is that we caught other countries several times, sometimes
using terribly bad tactics (where the defense was bad for various reasons that
are usually also bad) and sometimes using relatively novel stuff that we'd
never see before.

Thankfully you do not have to trust me, ask any security engineer at any big
company (amazon, fb, uber, google, lockheed, etc.). They'll either say they're
not allowed to speak about it or give you an answer that's similar to the
above (or break their NDAs, alternatively, I guess?!)

~~~
mrtksn
Could the reason be that the US and the others have different access to the
companies?

The US was caught when somebody blew the whistle, just Google for PRISM, for
example. China and others could not have done that, therefore they would do
something else. They make and ship hardware, therefore their vector of attack
would be expected to be that hardware.

Unlike the US though, I am not aware of any substantial attack that goes
beyond speculation. There was supposed to be an IC implemented into Apple and
Amazon servers according to Bloomberg but that story was refuted and went
nowhere.

So far, in reality, we have proven US surveillance(and Obama was very sorry
about it) and speculations about Chinese surveillance.

I am not sure that there's much going on here beyond the propaganda.

~~~
amachefe
Saying US has been proven and not Chinese is the real propaganda.

China has been caught countless times. Anyone working in network security or
Telecom have their China story

It is no longer treated with fanfare because unlike US it's is almost common.

~~~
mrtksn
Anecdotes of individual cases are not the same as the institutionalized spying
and the presidential "oops, won't do it again" once the spying is revealed.

I have no doubt that China or Saudi Arabia or Russia and so on have spying
programs and there were cases of revealed moles installed in companies but
it's nowhere nearly as substantial as US directly plugging into the systems
that run globally and running mass surveillance programs.

Google for Wikileaks, Snowden. Assange. The results will surprise you.

All this debacle looks nothing more than the US not wanting competition. It
doesn't even look like the Chinese mass spying efforts are beyond a startup
stage when the US spying is equivalent of a giant and established corporation.
Actually, not even a startup, more like mom and pop shops of spying.

I think it's alright, US is no longer the country that stands for something
beyond nationalism and most of the Western nations are not covered by that
American Nationalism.

~~~
pas
Uh. What. GFC. Great Firewall of China. It's the same dragnet stuff that NSA
dreamed of, only enshrined in law and staffed with thousands of people, and
well funded.

They have the technology. It's only a matter of time and economic expansion to
get their stuff into other exchange points.

Huawei is a greater risk than let's say Eriksson or Nokia, because there is
nothing to even suggest that they have any safeguards against a future
intervention by the NSA or CCP. (And users won't reverse engineer every new
firmeware update.)

How greater? Well, it's hard to say.

> I think it's alright, US is no longer the country that stands for something
> beyond nationalism and most of the Western nations are not covered by that
> American Nationalism.

Agreed :/

------
chvid
I think the main issue is that most europeans are just not so hot on a war
with China as the americans are; even after a massive media campaign.

I believe the next move by the US will be to force TSMC not to supply Huawei.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-huawei-tech-chips-
exc...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-huawei-tech-chips-
exclusive/exclusive-u-s-prepares-crackdown-on-huaweis-global-chip-supply-
sources-idUSKBN21D2E4)

That will be a major blow to Huawei (and TSMC) and will force the Chinese to
setup their own chip production as fast as possible. Will probably be quite a
thing to follow.

~~~
danmaz74
When the president of the USA openly disparages Europe at every opportunity,
it's pretty difficult to feel very sympathetic with the us administration on
such matters.

~~~
chvid
I don't think Americans realise how much diplomatic influence has been lost in
Europe.

To me the American tradition of a politicised diplomatic corps is to blame.
The politics of Trump is just very far from mainstream European politics.

I am personally convinced that had the campaign against Huawei been done by
the Obama administration there would be no Huawei technology in the EU at this
point.

~~~
frequentnapper
I am curious why it wasn't. Did Obama just drop the ball? I'm sure he knew how
much of a serious threat Huawei was.

~~~
thawaway1837
Because Obama was tackling the Chinese in a much more effective and long term
manner through the TPP.

And because 5G decision making hadnt really begun until early last year.

------
kasperni
So the US preaches nationalism, protectionism, and isolationism except when
it's not in their own interest?

Edit: My point (which probably wasn't clear) was that if you run an "America
First" agenda. Don't be surprised when your allies start prioritizing their
own interest above mutual interests.

~~~
Veen
Yes. Each nation looks out for its own interests and the interests of its
citizens. The only thing that's surprising is that a large number of citizens
seem to think that this is unusual or immoral.

~~~
thawaway1837
A large number of citizens think that it makes sense for a certain set of
nations to work together in many arenas. For decades, Western Europe and North
America worked together to both regions’ mutual benefit.

Trump has torn that apart, which has basically hurt both sides to China’s
benefit which appears as a far less capricious partner.

~~~
Veen
Nations should work together when their interests coincide. That's just a
generalization of the idea that nations work to support their own interests.
But, quite often, those interests are in conflict.

Some people appear motivated to shit on some nations while ignoring the
depredations of others. Perversely, they are opposed to the nation of which
they are citizens and embrace "the other side".

For example, the claim that "China appears the less capricious partner"
ignores an enormous amount of evidence that China screws over international
partners with no hesitation should that be in its interests.

See the recent stories about WHO delaying the release of information from
Taiwan about the coronavirus.

[https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-
df28cc3c6...](https://www.ft.com/content/2a70a02a-644a-11ea-a6cd-df28cc3c6a68)

(The U.S. currently being lead by a lunatic is a side issue.)

------
Priem19
Does someone have a source without this nonsense?
[https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...](https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-
session_bb176a60-85a0-4720-8f0a-4c000253c231)

~~~
ganzuul
Yeah, this is unacceptable bullshit.

[http://archive.is/wXQaO](http://archive.is/wXQaO) to the rescue.

------
millstone
How is it that the west allowed Huawei to gain such a lead in 5G? If this has
national security implications, why didn't the US support its domestic telecom
firms?

~~~
redis_mlc
The US, outside of the military, has a failure to make policy, whereas China
has very clear development policies.

Why is that?

The US is led mainly by lawyers, where facts are debatable, whereas most of
China's leaders are STEM graduates.

Thus China has constructed around 50 new cities and airports in the past
couple of decades, while the US literally can't dig a tunnel from one side of
Central Expressway in Mountain View or Palo Alto to the other.

The most egregious failure of US leadership is the corona virus crisis in
hospitals. But you could say the same about infrastructure, or just about any
other public policy.

~~~
icebraining
We've had a couple of engineers as PMs in my Southern EU country (one of them
is now the Secretary General of the UN - he started his career as an assistant
professor teaching systems theory and telecommunications signals), and I can
assure you it's no panacea. Pouring concrete is easy and not by itself
synonymous with good governance.

And since you said "any other public policy", I have to say I'd easily trade
50 tunnels and airports for access to Wikipedia.

------
fulafel
After decades of campaigning against good security in internet protocols,
mandating backdoors in networks, etc - government security organs are miffed
that things can't safely run on untrusted networks.

------
zhengiszen
Western nations don't need anyone to divide. Just see the brexit or covid-19
situations ...

~~~
rumanator
Arguably brexit is the result of Russia's psyops effort on the UK, much like
it did in the last US presidential elections.

And let's not pretend that Russia hasn't been caught financing and supporting
far-right parties throughout Europe.

[https://www.ft.com/content/48c4bfa6-7ca2-11e9-81d2-f785092ab...](https://www.ft.com/content/48c4bfa6-7ca2-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560)

~~~
easytiger
That's unbelievable rubbish

------
echelon
What are the British thinking? Do they think they'll get a better deal from
China than the US? Or is their intention to use this as a bargaining chip
against the US?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The UK is weak following Brexit, it needs friends wherever it can find them.

~~~
i_have_suffered
The UK's weakness was _exposed_ by the 2011 veto and subsequent upending of
the EU treaties to suit everyone apart from the UK. We had been floundering in
that club since 2009, despite bailing out other members (ie. Ireland) - and
when push came to shove Germany and France made it clear that the UK could
shove off. The UK is no weaker now than it was then - it's just that it's
clear where we stand. The great powers of the world (China, US, Germany) act
in their own interests, the UK must act as if that is true and attempt to
navigate around them - or we must simply be subjugated to one of them. I
believe that Germany in particular will regret this situation in the future,
with a pretense of a triumvirate of powers and associated allies (ie. France,
Italy, Spain etc; UK, Poland, etc; Germany and everyone else) there was a
chance of a very different EU. That's gone now and Germany must take the
reigns - and it will be in a very different strategic context.

~~~
thawaway1837
Despite all that, the real undeniable facts are that no country has prospered
inside the EU sad much as the UK has. And that the UK was stinking it up big
time before it joined the EU.

The UK has traded limited political power as a member of the EU for no
political power at all. And in return it has gotten a much worse economic
position, where it will be stuck between pleasing the US, EU and China in turn
for the foreseeable future, while losing the economic benefits it got from
being the default English speaking gateway to Europe.

~~~
i_have_suffered
Ok - the EU was founded 1st November 1993; I remember the UK as a centre for
world finance and one of the most prosperous and settled nations in the world
at that time. I could have been very drunk and made a mistake however.

But - I think you are referring to the state of the UK when it joined the EEC
in 1973. The UK was in fact in a big mess at that point - which promptly got a
lot bigger. This led to IMF intervention in 1976 [1]. This was not a big win
for the EEC at that point in my book. The UK was in a big hole because it had
spent all its money on unwinding its empire and failed to either properly
retool its industries or pay down its second world war debt. The EEC and
Europe in general did not help or bail out the UK - in fact they continued to
expect payments from the UK in the midst of all this, a pattern that I fear
Italy and Spain are about to encounter in the way that sentances encounter
full stops.

What turned this round - the discovery of North Sea Oil. This enabled Thatcher
to restructure the UK economy, recapitalize the City of London and hey presto
off the UK went to the races. The big buggeration was the collapse of the
Soviet Union which meant a restructuring of Europe in order to prevent the
East from falling into anarchy and exposing the German state to abject
collapse. Thus we all got swept up into the EU.

Anyway, if you want to argue about "prospered inside the EU sad much as the UK
has" I ask you to look at the economic performance of Germany.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_IMF_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_IMF_crisis)

------
chrischen
America historically is infamous for making sure that anything besides their
system (capitalism, supposedly) fails to work, and taking quite an active
approach to make sure it happens.

In theory, if you believed you're doing things the _right_ way then you
shouldn't have to worry about making sure another system fails (if it doesn't
fail, then maybe you were wrong?).

This applies as much to startups and their attitudes towards competitors (you
shouldn't worry about what your competitor does, only that your product is
good) as it does to nations and their attitudes towards competing economic and
government systems.

The crux of this issue is purely political, and based on fears of potentially
losing American supremacy. The article even references China as a "rival", and
that's exactly what the fears are based on: rivalry.

If you believe that these anti-China sentiments from these politicians have
anything to do with a belief in freedom, democracy, or human rights, then
you're just as brainwashed as the supporters of the Chinese communist party.
If our politicians believed in human rights then why didn't they do anything
to stop China earlier? Why do they only care when China releases cheaper
better technology that could potentially unseat their dominance? Seems like a
convenient time to start caring about freedom. Why is accepting cheap plastic
crap acceptable, but advanced technology not acceptable?

What is the end-game here? If you disagree with the Chinese system then you
should be taking action against them. Otherwise it seems like the goal is just
to keep the country in a subdued position for eternity, allowing human rights
violations so long as your own supremacy is kept?

~~~
SturgeonsLaw
This comment's getting downvoted but I can't really see anything here I
disagree with. Would any downvoters like to share an alternative opinion in
the interests of discussion?

~~~
MR4D
I didn’t downvote, but I’ll take a shot at answering it for you....

> If our politicians believed in human rights then why didn't they do anything
> to stop China earlier?

They did. Multiple administrations held the belief that if they could pull
China into the fold economically, then they would open up.

This strategy was literally the opposite of what the US did with the Soviet
Union, with the idea that we didn’t want another Cold War.

Clearly it didn’t work, but until a couple years ago, everyone thought it was.

------
haecceity
Western nations divide themselves. Must be nice to shift blame to other
though. Wish I could do that.

------
DeonPenny
A lot people are to comfortable with china controlling a lot of the world's
tech. I'm not in europe but it seems a strange thing to conclude. Either was I
will vote against anyone in the US that does and its the best I can do.

------
Roritharr
China is indeed very divise for our global powerstructures.

This Video shows a WHO official battling with this(if you want to look kindly
upon him):
[https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1243889673207832577](https://twitter.com/nathanlawkc/status/1243889673207832577)

What bugs me is that I'm really unsure if I should post anything critical of
China, it's scary what that could mean for my family 30 years down the road.

~~~
ganzuul
This rhetoric against China, legitimate or not, seems like a precursor to war.
I wish somebody would investigate if a troll factory is behind it or if it
truly is a popular opinion.

~~~
rumanator
I for one am surprised that anyone who is aware of some of the actions
perpetrated by China's ruling regime with regards to their handling of the
covid19 outbreak feels that they don't warant any criticism, and tried to pin
any criticism on conspiracy theories involving troll farms and beating war
drums.

~~~
yurlungur
Of course one can and should assign blame where it is due to the CCP. But
demanding vengeful reparations from the whole country is pretty much a
precursor to war. I can totally imagine a few leaders riling up public
emotions this way and also conveniently directing all responsibilities
outwards. I really hope the world doesn't repeat the history of the last
century like that.

~~~
rumanator
> Of course one can and should assign blame where it is due to the CCP. But
> demanding vengeful reparations from the whole country is pretty much a
> precursor to war.

No, it's the basis of any civil suit.

For some reason, you're trying desperately to spin holding an entity
responsible for their actions as being akin to an act of war.

You're talking about the regime that simultaneously refuses to include
positive and asymptomatic cases in their contagion statistics, and at the same
time publish press releases announcing that the only new cases of coronsvirus
infections within China come from infected foreigners.

States and governments are held accountable to their actions and inactions
quite frequently, even I'm courts of law. Somehow you see China's regime
immune and exempt from any responsibility of their actions. Why?

------
ngcc_hk
Look at the wuhan virus. Trust china you are doom. Just not worth it.

