
The Clean Network – United States Department of State - sysoleg
https://www.state.gov/5g-clean-network/
======
ISL
I have the same feeling about this as I did the announcement of the
"Department of Homeland Security". The name sounded Soviet in origin, with
only the exchange of "Homeland" in place of "Motherland". It reminded me of
things my family had taught me didn't happen in the United States.

"We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean
Network." is a sentence straight out of an authoritarian playbook. Top-down
imposition of standards is not what made America's melting pot great. Free and
open discourse, with redundant structures designed to ensure that governance
required the consent of the governed, did.

Furthermore, State is a decade or more behind the game. It is my impression
that modern companies that care about security assume that all networks are
compromised and act accordingly. See
[https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp](https://cloud.google.com/beyondcorp) as
an example.

Balkanizing the Internet will not make us free; we will instead tie our own
hands. This is not the same as banning the import of presumed-compromised
hardware.

Vote.

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
Yes. It is ridiculous how closely the language sounds to that of a dictatorial
regime. The language is just so.. cringy. When I first read, I genuinely could
not believe it was not onion or some weird caricature.

~~~
Angostura
The first sentence really stood out to me...

"The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive
approach to..."

Isn't that a bit odd? Surely these things would be worded as 'is the United
States Government approach..' It almost smacks of 'errr, don't blame us guys,
it wasn't _our_ idea.

Love the low res images of the logos too.

~~~
edgyquant
Probably the same reason why every white house announcement has to say that
whatever it is is way better than any previous administration did or could
have done.

------
supernova87a
This really comes off as a hastily prepared political dig against China, when
there are _in addition_ so many other actors and countries trying to take
advantage of poor security. The JPEGed giant logo at the top doesn't help...

Other observations:

\-- "Remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores": so, this would
call for even tighter control by Apple, Google, over its app distribution and
monopolies?

\-- Clean Apps: "Prevent untrusted PRC OEMs from installing trusted apps on
their apps store... should remove apps to ensure they are not partnering with
a human rights abuser." Umm, seriously, we're going to open this can of worms?

Edit to add a last thought:

I have yet to understand or read a coherent description about how we do not
have the technical ability to protect against eavesdropping/etc regardless of
who owns the physical hardware. Why is CCP-owned infrastructure uniquely
susceptible to this? If we can't protect our transmissions with encryption,
secure data storage techniques, what does it matter that the equipment is
supplied by China? What unusual attack do they get access to by owning or
manufacturing the equipment?

~~~
apazzolini
> The JPEGed giant logo

It's almost like they ran it through jpegify.me on purpose as a joke, but
really it's just another sign of the US's government technical incompetence.

~~~
reaperducer
_it 's just another sign of the US's government technical incompetence._

Not "the government." "A person in the government."

The federal government has a very good design system. But for some reason,
whoever built this page chose not to follow it.

[https://designsystem.digital.gov](https://designsystem.digital.gov)

~~~
saagarjha
> The federal government has a very good design system.

Having no knowledge of how the federal government works, but having worked for
fairly large organizations, I would still guess that the design system exists
and is used in many places but a significant fraction may not even know it
exists much less that they are supposed to use it.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Seconded. Plus many Fed'Gov orgs have explicitly different systems,
requirements, and silos. The DOD or NSA would put out something flashy, but
this is State...

------
consultutah
It looks like we are breaking the internet up along the lines of political
boundaries. The US will have one internet, the EU another, China yet
another... Hopefully the pendulum will swing back in the other direction
soon...

~~~
cmckn
Hopefully, none of this will be implemented and we can all forget Mike Pompeo
exists in 6 months.

~~~
slater
84 more days till election... fingers & toes crossed

~~~
TehCorwiz
Many municipalities have no-justification-needed absentee voting (vote-by-mail
by any other name) which can be dropped off often weeks before in-person
voting occurs. Likewise many places have early in-person voting.

1\. Check your voter registration.

2\. Register to vote if you need to and it's still open for registration in
your state.

3\. VOTE as soon as you can. If you're voting absentee then drop off your
ballot early if possible. If you're voting in-person then look into early
voting to avoid lines and keep everyone safe.

~~~
zrail
The key this year is to _personally drop off your ballot_ at an official drop
point rather than mailing it in. USPS can and will deprioritize mail in
ballots for the fall elections.

~~~
24gttghh
I do this anyways. Why would I pay postage to have something brought to a
distribution center 20 miles away, wait a few days, then brought back to my
town to get delivered to town hall when I can literally walk there and drop it
off for free?

~~~
gruez
Because time is money? first class postage is only 55 cents, that's hard to
beat from a dollars per hour spent perspective.

~~~
24gttghh
Time may be money to some, but my time is fresh air and not supporting
wasteful transport systems if I can avoid it.

------
legulere
> Huawei, an arm of the PRC surveillance state, is trading on the innovations
> and reputations of leading U.S. and foreign companies. These companies
> should remove their apps from Huawei’s app store to ensure they are not
> partnering with a human rights abuser.

So should European Companies also pull apps from Google and Apple?

I‘m all for standing up against the horrible human rights abuses of China, but
it sounds unbelievably hollow from the US, which has a track record of putting
their own interest before democracy and human rights abroad.

The whole website is pitched for other countries to join in, but I really
don’t see that happening except maybe the UK and Canada.

~~~
mabbo
> except maybe ... Canada

Relations aren't great right now. Just last week Trump began yet another trade
war with Canada. I don't really see Canada taking part in this.

------
kayson
Has anyone published the evidence of Huawei being an "arm of the PRC
surveillance state"? I've seen a lot of claims and a lot of out-of-court-
settled lawsuits, but nothing really showing that they're using their devices
or software infrastructure for surveillance.

~~~
lettergram
There’s such a long list of this stuff from various companies. It’s not hard
to research this at all.

In terms of an anecdotal evidence... My father used to work for molex, one of
his biggest complaints were fixing the molds after they were sent to Chinese
factories. They would try to deconstruct them and couldn’t put them back
together (this was the 90’s, early 2000’s). So they would be shipped back to
the US operations to fix.

Eventually, he ended up spending years training up Chinese to replace him (my
father, in China). Molex moved much of its tool making shop to China and shut
down most US tool and die making operations.

Anyway, China has people who are trained, on factory floors, who are there to
reverse engineer processes.

This has been known for decades, companies don’t really seem to care or know
(I guess that’s possible as they are outsourcing manufacturing).

I have no doubt this is designed across all their industries and systems. It’s
in their interest to do this.

EDIT: I want to point out, there’s no longer a need for China to reverse
engineer. US companies ship the designs straight to China. This is probably
why we’ve seen China catch up so fast. We trained their workforce and now
provide them all the IP before we build it.

~~~
wyuenho
This has been known for decades, companies knew, and the way they dealt with
this was to only give China obsolete tech or tech about to get out of date, so
they didn't care. That's no longer the case as China is catching up fast and
really threatening the competitive advantage of truly innovative companies all
around the world.

~~~
Fazel94
Recently, Like in the case of 5G. They are the innovators and others are the
catchers. I think labeling every western company as truly innovator and the
Chinese ones as copy-cats is the modus operandi in the US but that is clinging
to the old stereotypes in fast changing times. They built up massive expertise
and are putting it into use to gain more edge on other countries including the
US.

~~~
wyuenho
Huawei's contribution to 5G is probably overstated. Looking at the 3GPP
rapporteur roster, a lot of work is done by Qualcomm engineers with Chinese
names. This is why immigration is so important to the US in order to attract
the best talents to contribute to US IP.

[https://www.lightreading.com/5g/huaweis-patents-wont-save-
it...](https://www.lightreading.com/5g/huaweis-patents-wont-save-it-says-
leading-analyst/a/d-id/761569)

------
jamiek88
Oh jeez. No good can come from this Balkanization of the net. This is how
Russia started its control.

Same playbook.

~~~
wyuenho
China has already Balkanized their "Internet" for over 20 years now.

~~~
chillacy
That was their loss. If China does something, does the US have to follow?

As it is, this just makes it seem like China was right this whole time and the
US ideals of an open internet were a failure.

~~~
wyuenho
They view it as a success and have double down on it, while the rest of the
world continued to feed them knowledge free minds across continents spent
centuries to accumulate. In short, they only took the useful bits to
strengthen the government's grip on the population while leaving out all those
things that made the vast amount of knowledge possible. They are getting all
human knowledge for free, while it it not the same for us.

Strategically, this position is untenable. The free world is defenseless until
we demand reciprocity. Balkanization, be that as it may, it's not the end, but
a means to an end, the end should be all open for every one.

~~~
knolax
> leaving out all those things that made the vast amount of knowledge possible

No. This is the conceit of the humanities to attribute the past few centuries
of industrial and scientific progress to their work. The Soviets, the Nazis,
and the Japanese Empire all managed to progress useful knowledge while
believing in completely different ideologies. Your John Lockes and Thomas
Paines made no real contribution to the discovery of Penicillin or the
Transistor. The idea that censoring ideology will stunt technological growth
is a fantasy believed in only by ideologues.

~~~
wyuenho
I strongly advise you to look into the Needham Question. China could have
industrialized a millennium ago, and yet it hadn't until around 50 years ago.
Insulating one from knowledge can have tremendous effect on growth for
centuries. All Soviets, Nazi and Japanese progress are built on ideas and
attitudes first found in Reformation Europe.

~~~
knolax
> All Soviets, Nazi and Japanese progress are built on ideas and attitudes
> first found in Reformation Europe.

And yet they still managed to adopt all the useful ideas they needed despite
heavy political censorship.

~~~
wyuenho
They also all lost.

~~~
knolax
So did the British Empire.

~~~
wyuenho
I like your tagline

------
coldcode
If they weren't serious about this claptrap it would be downright hilarious.
"Clean" means nothing, other than "Approved by us" which of course can mean
anything they want, including shutting down anything they disagree with even
internally, and changing day by day. In practicality there isn't much they can
do legally to make any of this actually exist.

~~~
coliveira
> there isn't much they can do legally to make any of this actually exist.

Please, let's stop the whole thing of "he doesn't have the power to do this".
Maybe he cannot do everything, but the last four years have proved that he can
do pretty much everything he wants with a few minor problems with justice that
he will also disregard. Think about mass imprisonment of immigrants, travel
bans, attacking protestors in major cities with unidentified military units,
diverting money fro the military to build a wall against congress wishes, not
allowing his co-conspirators to testify in Congress, affirm he will not accept
the election results, etc. All of these things supposedly were not legal. But
he doesn't care about the constitution, and the constitution only has any
power if the government is willing to uphold it.

------
bananabreakfast
The intention of cutting out bad actors seems to be in the right place, but
using "Clean" for the terminology is really unnecessarily inflammatory.

~~~
52-6F-62
I'd add that the collection of telecom companies at the bottom of the page is
grossly misleading. It makes them appear as signatories or as if they're
following America's lead.

~~~
bilbo0s
Probably true. At the same time, they may have no choice. This sort of thing
is not elective.

There are a lot of people around me taking that as a list of companies not to
do business with. As if this will save them from the global surveillance
dragnet. But here's the thing, you either submit to american surveillance and
tracking, or you submit to some other nation's surveillance and tracking. You
will not be able to choose companies that don't partner with their national
governments for surveillance and tracking. So people taking this as a list of
cooperating companies, and asking how to avoid this system, are being a little
naive. Thinking that somehow, not being on our network will save them from
surveillance. It won't. Best case, it saves them from surveillance by us.

It is a sad future. I'll concede you that.

~~~
52-6F-62
The point I was referring to is that is that companies are listed that have
announced Ericcson as their network infrastructure hardware supplier for
years, and the decision has nothing to do with Pompeo's "Clean Path".

However, they are listed as if they are following the directive rather than
having been long in front of it. It's gross political posturing, useful or
not.

------
throwyawayy2020
The US is ran & staffed by the hyper-partisan “Z-team” right now.

This is tragic & dangerous bc we need shrewd & wise people to make decisions +
build coalitions in the opening decades of 21st century, not hyper-partisan
kooks.

Some of the worst actors in cyber space rn is the Russian gov’t & their
intelligence + “security” services —- it sure is funny (funny as in strange,
not humorous) how difficult it is to get any of these apparatchiks to publicly
acknowledge that

~~~
ETHisso2017
What is the Z-team?

~~~
advaita
I am _guessing_ they wanted to mean pollar opposite of A-Team.

(As non-native speaker) I always interpret A-Team as your most competent team
for a given task.

~~~
ETHisso2017
Ah makes sense... thanks for the clarification!

------
tomc1985
Why the hell does any of this have to be China specific? Tomorrow the bugbear
could be anyone else

Like, we want clean networks free of foreign influence and sruveillance, full
stop. Or are they implying that Five Eyes surveillance is good and OK?

~~~
waihtis
This is more about Huawei in general. Russia, for instance, doesn't have a
technology provider of similar magnitude and influence.

~~~
chillacy
I think the parent commenter's point is that making laws based on objective
rules would make it more future-proof. Laws once passed usually stay for a
long time. Huawei wasn't a big deal 15 years ago. 15 years from now someone
else their place.

------
javier10e6
Behold! The Clean World Wide Web will be known as Patriot One Web or pow.

------
keenmaster
Are there any cybersecurity professionals on here who want to comment about
the pros and cons of the network? I don't have the necessary expertise to
ascertain the merits of it (actual threat vs. mitigated threat) but I don't
like the "clean" verbiage. Nor do I like China's own longstanding
protectionism and Great Firewall.

~~~
radium3d
I can think of a couple,

1) There are too many in/out points and encrypted paths in and out of the
network to actually make this worth spending time on. Think of walling off the
entire country, yet there is still air above the wall, movable earth below the
wall.

2) It creates a false sense of security if you're on the "clean network" and
may make some developers less considerate of securing apps, websites, etc, and
some consumers of questioning the security and privacy of the apps they
install. I.e. it weakens those within the "clean" firewall.

------
hijinks
only the NSA is allowed to backdoor US networking hardware

~~~
codemonkey-zeta
I laughed, but also ... yes? As a lover of liberty I would much rather just my
own government (by which I am ostensibly represented) have the ability to
infringe on that liberty than 2 governments. I would want to support
regulations that protect myself and neighbors from the influence of those
other infringers, no?

~~~
chillacy
Your own government also has more tools to use against you. You'll pass
through your own border more frequently, you're more available to be arrested,
harassed by LE, etc.

How about as a lover of liberty, _nobody_ snoops on our data?

~~~
codemonkey-zeta
Of course you are correct, but the tools available to other governments still
concern me greatly. Are we actually presently capable of making sure _nobody_
snoops on our data? If so then I agree it is a better solution. But is it not
better to use an imperfect plan which is implementable than wait for a perfect
plan (if such a thing exists for cyber-security) to become implementable when
a threat is present?

~~~
chillacy
Depends how paranoid you want to be, and to what degree of certainty (after
all it's impossible to prove a negative).

But in general, backdoors for "the good guys" are just more surface area for
"the bad guys", and developers of products which take security seriously lock
themselves out too.

~~~
codemonkey-zeta
Is this about installing backdoors? Or is it just about ensuring the network
doesn't run on known-compromised hardware/software?

------
cardamomo
If you're not already familiar with the history of labeling immigrants
(particularly non-European immigrants) as unclean or dirty, I'd urge you to
read up. This article seems to be a good start:
[https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/1011](https://journals.openedition.org/transtexts/1011)

In short, calling this a "clean" network continues a long history of racist
and xenophobic language in the U.S.

~~~
artificial
Europeans got it too, Irish, Italians, Germans (post WW1 and 2), pretty much
the "last ones" to the party get crapped on.

~~~
cardamomo
Yes. I don't think its repeated usage in this way diminishes my point,
however. In all of these contexts it's been used to put down foreigners or
immigrants.

------
Naac
What's up with the incredible low resolution jpeg at the top of the article?
It really stands out from the other images ( which seem fine )

~~~
ipsin
I was curious about that too.

The img tag has a "srcset" attribute with resolutions from 85x48 to 1920x1080,
but the "sizes" attribute is "(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px".

------
bo1024
Amazing how end-to-end encryption would solve all the problems they claim to
care about here.

~~~
MentallyRetired
How do we accelerate this process?

------
PaulAJ
Follow the link in "Digital Trust Standards" to the "Criteria for Security and
Trust in Telecommunications Networks and Services" ([https://csis-website-
prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publi...](https://csis-website-
prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/200511_Lewis_5G_v3.pdf)).
Political & Governance Criteria numbers 8 and 9 would seem to present problems
for companies in the UK and US, both of which require suppliers to cooperate
with the government in secret and unchallengeable ways.

------
pulse7
So the country whose national security and intelligence agencies have gathered
the largest database of sensitive information in the world is proposing to
"safeguard sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign
actors"... If U.S. is some kind of role model / example for other countries to
follow (in terms of freedoms, democracy, prosperity, etc) then other countries
will also gather sensitive information to the largest extent possible... So
this "we can, but you shouldn't" is just a shameless hypocrisy. What would the
U.S. founding fathers say to all this? Is there any William Penn living in the
U.S. today to give basic freedoms like privacy back to the people? Or will the
"controlling party" take everything away - including the freedom to think and
say?

~~~
zepto
We actually don’t know that the US has gathered the largest database of
sensitive information.

Only that it used to gather a lot before Snowden.

~~~
remus
I'd bet a lot of money that the NSA didn't just turn off their servers and sit
their twiddling their thumbs after the Snowden leaks.

~~~
glenstein
That's an unfair caricature. The steelman version of that argument is that
China has likely amassed a more robust global surveillance database (to the
extent that that's even the right word to use) than the U.S.

~~~
8note
I imagine they don't even need to. All they need to do is gain access to the
American databases

~~~
glenstein
I think it's just true in a literal sense that China has constructed it's own
surveillance system that under any metric would be larger than that of the
United States or any other nation.

------
csense
Chinese government mandated pre-installed spyware on all phones made in China
is certainly a huge problem.

But on the other hand, isn't it a violation of First Amendment protections if
the US government can dictate certain apps aren't allowed to be distributed in
the US?

Since software's subject to copyright, doesn't it logically follow that
banning software is legally similar to banning a book?

~~~
AmericanChopper
Imported goods and services aren’t protected by 1A.

Software is protected by 1A, so there’s nothing the government could do to
prevent China from publishing software or source code, and allowing people in
the US to download it. But it can certainly prevent a Chinese entity from
providing services to US customers.

------
ProAm
We now have our own "Great Firewall"

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _We now have our own "Great Firewall"_

I don’t see anything about content filtering. Just transport integrity.

The closest we come to that is the prohibition on apps, but that’s still an
ocean away from censoring text messages mentioning the Tiananmen massacre.

~~~
komali2
Or arresting a Hong Kong democratic leader for "uttering seditious words"
(exact phrasing of the CCP today).

~~~
tkel
fyi in the "land of the free", people being mean to government agents are
cited for sedition

[https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/sdpd-
is...](https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/public-safety/sdpd-is-punishing-
speech-using-a-102-year-old-city-law/)

------
typon
This writing is so Orwellian it seems like a parody

------
vlovich123
Isn't it ridiculously easy to set up attacks from within a "clean" network? It
probably does increase costs marginally (you have to fly people to "clean"
countries, set up ISP access with third parties, etc) but are there any public
estimates how much it does that vs the increased costs to run this network? I
would think it's marginal.

Seeing the partner list this seems like more of a ploy by telecoms to attack
tech companies than any legitimate attempt to secure networks.

> To prevent U.S. citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our
> businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine
> research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible
> to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, China
> Mobile, China Telecom, and Tencent.

Am I missing something?

~~~
gpm
There's a bunch of different measures discussed, but they all seem to remove
some attack surface that we have seen exploited.

Securing the routers and network cables removes the means for man in the
middle attacks (or at least makes them preventable with router security). Not
connecting to telecos does the same (because of bgp highjacking and the like).

Removing chinese apps and not storing data on Chinese servers makes decreases
the amount of data that can be extracted from large portions of the population
by the CCP. E.g. preventing the "who knows who" graph from leaking wholesale
(even if individual nodes can still be investigated via other means).

This doesn't fix all security problems, but it removes some of China's current
advantages in cyberwarfare.

Not putting apps in Chinese app stores and devices looks to be an outlier in
that it's a form of sanction (in response to human rights abuses) rather than
a defensive measure.

~~~
adsjhdashkj
What i don't get is why we should care about this _(care as in, advocate
for)_. MITM is a great argument for distrusting the everyone in the middle,
not trying to increase trust in the middle man - no?

This just feels like an attempt to control _who_ is the middleman spying on
data, not actually securing Americans data. Which makes sense, coming from the
government and whatnot - but i'm just trying to make sense of if there's an
actual reason i should like this "Clean Network" _(which is to say, my comment
is an honest question, not an attack on the proposal)_.

Perhaps i'm just biased because of my (pet) passion for distributed systems. I
don't trust any MITM, so i think i struggle to understand the concern for
_who_ is in the middle.

I'd be far more interested in this type of pitch if it came with heavy support
for encryption, distribution, etc.

~~~
gpm
Look at the "great cannon" attack for an example of why securing the middle is
important. Secure software obviously shouldn't trust the middle, but the
middle being compromised means that insecure software can do orders of
magnitude more damage.

Moreover the middle can just shut down. Especially for things like embassies
it's not a good idea to give the adversaries an easy off switch.

I agree that "encrypt all the things" would be a very nice addition.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
I am surprised it did not make bigger news. I am genuinely annoyed that US, of
all places, is contributing to the splintering of the internet as we knew it.

But what surprises me more people are not up in arms about it. I mean, who
would not love only government approved code floating around and only child
appropriate messages being visible before 10PM.

If there is a real reason to dislike this administration, this is it.

------
Kapura
This is disgusting. Anybody working at an American firm that's supporting this
initiative should be ashamed. Anybody working on this project is actively
contributing to the destruction of international trust and cooperation.

I am beyond disgusted at my government. This Republican administration has
been an unprecedented disaster on every front.

~~~
scohesc
How would you suggest we limit the surveillance and active attacks on American
infrastructure by the Chinese government? They show no signs of letting up
and/or respecting how America works in the slightest.

~~~
DethNinja
Easy, USA can invest in open hardware/software. It would destroy Intel/AMD but
who cares, national security is more important, no?

~~~
tick_tock_tick
Ok that helps the issue in issue in 20-30+ years (develop the tech, start mass
production, replace all old hardware with it) what can we do in this decade?

~~~
DethNinja
That is the government's problem, had they asked me 20 years ago, I would've
told them moving all manufacturing operations to China just to enrich a small
small percent of people would be disastrous for the nation.

Right now I don't care whether China or USA spies, they are identical
countries in my mind.

Keep in mind that China can still spy on even with this Clean Network.

------
bblough
The link is now returning 404.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200808170849/https://www.state...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200808170849/https://www.state.gov/5g-clean-
network/)

------
anm89
Well, that's terrifying. I wouldn't be surprised if they get away with it
though.

------
dustingetz
I support the unity of all nations. The earth is but one country, and mankind
its citizens.

------
creativeCak3
Fuck. This is really terrifying. The internet has connected all of us, which
has been mostly for the better, and these idiots want to ruin it. I really
hope none of this shit sees the light of day.

------
annoyingnoob
Can we get a clean government? Free from hyper-partisan politics, where there
can be more than two sides and folks on other sides are still on the same
overall team and not the enemy?

Together we stand, divided we fall.

~~~
coliveira
The whole goal of trumpism is to create slaves to the ideology of white and
western supremacy. It has so clear racial undertones that it's not a surprise
they want to attack China: they see it more as a racial target, poorly
disguised with "homeland security" excuses.

~~~
k33n
Actually Trump is just fighting for the interests of Americans. Interesting
fan-fiction though!

~~~
coliveira
Wrong, Trump only fights for himself. Americans will also suffer the
consequences of a new irresponsible "Cold War". Trump, on the other hand, will
continue lining his pockets.

~~~
k33n
Diagnosis: TDS

------
cs702
In case it's not obvious after you read the text in that page, the word
"Clean" in the context of that text actually means:

* balkanized/siloed instead of globally standardized;

* permissioned instead of permissionless; and

* monitored via backdoors instead of optionally secure.

I'm reminded of this passage from George Orwell's classic piece, "Politics and
the English Language" ([http://www.public-
library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf](http://www.public-library.uk/ebooks/72/30.pdf)):

 _" In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the
Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can
indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people
to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question−begging
and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air,
the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine−gunned,
the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the
roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population
or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial,
or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber
camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is
needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of
them."_

\--

EDITS: Simplified language, and removed quotes from OP as well as several
paragraphs from the Orwell quote to make my comment shorter and easier to
digest.

~~~
A4ET8a8uTh0
I am not sure why you got downvoted. This is absolutely the interpretation you
can easily reach after reading it. Maybe readers perceive Orwell reference as
too dramatic?

------
motohagiography
The question I think this is an answer to is how you can have a reasonable
expectation of freedom and privacy while sharing an internet with a CCP who
has militarized their technology sector as a means to facilitate colonial
expansion.

I'm no fan of anyone involved, but we should accept that the Internet as we
may have known it has been compromised by exogenous governance structures and
their gatekeepers in service of non- and even anti-internet agendas, and it
can no longer seriously be considered a free territory for divergence and
innovation. The U.S. and their Clean network seems naive in a way, but in this
case, I don't object because I think it is the devil we know.

~~~
mindslight
Computer security does not operate around large sweeping claims of some party
doing something bad, and so doing something bad in retaliation. And it's
impossible for the "Internet" to be compromised - by definition it's an open
network that gets packets from A to B while letting most anyone listen in. So
then, what are the specific problems?

If the problem is that China is copying designs, then the solution is to stop
moving sensitive production there.

If it is that Chinese manufacturers are putting remote backdoors in products,
then the solution is to make _trustable_ designs with open firmware, and
domestic production of sensitive parts to avoid hardware backdoors.

If the problem is apps with built in surveillance, then the solution is to
secure mobile OSs to prevent data leakage.

If the problem is that Chinese groups are shitposting to manufacture political
consent, the solution is better social media filters, reputation systems, and
fixing our domestic institutions (eg the press) thus hindering the ability for
anyone to manufacture consent.

None of these things are solved by top-down imposition of some blunt firewall,
or whatever other misguided heavy handed ideas the politicians have in mind.
From the perspective of network security, it's really no big deal if Internet
addresses become 64 bits with the addition of a proxy.

~~~
motohagiography
This appears to be a rare example of a government providing a secure perimeter
for its citizens to create and innovate without being subject to a foreign
totalitarian machine's global spying operation. It's not a top down
imposition.

Reality is, if the U.S. govt doesn't protect its networks, people and
companies will have to protect themselves with encryption and hardware key
management that keeps China out, which by extension means keeping US law
enforcement out as well. It's a sovereignty issue.

------
kyawzazaw
I wonder how this is feasible for US embassies in countries like Myanmar where
basically all telecom and connections are ZTE/Huawei related.

~~~
mthoms
Satellites perhaps?

------
ahmedfromtunis
The general wording of the proposal is way more US-vs-China centered to be a
call to "all freedom-loving nations and companies".

------
alexmingoia
1) This won’t stop or significantly mitigate hacking from China. China is
perfectly capable of hacking US software on US networks.

2) China has the intellectual capacity to meet the US technologically without
stealing IP. Putting pressure on them will just encourage faster technological
development.

3) At this point, it seems China will continue to expand control of South
China Sea, or US will go to war with China to stop them. Any middle ground is
fast disappearing. Hawks in US seem to have won control of strategy.

------
Angostura
Saw the headline and I assumed it was an international iniative to promote
clean, sustainable energy. I should have known.

------
xg15
Aside:

> _To prevent U.S. citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our
> businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine
> research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible
> to our foreign adversaries_

I find it an interesting choice to specifically use COVID-19 vaccine research
as an example of intellectual property.

What about all the talk that COVID-19 vaccines should be developed in global
collaboration and that vaccines should become available to everyone worldwide?

~~~
rsa25519
Steelmanning the web page, maybe they meant protecting the research against
tampering?

Regardless, I think the site mentioning COVID-19 is needlessly inflammatory.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I'm a bit skeptical that this will go anywhere.

Many reasons, which I won't go into, but...ya never know...

------
jahabrewer
> We know the risk of an adversary running comms because we did it for a while
> with Crypto AG

------
devteambravo
Is there where we start piling up books and burning them? The Sanitized
Network. Looks bleak.

------
cutler
I wonder how the recently announced 400 vulns in Qualcom mobile chips fits
into all this?

------
breck
> our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19
> vaccine research

1\. If we have some valuable Covid-19 research, shouldn't we like, um, not
keep that a secret?

2\. Also, if we're going to take this farcical notion of "IP" seriously, it's
only right that we give up all our guns, since gunpowder was invented in
China, and we are infringing on their "intellectual property".

------
badpenny
The Clean Network being the same network that Edward Snowden spoke out about?

------
mas3god
Is it really that big of a deal to try to cut china out of the internet?

------
topkai22
I should find this more mortifying, but with the EU Court of Justice's
decision on the privacy shield, India's ban on Chinese apps, and the great
firewall + other nationalized internets, the US just seems like a late mover
on nationalizing the internet.

------
nitrobeast
It will be interesting to see how many telecoms in EU would join this.

------
dillon
I guess I'm confused. I clicked the link and read through it really quick. I
didn't really have a lot of strong opinions. This seems to be a response to
how powerful China is becoming and that's scary for many reasons. This almost
seems like a natural reaction of one government trying to abuse the internet
and another government trying to protect it's citizens. It might even be
irresponsible for the U.S. not to react. Obviously, there's no mention of
Russia, but let's shelve that for now.

I wasn't totally alarmed by what I read. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something,
but I take this as a sort of stamp of approval that a cloud/network/platform
isn't compromised by China. It doesn't seem to say, "Only use the U.S.
internet" as other commenters have mentioned. The stamp of approval seems to
be global (if you look at the list that was mentioned it's worldwide, not just
the US).

When I came back to look at the comments I was surprised to see a lot of
noise. I feel like something must have flew over my head and maybe someone can
explain it to me. I went ahead and read the link again but slower and I still
don't understand the reaction I'm seeing on HN.

Maybe it's some sort of state of idealism. People want the internet to be a
place that's free from tyranny or government, but that's not what's happening.
China/Russia/US/whoever is abusing the internet to gain an upper-hand. The
best solution is to reinvent the internet, which I know there are a quite a
few projects going on that are trying to accomplish that, but in the meantime
what is a government supposed to do? Let other governments siphon their
citizen's data without a cost?

Again, I could use an explanation as I must have missed something that a lot
of other people are finding very obvious. When a top level comment just says
"Make sure you vote in November". I don't understand the context.

Disclaimer: I am definitely not voting for Trump and dislike pretty much
everything the administration has done. Yet, I do try to look at everything in
silos.

~~~
ru552
I'm not really sure what's going on here either. Reading the article, it looks
like there will be a list of approved providers of telco equipment and all
services to US govt facilities will be required to use the approved list of
gear. Same for 5g networks. I don't see how that splits up the internet. The
app store thing could be fishy or maybe is just leads to a disclaimer in the
app store that an app is "clean" or not.

------
kyberias
Robert C. Martin is thrilled.

------
drivingmenuts
Almost the last people I would trust to keep my information safe.

And I live here.

------
codethief
> Clean Cable: To ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the
> global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at
> hyper scale

What is hyper scale? Did Trump write the copy for this site?

------
sequoia
> The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive
> approach to safeguarding the nation’s assets including citizens’ privacy and
> companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign
> actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.

What bunkum. What about intrusion by parties such as Russian intelligence
using legal methods, targeting ads using our "most sensitive information" on
Facebook to benefit Trump? Trump wants to talk about the Chinese digging
tunnels under the house while his cronies (domestic and Russian) walk right in
the front door.

This is such an obvious ploy to change the conversation away from the now
>160,000 Covid-19 deaths in the USA resulting from his disastrous management
of the crisis.

------
biolurker1
Election year. Instead of saying USA government's program its Trump program.

------
entropea
>The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive
approach to safeguarding the nation’s assets including citizens’ privacy and
companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign
actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.

Straight up consent manufacturing.

------
coliveira
Welcome to the great firewall of the US. The trump regime seems to be adamant
in copying the worst of digital surveillance and anti-competitive prohibitions
from communist countries.

------
52-6F-62
_All run on clean, clean coal_

Kidding aside, this is so blatant I can hardly believe I'm seeing it happen.

------
DiabloD3
Vote.org

Make sure you're registered, and make sure you vote in November.

~~~
tick_tock_tick
What would possible make you think Biden would change course on this? Neither
party likes China and the whole idea that a new administration is going to
roll back a hardline policy vs them is crazy.

------
coliveira
Trump plans are the musings of a rambling idiot. He and his enablers don't
know anything about technology and the impact this can have on American
companies.

------
yters
What is a better way to prevent mass IP theft the CCP is doing?

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Simple, stop outsourcing manufacturing to China. Companies regularly get
contracts which require an IP transfer in return for cheap mass labor. Of
course there's IP which is stolen, but that's the cost of doing business when
manufacturing at home has been shuttered.

~~~
codemonkey-zeta
But, wouldn't this need to be enforced by the government? How else are
companies going to agree to stop outsourcing manufacturing to China? And if
you agree that the correct solution involves government regulation, then what
specifically about this plan doesn't accomplish your preferred outcome of
"stop outsourcing manufacturing to China"? I may be naive but I also fail to
see exactly how this plan is bad. Do you not feel the Chinese government is
using technology to undermine the US, or that this isn't actually a legitimate
and compelling issue of national defense?

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
My comment was intended to be descriptive, rather than prescriptive. IP theft
isn't a new thing and American companies no doubt take it into account when
manufacturing overseas.

Enforcing IP internationally is actually quite difficult anyways. Tariffs
effectively restrict manufacturing overseas, as there's some breaking point in
cost to produce.

I don't believe banning trade / manufacturing to China is a good idea, we
depend on them for cheap consumer goods, and they depend on that revenue. We
developed a dependency on Chinese manufacturing because it was cheap, and no
with little to no manufacturing ability stateside, we're tied to their
economy.

As someone who worked for the D.O.E for years, I can care less where consumer
goods / technology is manufactured. The US government already has VERY strict
rules about manufacturing for military / transportation equipment. "National
Defense" isn't going to be decided by who owns TikTok or app-de-jour.

------
AlleyTrotter
you would all be in love with the idea if it was proposed by the obama
administration

------
LatteLazy
We should cautiously support this on the 1% chance that it's not a publicity
stunt and actually could lead to some action on China.

------
beepboopbeep
This particular administration has gone out of its way to gaslight everyone
and thing it possibly can. It is to the point that everything they do is
consider suspicious and/or a lie at face value. That they have the gall to
name this "The Clean Network" and encourage the allies they have been
bludgeoning for the past 4 years to join it is both laughable and insulting.

------
bmitc
> We call on all freedom-loving nations and companies to join the Clean
> Network.

This makes me physically sick. The only freedom you have in the U.S. is being
poor, controlled, and oh yea, you can Tweet whatever you want. While the U.S.,
both citizens and the government, have pointed fingers at Russia, China, and
<name a country>, we've been under the assault of propaganda and control for
decades, at increasing rates, all under the guise of so-called freedom and
democracy. Instead of propelling us into the future, our government has
dragged its feet to pull us back all in the name of pure greed and control,
giving itself and corporations near limitless power by sacrificing the common
people.

~~~
dane-pgp
> oh yea, you can Tweet whatever you want.

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but:

[https://www.cracked.com/article_25266_6-totally-stupid-
thing...](https://www.cracked.com/article_25266_6-totally-stupid-things-
twitter-will-ban-you-doing.html)

~~~
bmitc
Edge cases for an obvious hyperbole is not really bad news. Of course you
can't Tweet whatever you want, and you can't even say whatever you want.
That's obvious. The hyperbole was a jab at people, often commenters on this
very site, justifying "freedom" in the U.S. as being able to Tweet the
president whatever you want, within reason, as opposed to other authoritarian
countries.

