
Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027 - doener
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53403793
======
dang
All: HN has been seeing a dismaying increase in nationalistic flamewar. This
is not allowed here. I know it feels important when you're caught up in the
intensity of such feelings, but it is not _interesting_ , which is what HN is
for. Worse, it has the effect on interesting discussion that tank battles have
on a city park.

If you don't have something thoughtful and substantive to say, please don't
post until you do. Drop denunciatory rhetoric—it's tedious and evokes worse
from others.

Remember that the community is divided on divisive topics and that the person
disagreeing with you is probably not a spy, but just someone who disagrees
with you.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
dang
This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place. That way we can
collapse it and prevent too much offtopicness at the top of thread.

~~~
dicomdan
Can you present evidence of moderation not having a one sided bias? Every time
I see anything critical of the US / Europe / Canada and other liberal
democracies it's sitting at the top, no matter how unsubstantiated. While
every time there's anything that puts CCP in a bad light there's strong
moderation because it's "not interesting" (even though this particular event
is objectively very noteworthy in tech world and beyond).

~~~
dang
> Every time I see anything critical of the US / Europe / Canada and other
> liberal democracies it's sitting at the top, no matter how unsubstantiated

The key word here is "see". The problem is that we mostly _see_ what we're
primed to notice—which is basically whatever we most dislike—and we simply
don't see (or don't weight as heavily) all the cases that don't feel that way.
This creates a feeling of "every" or "always" (see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23835843](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23835843)
in this thread), which is a true statement of what you've seen, but only
because your seeing is extremely conditioned by your passions on the topic. (I
don't mean you personally—we all seem to have this bias.) People with opposite
passions see literally the opposite picture. Moreover, the degree to which the
picture you see feels unfair and unbalanced is a function, not of the raw data
stream, but of the intensity of your passion, regardless of which direction it
points.

For evidence, if you search my comments you'll find examples where I've
admonished users for flamewar in the opposite direction, as well as for
flamewar on other topics, including nationalistic flamewar about other
countries (India is probably the second most common case; Russia was up there
for a few years and still flares up at times).

~~~
dicomdan
Thanks for the response. If you claim there's no bias, would you be willing to
release the full list of posts that have been nudged / downranked from the
front page by moderator or trusted users as part of a "HN transparency
report"?

~~~
dang
That comes up from time to time:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20litigious&sort=byDate&type=comment).
I think it would be a mistake—it would drain our resources while convincing no
one. People who see "every" comment they disagree with "always" at the top,
and "every" comment they disagree with "always" flagged and removed, are not
looking remotely objectively. I don't mean to pick on you personally—these are
extremely common feelings that are rooted in cognitive biases we all share.
But the patterns they claim are not even close to true, so anyone who wants to
be convinced by evidence can just look at HN in the first place. Beyond that,
there's plenty of transparency available through HN Search and the moderation
record of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dang).
Anyone who looks through the record can find numerous examples of us
moderating opposite views in exactly the same way, if they want to.

By the way, I don't claim there's no moderation bias. How can we know what
unconscious biases we may have? I'm just saying that certain stock allegations
about it are false and have clear explanations.

~~~
dicomdan
Does it mean every thread that is downranked by moderator or superuser will
have your comment in it that will show up in search results visible to
everyone in the community? Or are there threads that are promoted or demoted
silently?

~~~
dang
It does not mean that. HN is a curated, moderated site; it always has been.
Moderators do lots of things that aren't commented.

There isn't any class of things we do that is secret, though.

------
euix
Here is a meta comment: having read this entire thread, it's pretty obvious
that if even reasonably educated and intelligent people on a technical forum
like this descend into complete disagreement then one can think what happens
among the society and people at large on both sides of the Pacific and how
easily it is to descend into a conflict.

------
benlumen
Something I don't see many people talking about is how Openreach, the UK's
main physical layer broadband provider, uses Huawei kit in the majority of its
street cabinets and has done since FTTC VDSL was rolled out a decade ago.

5G is the tip of the iceberg with respect to the UK's communications
infrastructure involvement with Huawei.

~~~
wyuenho
Worse, Hyperoptic gives everyone a terrible ZTE router lol

~~~
Deathmax
At least for the two Hyperoptic installs I've had or seen in the past 2 years
have been Tilgin routers ([https://hyperoptic.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/Tilgin-HG2...](https://hyperoptic.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/Tilgin-HG2381-admin-manual.pdf)) instead of ZTE
routers.

~~~
wyuenho
I think they've ran out of them a long time ago. I requested a non-ZTE that
support 5Ghz last year. They didn't have any and they said they weren't
ordering them anymore. Those Tilgin are probably old stock.

------
rich_sasha
If this is just Realpolitik/hardware independence, fine, but security..?

Any worthwhile Internet traffic should be encrypted in 2020, and if it isn’t,
Huawei probably isn’t the most immediate concern.

And if it is encrypted, does it really matter who is listening?

Comments welcome, I know zilch about telecoms hardware.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Your questions aren't about telecoms hardware, but about politics and the
international flow of power. China is slated to take over the world
economically. Their political model has the potential to spread around the
world. These are attempts to limit China's capacity to grow as fast while
inhibiting their capacity to knock out, intercept, or backdoor critical
infrastructure.

~~~
rich_sasha
Yeah, this I get and, well, sympathise in a way. There is no war, but an
ongoing struggle for staying ahead economically, and if this is a part of it,
at least there is a logic to it.

I’m asking, is there really a security risk that Huawei might listen in on
telecoms. Is traffic at the low level more vulnerable somehow? Is it the
prevalence of unencrypted communications? Is it leaking of metadata that
people are worried about?

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Yes, the risk is real. Imagine the US made phones for Russia during the Cold
War, and the phones were so complicated and full of microcontrollers that
reverse engineering and ensuring that a backdoor wasn't in place was
impossible. Do you really think the US wouldn't have taken advantage of that?

The specific technical risk is unknown, though. There are thousands of
microcontrollers in a modern advanced electronic device. It's nearly
impossible to inspect each one and see what exactly is backdoored and how.

~~~
sudosysgen
The phones have access to the raw data. The towers shouldn't have access to
the raw data, because presumably it's encrypted. If it isn't, it's game over
anyways. Not really comparable.

You could make an argument about metadata, which is much more questionable
from the get-go.

~~~
filoleg
I think the parent comment wasn't talking about intercepting traffic and being
able to know what your enemy is talking about.

The parent comment was talking about being able to take advantage of the
situation by making the enemy use your devices and then incapacitating their
infrastructure at the perfect moment by activating the killswitch on those
devices.

~~~
sudosysgen
The solution for that isn't to boycott Huawei, it's to have multiple networks
with many providers.

A country using Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei is much better protected to such an
attack than a company using only Nokia or only Huawei or only Ericsson, or
both Nokia and Ericsson but not Huawei.

~~~
filoleg
Sure, I am not arguing one way or another regarding whether this ban is good
or not. I am just saying that the cold war analogy had nothing to do with
encryption, unlike what the post I am replying to is attempting to imply.

------
BrandoElFollito
All providers had their infamy moment at some point, leaving a backdoor
behind.

Maybe for spying, maybe because QA failed.

Huawei is on the US radar but somehow when Cisco left a backdoor on some
routers it was "just a mistake".

Every country is guilty of stabbing in the back others (occasionally or all
the time), it has been the case for centuries and is not likely to change.

I am French, we do not have our own tech so we get stuff from everyone around
- we are probably in the worst spot from that perspective.

~~~
VWWHFSfQ
I've wondered how EU people feel about things like this. Euros have been
inundated with "Americana" for the last 40 years or so. They watch TV shows
about Americans, movies about Americans. They use American social media
networks. It's like a culture-overload like USA is always "in your face". USA
never had any problem with Skype as a Danish company being used by a
significant number of Americans. But TikTok, a Chinese company, is stirring up
national security issues.

~~~
arp242
I think the issue is that the United States – for all its faults and Snowden
leaks and whatnot – can still be trusted, somewhat, to do the right thing.
There clearly _are_ trust issues (for good reasons) but I would sure trust the
US gov't _more_ to not install backdoors in equipment private companies
deliver to befriended foreign nations.

China, on the other hand, has no clear separation between the state and large
private companies, and has a state which does not acknowledge basic human
rights in a myriad of ways. Again, the US is not _perfect_ here either, but it
sure is _better_.

Personally, I wish Europeans would use more, well, European equipment for this
kind of stuff. This isn't out of some nationalistic sentiment (I have no
problems using foreign equipment _as such_ ), but given the state of the
world's affairs and the direction I fear it might be heading, a strong and
independent Europe will probably be more important than ever in the coming
decades.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
One lesson from Snowden's leaks is that the US is engaging in surveillance on
supposed allies - not just enemies. This includes intercepting and modifying
network equipment during delivery (Tailored Access Operations), and
intercepting internal government communications of allies during trade
negotiations. The consequences of the latter are quite significant, since
knowing the other side's strategy and bottom line gives the US a serious leg
up in negotiations.

------
gberger
The justification is that the equipment presents a national security risk.

If that's true, how is it reasonable to allow this equipment to operate in the
UK for 7 more years? Doesn't that mean the UK is willingly under national
security risk for 7 years?

Unless, of course, there was never a security risk...

~~~
tomfanning
Not dissimilar to how face masks are being made compulsory in shops by the
British government.

In 11 days' time.

~~~
krona
You're assuming everyone who must to go to a shop in the next 11 days already
have in their possession an appropriate face covering; the definition of which
is as yet unknown.

~~~
blhack
If the face masks are that essential (which they probably are): wrap a t shirt
around your face.

------
CodesInChaos
If the protocols used for mobile networks were designed to be secure, most of
the infrastructure couldn't do anything worse than a DoS attack. It'd still
need some trusted servers for key management, but those could be standard
hardware with relatively simple software.

~~~
electronWizard
If China can cause a denial of service attack on a country by remotely
bricking all the network infrastructure or even slowing it down to a degree,
this would still be economically devastating at the least.

~~~
Traster
I think there's a difference worth noting between subtle monitoring & coersion
vs. a full out act of war. By the time China is trying to denial of service
the UK's 5G infrastructure we've got other things to worry about.

~~~
Swenrekcah
But they don't need to dos the whole country, just interfere up to the point
of plausible deniability. They could do targeted outages for some UK firm at a
stratetic moment or something.

Also in the case of an actual war, it's surely better to not have your entire
nations communications under enemy control.

------
room271
This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few years. It's a
tough question: how to marry globalisation with the political realities. When
China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps the assumption was
that China would liberalise more quickly than it has. But China, while
increasingly mature economically, has not developed proper civil society,
human rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope they do
so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the Chinese people
themselves. And let us work to improve our example and unity too in countries
where we do have these things, however imperfectly.

~~~
flohofwoe
I think the simplistic sort of thinking that capitalism and human rights are
'inseparable' from each other and can be 'exported' like Coca Cola or Blue
Jeans is just a leftover from the Cold War. The reality is much more
complicated unfortunately, together with the slowly growing realisation that
the USA has quickly lost it's 'role model' status as the leader of the 'Free
World' after the Cold War has ended.

The West needed 30 years to realize that (some are still working on this I
think) because it thought that it had actually 'won' the Cold War through it's
actions _during_ the Cold War, when the reality was much more likely that the
East had collapsed also without much 'help' from the West.

The countries on the 'losing side' in this battle of ideologies (like the
Soviet Union and China) had adapted to this new reality much more quickly,
both in different ways though, but none of them copied the 'obviously
superior' model of the Free West.

Of course hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes I've got the impression that many
people in the West still wear their rose-tinted Cold War glasses ;)

~~~
Ekaros
Considering the actions of these capitalist nations during Cold War it's
pretty clear in retrospective that promoting human rights and democracy wasn't
very high priority. Propping up dictators and terrorist don't seem very much
in those lines.

~~~
chillacy
America had to undergo a great amount of social change too before it came out
the winner. With groups like the Black Panthers carrying around Mao's little
red book, it seems to me that America had to (was forced to) become more
inclusive to build allies and compete with the soviet union.

~~~
jeffsboi
Dont you talk about black panthers in this manner.

------
stephenheron
I would encourage people to read the NCSC blog post on this as it goes into
technical detail on why the decision was made.

[https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/a-different-future-for-
tel...](https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/a-different-future-for-telecoms-in-
the-uk)

~~~
pqhwan
Effectively US is pulling US-made chip design tools from under huawei’s
manufacturing process. Seems that the political calculus is that this will
damage huawei’s standing, at the expense of global technological cooperation.
But to what end? It falls short of providing Huawei (and the state behind it)
with incentives to be more transparent with their technology, and at best
creates a necessity for them to become wholly independent in their process. I
guess the US is betting they can’t pull this off, but if they do, this policy
has bought US nothing but a few years of suppression and a fiercer
competition.

~~~
remarkEon
>It falls short of providing Huawei (and the state behind it) with incentives
to be more transparent with their technology, and at best creates a necessity
for them to become wholly independent in their process. I guess the US is
betting they can’t pull this off...

Bingo. It seems like this is more a bet that they can't become wholly
independent without the tooling itself, or can't become independent for a long
while. I doubt it has much to do with "setting up incentives for
transparency". I think the "will China become transparent about its actions"
question is pretty much settled at this point.

------
melonkidney
According to [1], Huawei employs 1,500 people in the UK. I'm curious - if
anyone from Huawei UK is reading, how is this news being perceived?

[1] [https://www.huawei.com/uk/facts/huawei-
uk](https://www.huawei.com/uk/facts/huawei-uk)

------
neximo64
Following the German strategy I see. Just put things so far out they’re the
next governments responsibility

~~~
tzs
Or maybe the idea is to put it far enough out that no one actually has to
start replacing equipment until the US has a new administration and they can
see where that administration stands on China.

If Trump gets reelected this year that will be his second term which is the
limit, and so there will be a new administration in January 2025. If he
doesn't get reelected there will be a new administration on January 2021.

------
tibbydudeza
Just the beginning of a new cold war.

The Belt and Road initiative was a clear sign that China is confident and more
assertive geo-political player and intends to eventually replace the US as the
dominant world power.

An easy choice of the UK to make considering they export very little of
consequence to China ... Australia on the other hand.

------
oliwarner
This makes me nervous.

If the last few years mismanagement of Brexit, privatising the NHS,
"universal" credit, historic immigration renegs, the perpetually delayed
reaction to Covid19, PPE procurement contracts going to zero-asset companies
monetarily linked to Tory members and donors...

Well... A large part of me _hopes_ it's mere incompetence.

But the bigger picture seems to be a party that —starting with May as Home
Secretary— has been pushing harder and harder at knowing everything about
everybody. Kicking out incumbent foreign hardware providers seems like a
bloody good way to plant your own hardware in its place and achieve another
level of control.

------
dependenttypes
I am actually glad for this. Not because of any nationalistic reason but
rather because Huawei is an extremely anti-user company (locked bootloader
etc) and I would be glad if it went down.

------
Huntsecker
there is so much talk on here that this is about security or that the USA has
some hold over the UK. The one and only reason this has gone back to parliment
to vote on and that it has been decided not to use Huawei is because due to
the sanctions the US has placed on Huawei around procuring chips the UK has
come to the conclusion that its not safe to use Huawei due to the risk that
replacement devices might become an issue.

------
elicox
2027? I guess to install 6G

~~~
someperson
> UK's mobile providers are being banned from buying new Huawei 5G equipment
> after 31 December 2020

~~~
est
good news, huawei just got bunch of 4G LTE Advanced++ gears to sell

------
m3kw9
5 years serves 2 things, one is to show UK is with their partner US and two, 5
years is a long time for a punishment to be effective because so much policies
can change(2 elections) during this, and China knows this isn’t really a big
punishment.

------
AndyMcConachie
A trade war masquerading as national security concerns.

~~~
msla
No, the security concerns are real, given the TikTok example and so on.

~~~
msla
Ah, this is proof I struck a nerve!

------
simonkafan
Impressive how much power the USA has over UK. It is known that Cisco has
backdoors in their routers - and UK politics doesn't care. Now the Trump
administration is spreading the rumor that Huawei hardware _might_ have
backdoors (when the most plausible actual reason for this warning is to gain
the upper hand in the trade war) and England is already putting the wish into
action.

~~~
fluffything
UK is in a weird spot now alone in the world out of the EU.

The country is essentially for sale. China just needs to make the "right"
political donations.

~~~
puppymaster
They did try and it wasn't enough. Or as you put it, wasn't the 'right'
candidate.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/14/lord-
brown...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2020/07/14/lord-browne-quits-
huawei-uk-chairman-ahead-government-ban/)

------
alexnewman
Carrier maintenance modes still allow you to access the memory of the device
and force screenshots to fire

~~~
pilsetnieks
This is about carrier equipment, not phones. In fact, phones are exempt from
this decision.

~~~
alexnewman
Please re-read what I said. The carrier equipment can read the memory of your
phone remotely dog. It's a "feature" in nearly all Qualcomm chips

------
godelmachine
Guys, just my lame thought but can’t differential privacy be legally enforced
in every software on every digital device?

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy)

~~~
haecceity
I think the issue is that things that can not encrypted because of protocol
requirements is enough to be dangerous

[https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-
chief-...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-we-
kill-people-based-on-metadata)

------
TwoNineFive
The ghost of Nortel haunts thee.

------
catherd
What's the expected service life for that kind of network gear? Wouldn't most
of it be gone or upgraded by then anyway?

~~~
franklampard
4G lasted probably 5 years

------
kimsant
a very simple person here:

Does this mean that operators will have to pay for it, so new investments will
be required?

If 5G deployment price increase due to this political stuff, is gonna be then
more expensive for the end user no? price will reflect it i guess...

------
coliveira
We will end up like cavemen if we start to banish every new technology coming
from China based on racism. China will not stop developing new technology just
because the US doesn't like it.

~~~
justwalt
I don’t think people dislike Chinese tech because it’s made by Chinese people,
but rather because the Chinese government is assumed to have some hand in it.
Best faith interpretation and all that, right?

~~~
coliveira
Technology has no political badges or flags. First of all, scientists and
engineers are not political actors. Moreover, I have all the right to use a
technology if I want it, even if it was developed in a totalitarian regime.
For the US to prevent me from using this technology is infringing on my
freedoms.

~~~
newbie578
Get of your high horse. Scientists and engineers in China, are political
actors. Everything done in china is political. And your right is superseded by
national security, and good luck trying to find infringment on it.

I for one am rooting to start boycotting the whole of China, until their
communist regime which conducts genocide is forced to change and play humane
and fair.

~~~
dang
Please stop posting flamewar comments. We ban accounts that do that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
macspoofing
The China-US tensions are not going to get better, and, in fact, will get
worse as years go by. More and more nations will be forced to choose sides.
It's not good and I'm not sure what a resolution even looks like.

~~~
est31
A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and totalitarianism
needs to be fought, but I doubt that a democratic China would be any different
when it comes to their claims to the world. They'd want to expand just as they
want to expand now. Just look at the various western colonial empires of
history. Many of them were democracies in some form or fashion.

Any long term resolution to the conflict has to involve the realization that
China has had 100 bad years and now has a giant comeback. And that the US has
had 60 good years but now large parts of it decline.

~~~
chosenbreed37
> A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and
> totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a democratic China
> would be any different when it comes to their claims to the world.

I wonder about this. Why does totalitarianism in a sovereign nation need to be
fought? For those of us considering a democratic China...why do we think the
country would fare better as a democracy? The Chinese civilisation is goes
back thousands of years. Could the system they have now be the cumulative
effect of all they have gone through to date? In other words it has evolved
and generally serves its people. It may evolve into something else (possibly
resembling Western democracies) but it may not. I don't particularly think it
has to.

~~~
arp242
If you see your neighbour kick their dog (or even child) would you stand idly
by and say "well, it seems to work for them" or would you take action?

------
AdrianB1
Total crap;either it is a security risk and it has to be removed yesterday or
it is not. 2027 is meaningless.

~~~
IshKebab
That's not how risks work.

~~~
sixstringtheory
Do you buckle your seatbelt before you start driving or when you're 68% of the
way to your destination?

~~~
kube-system
A closer car analogy: antique vehicles without seatbelts were not banned from
public roads when seatbelts became mandatory.

~~~
sixstringtheory
Except that it's already been decided the towers will be removed, which is
counter to your example. My analogy was meant to highlight the delay in action
against something that has been deemed a risk.

~~~
kube-system
Almost every safety regulation does this; few are effective immediately.
Manufacturing plants need retooled, workforces need retrained, new equipment
needs to be acquired and implemented, compliance measure must be implemented,
etc.

>Except that it's already been decided the towers will be removed, which is
counter to your example.

Grandfather clauses are implementation grace periods that are equal to the
expected lifetime of the device. This is not counter to the example -- this is
an example that sometimes these grace periods are very generous even for
things we are very sure are unsafe.

------
jk20
U.S. is just concerned that China, and not them, will get an edge in spying
and the next industrial revolution. Speaking of human rights it should be
noted that U.S. not only wantonly attacks or bullies other countries, but it
also has the highest incarceration rate in the world - in absolute terms the
number of inmates is comparable to that of China and India combined.

~~~
rashkov
Regarding your first point, yes, that’s an interesting take. Regarding the
criticism of the US, yes you’re probably correct, but this is a “what about”
argument that doesn’t really aid the discussion in my opinion.

~~~
Barrin92
Whataboutism gets brought out too fast to dismiss discussion. Democratic
systems project their values by demonstrating them. A democratic state that
cannot show that its values work will have no ability to demand of others to
emulate it.

In that context the failures of the US (as it is de-facto the standard-bearer
of political liberalism in a broad sense), have real influence.

When the Chinese look around the world and they see the state of the US on
imprisonment, racial conflict, failure during the current covid crisis and so
on, this strengthens the domestic control of the party and the alternative
autocratic system the government is advocating.

~~~
rashkov
The US has certainly lost a lot of moral standing, and yes it makes it harder
to criticize others, and it strengthens autocratic hands abroad to be able to
point to the US' failures.

That said, the parent poster isn't the US government, but a private citizen
raising a valid criticism of another country. So why can't it stand on its
own, without a big show of self-criticism first? Can we not criticize others
until our own house is in order? Once that happens, the discussion turns into
an argument over moral equivalence or lack thereof -- ie. "the US' crimes are
just as bad as China's!" versus "No these things are of completely different
degrees!".

This line of argument quickly becomes tiring and, I think it completely
muddles the original point, which is often what is intended when hurling "what
about...!" into the discussion.

~~~
free_rms
I hear what you're saying here, and no, our country doesn't have to be perfect
before criticizing someone else.

But still, we should wonder if the criticism is motivated by something other
than pure concern for human rights. You expect me to believe that Americans
are mad at China strictly because they really, really care about the rights of
muslims? With our record and our allies' records?

Or is it possible that this is just motivated by geopolitical interest?

~~~
rashkov
I believe that people who claim to be mad at Chinese human rights abuses are
mostly genuine in their feelings. They also have a blind spot for the abuses
of their own country and their allies. That blind spot probably comes from the
part of ourselves that's very tribal, as well as a social and political
environment that ignores and minimizes self-criticism.

Now, if we're talking about the US state department, then absolutely they're
doing it for geopolitical interests. However, they're also reflecting the
concerns of at least some of their citizens.

I'd also like to note that there's a moral equivalence argument to be made
here. It's possible that China's abuses are actually worse than our own. Or
maybe not. I just want to acknowledge that aspect of this argument, but I
don't want to get into it because I'm not really informed enough to make it,
and I'm certain that 80% of that impression is formed by skimming headlines
and whatnot, which is not really a proper basis for debate.

~~~
sudosysgen
A consequentialist analysis would say that attacking China when it is almost
impossible to influence while ignoring the abuses of your own government is
even worse than inaction, because you are giving even more power to a state
that is pretty much as bad.

I would be much more amenable to agreeing with the people that claim to be mad
at China in the US if the solutions they proposed didn't give more power to
US, that has no fundamental difference in foreign policy than China.
Economically isolating China, for example, does absolutely nothing to help the
treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but gives a _lot_ more power to the United
States. But if the solutions that were being talked about changed the balance
of power towards entities that didn't wantonly abuse human rights, I would
entirely agree.

Therefore, I don't think it's whataboutism. It would be whataboutism if the
claim was that China actually respects human rights because the US is worse.
But the question is different - it's whether we should economically isolate
China on the pretext of their human rights abuses, or not. Saying that the
party that benefits from this and that is pushing it is fundamentally just as
disrespectful of human rights is not whataboutism, it's a question of whether
the proposed actions will do anything for human rights at all.

It seems pretty clear to me that they won't.

------
jaekash
And we already know China has been backdooring other equipment:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-
big-h...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-
china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies)

So yes, this is a small victory in a massive war.

~~~
londons_explore
The cost of that victory, according to the BBC, is a 1 year delay in the
rollout of 5G tech.

That's a pretty large economic cost. Bob can't watch his medical lectures on
the train, so ends up behind in class, Mary's company looses a contract to a
foreign competitor because she got frustrated with her bad VPN and didn't read
over the bid one last time, Fred couldn't afford the cost of the new 5G
contracts so didn't get much data and ended up losing touch with his friends
who were all group video calling eachother.

All these socio-economic costs cascade for decades or more. Do they really
outweigh the theoretical ability for another nation to disrupt network traffic
for a few hours until a mitigation is put in place?

~~~
cm2187
Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but assuming you aren't. No consumer is
asking for 5g, and I don't think any consumer will realise the difference. And
not sure that 5g can do much good on a train, unless the train circles around
inside a big city and never goes in the countryside where what matters is
antenna with long range.

~~~
jvanderbot
5g also doesn't beat my wifi. My wife and I slashed our data plans during
COVID.

~~~
fock
but your wifi is unreliable and slow. Instead of buying a good AP, buy this 5G
modem for only $5 and get your nice, capped 20MBit/s for $200 a month. Isn't
this just what you need, when every site is slowly just getting a fibre-
connection theoretically allowing a community hosted mobile mesh-network in
any city which deserves the name.

------
aphroz
Will the brexit still be in progress by then?

------
mrbonner
It is increasingly appears that the CCP government wants to confront every
countries at the same time. First, I thought this was just the power
struggle/grab between US-CCP economically. Then, it spread to the political
issues like the South China sea claims which pisses off Viet Nam, The
Philippines , Taiwan. The CCP even manages to engage India into its
territorial issue resulted in sanction from Indian gov. In the north-east
side, the CCP is irritating Japan to a point Japan is considering ramping up
its army.

If the CCP wants conflicts at least it needs to find allies, right? So why
then it tries to piss off just about every countries it's surrounded by?

~~~
nindalf
> it needs to find allies

No shortage of Chinese allies - 70+ countries supported China's recent change
to Hong Kong's laws
([https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1193422.shtml](https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1193422.shtml)).
Certainly none of these countries are bastions of freedom - North Korea,
Venezuela, Chad, Myanmar, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan. But all of them support China
to the hilt. Tanzania didn't even stop with an endorsement of the HK law, they
also felt it necessary to mention that Taiwan is a part of China. Turns out
Chinese loans go a long way in creating a sense of gratitude.

All countries barring the US need China more than China needs them. And China
only needs the US until it has semiconductors of it's own.

The US and EU were asleep at the wheel these last 30 years - allowing China to
grow powerful without also creating a counterweight like India. Now the
world's dependence on Chinese manufacturing and Chinese consumption means that
no one dares to criticise China, and there's no shortage of countries lining
up to praise every action of Comrade Xi's.

That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking what they please.
Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or Malaysia suddenly going to stand up to
China? No, they will merely grumble. Is India willing to provoke an actual
war? No, they will merely ban TikTok and call it a day.

~~~
blibble
> That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking what they please.
> Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or Malaysia suddenly going to stand up
> to China? No, they will merely grumble.

ah yes, exactly the same logic that resulted in World War 2

~~~
nindalf
The world is much more inter-connected than it was then. The cost of a war
with China is orders of magnitude more than the cost of a war with Germany. In
fact, for the first several months of WWII, British and French citizens barely
noticed the war.

War with China would be extremely painful, every single item that modern life
depends upon apart from food will suddenly become scarce. That acts as a
powerful deterrent.

~~~
blibble
> The world is much more inter-connected than it was then. The cost of a war
> with China is orders of magnitude more than the cost of a war with Germany.

"economic interdependence prevents wars" was commonly accepted to be true in
the 1910s, right up until the outbreak of World War I

