
Huawei Sting Offers Rare Glimpse of the U.S. Targeting a Chinese Giant - moh_maya
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-04/huawei-sting-offers-rare-glimpse-of-u-s-targeting-chinese-giant
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jaclaz
As a side-side note, I do understand how journalists may want a career as
writers and US articles tend to have pointless details/descriptions, but this
is IMHO way too much:

>Khan was casually dressed in a dark peacoat, black button-up shirt, gray
pants, and sneakers. Shurboff’s attire was more businesslike: a light blue
dress shirt, gray sports jacket, black trousers, and brand-new leather shoes.

~~~
gumby
Thank you for saying this -- this kind of fluff filler annoys me too.

It always makes me think me of a kid padding an essay to reach the teacher's
limit though I'm pretty sure that's not actually the case.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It's trying to add some "human interest" to the story. It annoys those of us
who want "just the facts". But for others, it makes the story come alive.

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ridgeguy
I'll be slightly pedantic: the coating is almost certainly diamond-like carbon
(DLC), not diamond.

DLC is a complicated class of materials, generally composed of amorphous
carbon (no long-range order - kind of like glass) with the same kind of
interatomic bonds you see in diamond (sp3 bonds). It's often applied by
sputtering or ion beam deposition.

Diamond is sp3-bonded carbon with long-range crystalline order. It's most
often made by chemical vapor deposition, which is slow and expensive compared
to DLC deposition methods.

The DLC coating described in the article won't do much to reduce glass
breakage. But it will greatly increase scratch resistance because it's nearly
as hard as diamond.

Diamond doesn't melt unless you're heating it while it's also under enormous
pressure to keep it from turning to graphite. It does ablate, or vaporize when
hit with laser pulses. This is used to remove small graphite inclusions in
diamond.

~~~
aarongough
Off topic: over the next couple of years I'm looking to develop a small-scale
ion-beam coating system for applying DLC as part of a single-piece-flow
process cell. I currently send out my products for DLC coating, and the coater
does a good job but they keep making process changes (which affects color)
without warning me, so I want to bring it in-house to avoid that and to
eliminate the need to batch components for them.

I would release the design as open source after it's completed. Sounds like
you have some knowledge in this area so let me know if you'd be interested in
collaborating!

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ShorsHammer
> The FBI asked them to travel to Las Vegas and conduct a meeting with Huawei
> representatives at last month’s Consumer Electronics Show. Shurboff was
> outfitted with surveillance devices and recorded the conversation while a
> Bloomberg Businessweek reporter watched from safe distance.

Is this common practice for criminal investigations?

~~~
Wohlf
Seems like a pretty typical sting operation, except for the reporter.

~~~
clubm8
>Seems like a pretty typical sting operation, except for the reporter.

I think that's the part that parent thought was unusual

~~~
ShorsHammer
Indeed, I would have thought it entirely compromises the judicial process too.

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yeahitslikethat
Super long read only to find out at the end, it might be nothing at all.

~~~
crispyambulance
Yep, this isn't the first story in recent memory from Bloomberg that smells
like much ado about NOTHING. What's going on with them?

~~~
mruts
Well Bloomberg reporters get bonuses based on how much the their stories move
the market. Huawei is traded on the Shanghai Exchange so the incentives for
the reporter are to make the stock tank (or pop, I guess).

~~~
AftHurrahWinch
> Bloomberg reporters get bonuses based on how much the their stories move the
> market.

I was surprised to learn this is true!

[https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-
compensa...](https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-
compensation-2013-12)

~~~
wybiral
This article speculates but doesn't provide any actual evidence of anything
other than the fact that they probably get compensated for reporting on things
that impact the market... Which makes sense considering the nature of their
publication.

It doesn't provide any proof that they encourage bogus reporting for the
purpose of manipulating the market. There's a difference.

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sschueller
"They recall the gemologist saying he’d analyzed the diamond glass sample and
concluded that Huawei had blasted it with a 100-kilowatt laser, powerful
enough to be used as a weapon."

What? how can you determine that from a piece of broke glass?

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timdellinger
It's a bit of a tangent, but there's an entire field of study called
"fractography" which is all about doing things exactly like that.

Further tangent: "a piece of broke glass" can exhibit interesting
morphology... "mirror", "mist", and "hackle" are distinctive signatures of
different fracture conditions.

~~~
peter_d_sherman
Fascinating! Did not know about that subject until now. For anyone that
studies material engineering even casually, it's an important sub-topic (I
never took material engineering in college, that's why I was ignorant about
this subject prior to your comment). On a related note, I found this cool
related link on Wikipedia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fracture_mechanics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fracture_mechanics).
Anyway, thanks again for the comment!

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grezql
The point of the story is not whether the glass is "unbreakable" or not.

It is about the extent of the Huawei scandal.

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boomboomsubban
So after Businessweek's story about Supermicro sending hacked boards to
companies, the FBI director Wray deflected questions by saying

>“We have very specific policy that applies to us as law enforcement agencies
to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation,”

Why are they now seeming to break that policy by confirming this
investigation?

~~~
acct1771
Political gain.

Basically, same as when 60 Minutes showed US bombers against protocol a short
bit after Russia started waxing ISIS in Syria.

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londons_explore
Is it really standard practice to demand a sample be returned in original
condition in 60 days?

Especially a sample of glass?

Surely the buyer would want to bend it, scratch it, coat it, paint it, etc. to
determine if it's suitable for their usecases?

In my experience, it's typical for samples to be provided free (or for a
nominal cost), with no strings attached. If there was anything 'secret' in
them, they would be protected by copyright, trademarks and patents.

~~~
londons_explore
It sounds to me like this company didn't have any patentable technology, and
was hoping they'd be protected by dubious 'no reverse engineering'
contracts... Which they weren't...

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vincnetas
This descriptions does not sound like it's about something that is "virtually
unbreakable" :

"The sample looked like an ordinary piece of glass, 4 inches square and
transparent on both sides. It’d been packed like the precious specimen its
inventor, Adam Khan, believed it to be—placed on wax paper, nestled in a tray
lined with silicon gel, enclosed in a plastic case, surrounded by air bags,
sealed in a cardboard box—and then sent for testing to a laboratory in San
Diego"

~~~
sschueller
Also according to the agreement Huawei was not supposed to "break" it. I am
not sure how they are supposed to evaluate it without scratching at it.

~~~
sharpneli
This one stood out to me too. What benefit it even is to get a sample of
protective glass if you are not allowed to test it? ”Here. Look at it. Trust
us that it’s super resistant to scratches”.

~~~
dsl
There are plenty of "unbreakable" coatings. It sounds like what makes this
unique is that is was suitable as a display cover.

An initial evaluation would be measuring things like how much light energy of
what frequencies is able to penetrate the coating. Is the viewing angle
acceptable for a consumer device, etc.

Hitting it with a hammer can always come later when they determine that it is
a good display glass first.

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mikehines
A marketing ruse?

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aurizon
beauty is skin deep, Huawei is ugly to bone...

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KangLi
I've read so many stories proclaiming Huawei's misdeeds yet nothing solid thus
far, with all scenarios hanging on the hypothetical thread. Yet oddly, it is
somehow working and skepticism after all is rooting certainty.

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ETHisso2017
Sounds like the FBI is just flailing around, and latching onto bottom feeders
in the smartphone components industry in an attempt to find dirt on Huawei.
This case is a good example: AKHAN had 28 employees and was going on 80 in
2014, but now it only has 5 employees and has zero revenue.

[https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140917/BLOGS11/140...](https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140917/BLOGS11/140919854/akhan-
semiconductor-gets-3-5-million-to-stay-in-illinois)

Also, how does a startup without any sales dollars afford the services of
Thompson Coburn LLP? And just LOL at Adam's final claim around disclosing the
FBI investigation to help with landing a customer: do you think federal agents
would have allowed him to break his non-disclosure agreements if this
investigation had merit? Whole thing is pretty fishy

~~~
z2
The Bloomberg reporter watching from a distance part was a bit weird. Also,
independent of this alleged wrongdoing, the product itself clearly failed to
get traction in the (mobile device) market, for reasons we can only speculate.
Sure, they probably can't compete at the same level as juggernauts like
Corning, but Gorilla Glass was adopted within a year of announcement back in
2008. Here we are 3 years after 2016, and presumably zero manufacturers are
interested in the glass.

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vfclists
Is there anything that Huawei does that Western companies don't do, such as
trying to steal their competitors secrets?

[https://www.digitaltrends.com/business/google-sues-uber-
over...](https://www.digitaltrends.com/business/google-sues-uber-over-self-
driving-car-secrets/)

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43010348](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43010348)

For any older person this is no news. Didn't we something like this with
Hitachi in the 80s?

Of course the authorities try to ban purchases from foreign companies that
steal American company's secrets, but they don't apply the same rule to
American companies that steal other American companies secrets.

They also don't seem so eager to launch sting operations against American
companies who aim to steal other American companies secrets.

~~~
Didymos
My instinct is anything our government screams at another country about,
security-wise, is simply projecting the fear that everyone else is going to do
the exact same thing our government is doing. Huawei might have back doors for
the Chinese govt.? Oh, you mean like the FBI, NSA, and CIA have tried to (or
maybe successfully) force(d) Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google to do?

~~~
Gokenstein
When US intelligence goals directly oppose US business goals then the enemy
has already won.

~~~
Didymos
The goals of the US intelligence community should be completely independent of
US business goals, unless they intersect legitimately because of security
concerns, rather than anti-competitive practices.

