Why are the stakes so high? Well, research "integrated communications and sensing" to find out. IEEE is pushing this paradigm shift. The radio hardware isn't just being used for communications between active devices anymore. It'll be useable for passive and biometric sensing applications, including but not limited to passive localization and identification of people without phones. Next generation wireless standards are being explicitly designed to facilitate this.
That said, for some reason I doubt that hardware deployed in the 5 eyes nations won't also be used for surveillance purposes, just that the institutions controlling the systems will be different.
> It'll be useable for passive and biometric sensing applications, including but not limited to passive localization and identification of people without phones.
What? How? Why are all these tinfoil hat conspiracies turning into reality ... like your TV or alarm clock spying on you.
This is scheduled for 2024 via IEEE 802.11bf in Wi-Fi 7 Sensing, it's passive radar that passes through the walls of homes and business, e.g. neighbors or adversaries can identify humans, activity, typing, combination locks, etc. Anything involving motion which causes Doppler shift. Hundreds of papers have been published over the past decade and it can be done with hardware that costs less than $20.
Defenses are either cat&mouse electronic warfare or shielding the walls/floor/roof of some rooms (e.g. research labs in business, industrial systems, home offices, bedrooms) with materials like aluminum radiant barrier or expensive drywall (e.g. QuietRock) designed for RF shielding of SCIFs.
In short, your body affects the signal. And through MIMO there are multiple simultaneous signals being sent between different antennas on wifi-devices.
With just one signal, wifi sensing doesn't tell you much. You sort-off have to look at signal loss and guess if it is lower because the signal is passing through you.
With multiple signals, not only do you get multiple data points on signal loss, you also get a phase difference between the signals (i.e. a signal that passed through you is delayed a bit compared to signal that didn't pass through you).
By integrating that knowledge from various signals (or rather 'channels') and probably doing a whole lot of other smart stuff, potentially some training / fingerprinting (i.e. if they are at position X, then the signals do Y, for many different positions), you can get location data.
Could you elaborate on what exactly "integrated communications and sensing" is and why it's so important here. I tried to do some quick reading but I failed to find any good high level overview of what it is. Most of what I was able to find seemed like academic research papers around beam-forming.
It's an approach to wireless engineering aiming to make it much easier for sensing and communications applications to use the same spectrum simultaneously. There are so many papers on the topic and some of them are more technical but a lot are focused on possible applications. The name "ISAC" is kind of an umbrella term to describe a bunch of different approaches both old and new.
For the passive sensing applications you can mix and match these keywords in Google scholar:
For example: "device free localization" is a keyword for papers about tracking people who don't have phones. Another similar one would be "passive identification". You might also try "adversarial localization".
Wow, this is equally fascinating and frightening. Is it correct to say Cross-Modal-ID is an application of "integrated communications and sensing" technology then? Am I understanding relationship correctly?
I'd say that's a good way of putting it, though the way I understand it is that "integrated sensing and communication" is an engineering approach intended to facilitate more applications like this and to push them to the theoretical limits. The main reason being to help communication and sensing applications coexist in the same spectrum.
This paradigm shift appears to be driven in part by the increasing congestion of the sub-6 GHz frequency bands. Integrated communications and sensing devices should be able to share spectrum.
This covers Dahua, which I believe is the supplier that underlies cheap security cams like Amcrest, which have been a common choice for people who want local-only non-cloud cams for a long time.
Ouch, I own a few of these cameras. I chose Amcrest because they have a local US distributer who does all of the technical/warranty support. Interesting.
Why ouch? If they are local-only the max mischief they might cause is relatively limited, right? Or do you suspect them of phoning home behind your back?
I have a handful of 'local-only' chinese import cameras (although no Dahuas). They all reach out to hard-coded IP addresses on the chinese mainland. (with no explanation why, nor a setting to turn it off) I put them on a dedicated VLAN without internet access for this reason.
I haven't seen any unusual communication from any installed, but they're all firewalled and with WAN disallowed. The ouch was because I will have to find another vendor if they are no longer allowed to be sold in the US.
That was previously the case. This[0] announcement is that these[1] devices from these[1] manufacturers will not receive FCC authorization for use in the US moving forward.
At first I was intrigued about why did that guy call all this industrial protectionism act as something "professional", afterwards I saw that he is an active part of the industrial defence complex (he's a National Security Council staffer), so that started to make a little bit more sense.
I'm wondering though for how long will the MIC ghouls continue to have the upper hand in this. There are huge opportunity costs to be paid by the side that goes all "Corn Law League" on something as fundamental to our age as grains were ~200 years ago, but, then again, when said pro-protectionism side also controls the media, which means no Cobden [1] to take it all down, the US could be in for the long-haul.
Maybe this may help US manufacturers get better deals. But I see it as a side effect. The main effect is that we should not buy key communication equipment from a country we cannot trust. Its government can strongarm any of its business entities to comply with its orders, and these orders are not going to be friendly to the US.
It's a bit like buying communication equipment from the USSR. Maybe the equipment is fine! But accepting even such a thing as the US national emblem from the USSR proved to be... a decision detrimental to security [1].
>We should not buy anything that is internet connected from a country we cannot trust.
We should not buy anything that has non-dumb components from a country we cannot trust.
We should not buy anything that is has high-performance materials that cannot be non-destructively tested from a country we cannot trust.
Overall, we should not be buying ANYTHING AT ALL from a country we cannot trust, as literally any trade merely supports their working against our well-being.
The grand experiment was done, and it failed miserably. We all thought that increased trade and information flow would bring free markets and democracy to the autocracies of the world. We could not have been more wrong — all we did was further empower expansionist/imperialist regimes. Russia is now waging a genocidal hot war in Europe and China is more actively threatening Taiwan than at any time in at least decades, and putting Uighurs in concentration camps - all funded by our purchasing. It is past time to embargo them.
Easier said than done when they are the dominant or at least major supplier of many strategic materials. It will take time to find economically viable alternative suppliers. Globalism is rapidly collapsing and China won’t for long be able to remain a reliable trading partner even if they desperately wanted to be, so we ought to be urgently securing sufficient alternative suppliers anyway.
That said, you are absolutely correct that it'll be a heavy lift to find alternate supplies of many materials and items.
That makes it no less necessary.
Germany had made apparently catastrophic reliance on Russian NatGas, and looked like a horrible winter. Yet they have extricated themselves within 10 months so much that even without that Russian supply, NatGas prices are actually falling going into winter.
This is silly pearl clutching, do you have any refutation of the arguments?
I believe there is very credible reporting on ccp-sponsored hacking of industrial, military, government dbs, etc. Even if we don’t have hard evidence of this type of hardware compromise, it seems to be wise to believe there are serious risks, and to take action until such risks are investigated.
Despite all the expertise on HN, i would guess almost no one here has a clue what kinds of elite military spy tech are being tested/used.
Further, the ccp has shown the world who they are - bad faith and anti-global-cooperation. Trust should be a two way street. I think we’re foolish to do any business with them.
> This is silly pearl clutching, do you have any refutation of the arguments?
The refutation is that the tech sector is one of the largest beneficiaries of globalization, and practically would not exist in any recognizable form without it.
With measures like this (but by no means only this measure), the US is in the process of rolling back globalization, and the tech sector will suffer for it.
Trade restrictions are not good for our economy. Huawei and ZTE's main competitors are mostly US based companies so they will see protection from competition with this policy. While you may see the national security threat as credible, many others do not.
Stopping consumer IP cameras being used as a mass surveillance operation on US citizens by a hostile foreign government does not seem like an overreach.
The US campaign against Huawei and ZTE caused the 5G rollout in the west, including here in Europe, to be considerably delayed and much more expensive.
I participated in technical due diligence for a purchase order of huawei tech back in 2011 (was lte back then). Their tech was good but there is no way in hell there isn’t some kind of trick how cheap they were compared to the europeans (there were no americans at that point since motorola was kaput). Like it was basically free. There needs to be some kind of regulation when techniques like that are being played whether it’s security or just economic concerns
Isn't it obvious why it's so much cheaper? Their pricing for market share and cutting costs wherever they can in terms of labour conditions.
I don't see how spending many billions on R&D to develop the most intricately hidden backdoors in human history (that no one has been able to offer proof for) and eating that cost to deploy them when it will all become worthless the moment the first one is detected, makes any sense at all.
I’ve been to their headquarters in Shenzhen it certainly didn’t look like much was being saved on r&d… I’d say much likely explanation is either aggressive government subsidy to price out competition with maybe some mix of wielding political blackmail later on (a la what US is doing with its chip restrictions rn)
I don't see what they could possibly gain, all it would take is for one genuine case of a backdoor to be confirmed and then all that investment would be nearly worthless.
Reliance for critical infrastructure on a geopolitical enemy.
Historians often site “The Great Illusion” which was written in 1909 and predicted there would be no more major or prolonged wars due to the new global and interconnected economy. Clearly that was wrong and yet the same argument keeps being made with regard to China.
China has made it clear they consider “the West” as an enemy. We should not trust any infrastructure to them.
I still don't see a logical relation with my previous comment:
"I don't see what they could possibly gain, all it would take is for one genuine case of a backdoor to be confirmed and then all that investment would be nearly worthless."
And your previous comment: "People used to say same exact thing about russian gas"
I'm struggling to find any analogous situation to a single verified breech of trust destroying billions of investments in the gas sector of Russia.
One shipment of contaminated gas (?) is not going to have any major effects on the gas trade.
This did not affect the total amount of gas purchased from Russia. Even looking at just EU-Russia trade volumes, there wasn't a huge drop right after this happened.
A commodity business with high transportation costs has different dynamics then from the electronics industry.
How expensive do you think it would
be allowing an entity infamous for intellectual property theft, to have unfettered access to the teleco networks of the countries that they themselves say are their greatest enemies?
Yes, imported Russian nat gas is way cheaper. Until it isn't.
First I don't really think your premise is correct and second we are capable of keeping our networks secure even if a cable or a base station is made by a Chinese company.
I worked in tele for a couple of years; the reason Huawei and ZTE got ahead in 5G was that they invested heavily at time when Nokia and Ericsson were focused on cutting cost.
As for the "unfettered access" stuff; a telco, or at least the one I worked at, doesn't really work like that. We buy products and engineering services from our suppliers but we run our own network, and if we did outsource operations, those engineers would sit on premise and the whole thing would be under our control.
Is it really protectionism when just matching the requirements of China?
Of course it is but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right call. Huawei & ZTE exist so Cisco doesn’t have to be used in China. It seems this is a blanket ban for sale in all of the US which strikes me as excessive without knowing why they’re a National security threat.
I’d like more expectations of parity. Maybe real estate.
You're falling into the trap they've laid for us. They screw us with protectionism, then when we respond, they cheekily say, "You're violating your values! You can't do that!"
Most Ukrainians don't want to kill Russians, but they were attacked. "Fight back" and "surrender" are the only two options.
Remember, it is okay to be intolerant of intolerance. To be tolerant, you need to have a threshold for not tolerating intolerance. Protectionism is a form of intolerance.
That took long enough! Glad we're finally looking out for national security interests, even if it was partially incentivized by economic protectionist ideas - it's naive to think China hasn't done the same to other foreign tech companies.
Ericsson and Nokia sell their 5G technology in China.
Actually funny enough they were siding China too on this in Europe because a ban of Chinese tech in Europe could've resulted in a ban of European tech in China.
and for anyone that doesn't live under a rock, they know pretty well that china is far a bigger market than Europe
Ericsson essentially lost its 2nd largest market because of Sweden's decision to ban Huawei.
From [0]:
> Swedish telecommunication equipment maker Ericsson plans to restructure its operations in China, its second-largest market, after its sales in the country plunged for a second consecutive quarter in the wake of its home government's move to exclude Huawei Technologies and ZTE from 5G mobile networks.
> Ericsson recorded a 74% drop in revenues from China, to 1.3 billion Swedish krona ($150.3 million), in the July-September quarter compared with a year earlier. This followed a 63% drop, to 1.5 billion krona, in China revenues in the second quarter when the company wrote off 300 million krona worth of Chinese inventories.
This might be true, but Ericsson currently has the biggest 5G market share, has more operators onboard and is doing fine even without the Chinese market. For sure it was a big blow, but that’s the way thing go if politics come into play.
I don’t know what US people really feel about all these Chinese companies, but I for once don’t trust their software/hardware. This doesn’t mean that equipment from Ericsson or Nokia Siemens don’t have “backdoors”, but at least they’re clearly communicated with other governments. That’s the good thing if your company is neutral and sells to everyone. Chinese want to sell to everyone but they want the “backdoors” only for themselves ;-)
Unfortunately, the free countries where they live facilitate their business... Too bad they can't sell to a country that enslaves ethnic minorities anymore :(
I have an online Chinese security camera system outside my house. I'd be happy to replace it if usgov wants to subsidize that.
The SSH Honeypot on the network with it remains untouched for now.
He's assuming that the ban was caused by the discovery of malicious hw or sw from those manufacturers. If true, it puts into question their previous products as well. It may be that a recall was decided against for a variety of reasons from the practical difficulty to the more spy-related, that it would reveal techniques.
It might also be we're witnessing masterful manipulation of the USG by corporations at (economic) war with each other, using every option to destroy the other's access to markets. Lots of speculation either way.
Reminder of how this started... when Huawei and ZTE decided that because they weren't American companies, they didnt need to answer questions from Congress, and even outright lied about the structure of their companies to conceal CPC/government involvement:
That's correct, they certainly have the right to not answer questions...and the US government has the right to interpret that lack of cooperation any way it chooses, and, say, ban their products.
What government can do is limited by the constitution. Generally speaking, unless these companies have done something unlawful there is no ground for banning their products. Is it established that they have broken US laws?
Have you read the US constitution? It is very short, easily reeadable in an hour. So if your comment is sincere, you would cite the specific clause of the constitution that you are worried is being violated. There is no such clause.
> Generally speaking, unless these companies have done something unlawful there is no ground for banning their products.
I don't think the right to sell goods is in the Constitution. What is in the constitution is an explicit grant to power to Congress to "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations"
Americans do have to answer questions posed by Congress or a court in many, many situations. It is commonplace for large public companies for example, to have to answer questions from regulators or Congress.
For example, any time there's a merger, the federal government must approve it to ensure anti-monopoly laws are not violated by the new market arrangement.
Or you may recall the famous cases of auto executives being questioned over car safety, or Zuckerberg being questioned over social media's effects on society.
Are you new to following US business news?
Are you just very confused and think the famous "fifth amendment" applies here? Go back and read it if so.
I think his point is that you can choose to go to jail for contempt rather than answer anything. If your sit in jail long enough, the world moves on and your testimony is no longer relevant. That’s when a judge releases you (i think).
Many people have faced serious legal consequences for not answering questions from Congress, for example related to Jan. 6 riot. You do have the right to avoid testifying against yourself, so often Congress has to grant immunity from prosecution, in order to remove this legally justifiable excuse for not answering questions. I remember in the Iran/contra scandal, Congress was asked not to do this so that some of the people involved could be prosecuted, but chose to proceed for various reasons best known to themselves.
Is government involvement problematic? Many firms have government involvement, often in an under the table manner. For example Airbus. Government involvement is in itself no grounds for banning a company.
Airbus is a French company. France is part of NATO. In the event of war, France and the US would likely be obligated to be on the same side by their NATO treaty obligations.
I don't think you are very informed on this matter.
Airbus is not anymore a French or Netherland company (Airbus Group N.V). Since 27 May 2015 the company became a Societas Europaea (SE) (Latin: European Company).
When that government is actively stealing your intellectual property, hacking your computer systems and installing ransomware, threatening war against an important ally...
And when the product is telecommunications technology...
I'm going with yes. The EU and the PRC are not even remotely comparable from the perspective of the U.S.
Even American companies in China have a Party cell. This is the law for all companies above a certain size. Those cells do not 'approve all company decisions'.
On a business trip to China, I accidentally walked into our company's Communist Party meeting (and was politely encouraged to quickly leave).
I have no idea if company-specific discussion ever occurred. Our office was mostly junior engineers so company decisions wouldn't be made at that level in any case.
Not just telecom but phones, closed operating systems across any devices and basically any software.
I have no illusion how good and obfluscated user tracking is baked in products of google apple, microsoft et al. From time to time some case highlights their desperate needs to use and hide tracking stuff, ie ms office printing almost invisible fingerprints in documents, and that was way more analog era.
You can say though that most countries are US friends so there is nothing to worry. But even among friends, ie industrial espionage happens all the time, and just financial harm can easily go into tens of % of given GDP
Yes, exactly. For those in a hurry, here's an excerpt from the executive summary.
```
Despite hours of interviews, extensive and repeated document requests, a
review of open-source information, and an open hearing with witnesses from both
companies, the Committee remains unsatisfied with the level of cooperation and
candor provided by each company. Neither company was willing to provide
sufficient evidence to ameliorate the Committee’s concerns. Neither company
was forthcoming with detailed information about its formal relationships or
regulatory interaction with Chinese authorities. Neither company provided
specific details about the precise role of each company’s Chinese Communist
Party Committee. Furthermore, neither company provided detailed information
about its operations in the United States. Huawei, in particular, failed to provide
thorough information about its corporate structure, history, ownership, operations,
financial arrangements, or management. Most importantly, neither company
provided sufficient internal documentation or other evidence to support the limited
answers they did provide to Committee investigators.
During the investigation, the Committee received information from
industry experts and current and former Huawei employees suggesting that
Huawei, in particular, may be violating United States laws. These allegations
describe a company that has not followed United States legal obligations or
international standards of business behavior. The Committee will be referring
these allegations to Executive Branch agencies for further review, including
possible investigation.
```
"During the investigation, the Committee received information from industry experts and current and former Huawei employees suggesting that Huawei, in particular, may be violating United States laws. "
This is a claim which can only be proven in a court of law.
So? No one's bringing them up on criminal charges.
If I think you're shady and you refuse to provide evidence otherwise, then I don't have to do business with you. And if I'm in charge of regulating business in the country, then I can prevent you from doing business here because of that perceived shadyness. It's that simple.
There's a decided lack of understanding in this thread about the US constitution and the role of Congress, and what this story is about. US Telecoms is a federally regulated industry. Congress does have the powers to compel testimony from individuals or companies related to this situation. If they're not satisified with the responses they can prevent them from selling into the regulated market. They don't need to engage the judiciary branch to do so.
We can argue IF this is "right" and IF these companies have been unfairly targeted, but please stop the misinformation about not having to answer to congress and requiring a court of law.
Congress can investigate anything they want - the thinking is that this power is necessary to effectively legislate and conduct oversight.
The ban came from the executive branch. Nobody has a right to bring anything they want into the country. Wether you’re a citizen returning from vacation in Tahiti, or ZTE, you need permission. This ban is removing everyone’s permission to bring this stuff into the country.
Why would a court of law have to be involved? This is a Congressional investigation. Nobody is being charged with a crime.
As usual for you, you make a wild and vague claim because you have no understanding of US law and customs. In fact I doubt you have ever been to the US.
This is a very detailed examination of Huawei's ownership structure: [0].
It was written after claims that Huawei is secretly state-owned. The author goes into some detail about Chinese corporate law, and shows that Huawei is effectively employee-owned (effectively, because Chinese corporate law limits the numbers of shareholders in private companies, so there is a legal structure that holds shares on behalf of employees).
Seems weird that people would think "secret ownership" would be public, about a company located in China, which controls ownership info.
That said, what is on the books is irrelevant, if the senior staff are in the pocket of the PRC. Or, you know, their entire family is under threat, a common way to compel in China.
That obviously wasn't a very good move from Huawei and ZTE but it's disingenuous to claim this is what caused the current situation. It simply handed the US government a convenient stick when they really wanted one, and they would therefore have found one in any case.
There is a global geopolitical struggle between the US and China, and the US see China as an increasingly serious threat to their 'leadership'. That really is the bottom line.
Even companies as large as Uber got strong armed in china. From having traffic shut off completely inside the country without warning (no net neutrality laws) to having to setup an entirely new business in china that didn’t touch the US one.
I have little sympathy and i hope that the Us continues to push restrictions on china tech.
What would you say is the best example? I'm aware China does aggressively censor US media type products that don't toe the Chinese worldview, but I'm less familiar with absolute bans of major companies of this sort.
I may be misreading the situation here, but to me this seems like a rather extreme escalation that would be analogous to China banning e.g. Apple or Google based/created devices after questioning them over their relationship with the NSA [1] and being [predictably] dissatisfied with their responses.
Can anyone familiar with the topic ELI5 this? Does this mean you can't use (buy? (sell?)) ZTE or Huawei modems in the US going forward? Or is this just a restriction re US govt related entities?
The order is almost 200 pages long but it states that it prohibits "marketing and
importation" of the devices in question, among other prohibitions for equipment authorization going forward.
ELI5: The US and China are not very good friends, but Chinese goods still get sold to US markets. China's gov't has a hand in every company in its borders, or so it is suspected, since this is routinely denied by the companies and the Chinese gov't. Some of those companies make computers that can watch and listen to us, whether we ask them to or not. The US is no longer comfortable with that arrangement.
Of course, it's a little more complex than that...
The way you're framing makes it sound unique to China. PRISM [1] hasn't gone anywhere and has certainly only expanded since the leaks. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many others were all participating companies. If China starts stooping to the same level here they would be obligated to ban products from these companies and more. If they want to make a spectacle of it, they could even have a kangaroo court committee hearing where they ask these companies about their relationship to the NSA and other alphabet agencies.
Any country operating in any country anywhere is going to subject to the whims and influences of the government in their home country. Some make it more or less overt, but pretending this is some discovery or "them vs us" thing is absurd. This whole affair is another step in the apparent goal of escalation with China, to what purpose - I have no clue.
Nope, that's from yet a different set of spying programs - MUSCULAR, INCENSER, TURMOIL, and others [1]. PRISM does it in coordination with companies. One of my favorite leaks was this [2] which is a support manual for NSA agents engaging in real-time Skype spying.
It even includes a technical FAQ with all sorts of troubleshooting issues, like agents wondering why messages they're intercepting might end up getting repeated. The reason there is that when a secondary device (e.g. going from your phone to a computer) syncs, everything is resent to the user, which is in turn also gets sent right on over to the NSA. There were also promises to help agents upset that on occasion the audio and video of whoever they're spying on (again in real time mind you) would get out of sync. It's a tough life being a 21st century spy.
One can argue that PRISM was in place long before China was doing anything real. So US and allies set the tone of this global topic decades ago. China decided they will go their own way, because they could.
This is all just a theatre as mentioned, long term planned escalation with some form of conflict inevitable. Not judging, it makes sense for each side to act as they do, but these congress hearings were a farce with decided outcome long before they were even announced, not some fair public discussion.
Two decades ago, the Chinese military was actively raiding Nortel's IP directly from their servers. Regardless of when and what the US government is doing, Huawei and ZTE's tech is built off of rampant state-sponsored IP theft and shouldn't be used and can't be trusted.
There's no way to deny that Huawei was years ahead of competition with their 5G offerings, so it seems this is much more a story about telecom becoming patent trolls rather than R&D focused companies, something something creating value to shareholders.
Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? We've already asked you this more than once.
Your comment would be fine without that swipe. Perhaps not very substantive (you could make this argument better with more information in it), but at least not a gross violation of the guidelines.
Sorry, it's not clear what you think I'm wrong about or what you're trying to say at all. Can you please clarify? Preferably without the insults and layered sarcasm.
"National security" has been increasingly been used over the last 5 years as a justification for measures that are actually much more broadly geopolitical in nature.
A private individual using a Huawei phone or router isn't a national security threat to the US.
However, in a broader sense, the US government sees the technological development of China as a threat to American strategic dominance, and has been taking ever more drastic measures to try to hobble the Chinese tech sector. The campaign against Huawei, which began a few years ago, was the opening shot. Blacklisting various Chinese semiconductor companies (which does not only prevent American companies from doing business with them, but which also threatens companies around the world with secondary sanctions if they do business with the targeted companies) was a further escalation. This was also justified as a "national security" measure, with the claim that these companies do business with the Chinese military (these claims were not publicly backed up by evidence, of course). Biden dramatically escalated the "tech war" recently with even broader sanctions against much of the Chinese high-tech sector.
The "national security" justification has become so broad that virtually any business with China is now being construed as a national security threat. Americans should consider if they really want to turn their relationship with the world's largest economy into one that is purely hostile.
> Americans should consider if they really want to turn their relationship with the world's largest economy into one that is purely hostile.
The relationship is far from "purely hostile". We're giant trading partners. The relationship is mutually beneficial.
As was said here, our restrictions on Chinese companies are nothing compared to their restrictions on ours. And they've built their economy using so much stolen IP that's it's hard to believe this wasn't CCP policy coming from the top. [1] [2]
It's also not hard to imagine CCP hackers using homegrown telecommunications equipment as part of this IP "procurement" process. Personally I think a move like this is long overdue. As has been said here, what's wrong with deciding who your friends are and aren't? We're trading partners, that doesn't necessarily make us allies. Yes this is geopolitical, and if geopolitical issues aren't issues of national security, I don't know what is.
> As was said here, our restrictions on Chinese companies are nothing compared to their restrictions on ours.
This is something that is widely believed in the US, but which is not actually true.
American companies have very large market shares in many sectors of the Chinese economy. Chinese companies are not active in the US market on any comparable level.
China used to have many more restrictions on market entry, but that was during a time in which investment was almost entirely in one direction (into China). Those restrictions were meant to prevent foreign companies from completely supplanting Chinese companies, which were technologically far behind and incapable of competing with foreign giants like Volkswagen.
The deal was that foreign companies got to exploit cheap labor in China and gain a dominant position in China's growing market, and in exchange, they took on local joint-venture partners, to which they transferred some amount of technology. As China has developed, those restrictions have been dropped from most sectors.
> As has been said here, what's wrong with deciding who your friends are and aren't?
There's a very big difference between not "being friends" and implementing broad sanctions intended to bankrupt another country's entire high-tech sector. The US is attempting to prevent any company anywhere in the world from doing business with any major Chinese tech company. This is really an unprecedented level of economic warfare, at least in the last several decades. I don't think many Americans are aware of how far their government has gone here.
I agree, the sanctions aren't helping the Chinese tech economy. And I also agree that economic warfare has escalated recently. Battle lines have been being drawn for the last decade or so, and now pieces are moving around on the chess board (not just US and China, Russia Ukraine etc)
As to how much beyond "not being friends" this is, I'm not sure that protecting the Chinese tech sector is anyone's responsibility but China's. As you said, this is geopolitics. It's not like China is looking out for US or EU or anyone else's interests. Widescale IP theft certainly isn't helping the US tech economy. If US and China were allies I'm sure more would be done to find a mutually agreeable solution, but it's pretty clear at this point that US and Chinese geopolitical interests are not aligned.
Having it's IP stolen is the US's problem to solve. They're solving it in part by refusing (at a state level) to do business with parts of the Chinese tech sector. Considering how long its taken the US to respond, it's clear to me time was being taken to solve this diplomatically, and that patience has run out. It's not like the CCP hasn't had time to change their bad behavior and reach a compromise solution.
Having something stolen is a problem for the victim. But the victims response may be a problem for the thief. This is simply a long overdue consequence for systemic bad behavior.
This situation is regrettable for both parties. But resorting to "US bad" and "China victim" here is a gross simplification of the situation.
> This situation is regrettable for both parties. But resorting to "US bad" and "China victim" here is a gross simplification of the situation.
It's clear which side is the aggressor here. The Chinese government doesn't want a tech war or a trade war, because every year that China can stably develop its economy plays in its favor. The US sees the same situation in exactly the opposite way: every year that China develops economically lessens American dominance.
> Widescale IP theft certainly isn't helping the US tech economy.
You're vastly overstating the importance of IP theft. This is a minor annoyance in the US-China relationship now. China used to have weak IP protections, like most developing countries, but now it has much stricter IP enforcement. If this were just a question of reducing IP theft, China and the US would have little difficulty negotiating a deal. The issue is much deeper: American anxiety about being displaced as the world's top power.
I don't understand how you can complain about unfair economic warfare being waged by the west, while at the same time downplay the systemic theft of western IP to build the Chinese economy. One is "economic warfare" and the other is a "minor annoyance"? Guess it depends on whose side you're on?
As for "American anxiety about being displaced as the world's top power". It's no secret that China wants to replace the western/liberal rules based system of international order with one of their own design. Whether or not they will succeed in doing this one thing is certain: it wont happen without major conflicts along the way, and will likely require a world war. The system put in place after WWII has served the world well enough, it's given the world relative peace and prosperity, and helped the great powers avoid major conflicts for a good 75 years. In many ways there's never been a better time to be alive.
It seems China seeks to return to pre-WWII conditions, where great powers have the opportunity to pursue their ambitions in absence of any group uniting to keep them in check. This will inevitably lead to rising tensions and conflict between overlapping spheres of influence. If this isn't a recipe for war, I don't know what is.
There is a period of conflict that is coming (and in some ways is already here). Russia invaded Ukraine shortly after announcing the Russian-China friendship was was "without limits". Russia wants to be free to pursue it's Imperial goals in eastern Europe, and China is willing to look the other way as they have their own designs on the pan-Asia geopolitical sphere. In many ways the invasion of Ukraine was a shot across the bow to the current world order, announcing that some power blocks are done playing by the current set of rules, and signaling to everyone that the period of relative stability may be over. We've moved from the "post WW-II" phase of history to the "pre WW-III" phase.
> the systemic theft of western IP to build the Chinese economy
As I said, you're hugely exaggerating the scale and significance of IP theft. IP theft was not important to the development of the Chinese economy. There is weak IP protection in practically every developing economy, and China was not unusual in this regard. China now has relatively strong IP protections, which are better than what most countries at its developmental stage have.
> It's no secret that China wants to replace the western/liberal rules based system of international order with one of their own design.
The phrase "rules-based international order" has become a buzzword at the State Department over the last few years. China buys into the international system, centered on the UN, but also including the WTO and other multilateral organizations. The US has a very bad record of respecting these organizations, particularly since the late 1990s. Just two examples: the illegal invasion of Iraq (the US knew the UNSC would reject any war authorization, so the Bush administration declared the UN irrelevant and went ahead with the invasion anyways), and Trump's trade wars (which obviously went against WTO rules, though the US also purposely lamed the WTO by blocking the appointment of appeals judges). I suspect that the reason the State Department likes the term "rules-based international order" is that it doesn't explicitly refer to the actual, established international system (the UN), and is vague enough that it can refer to really whatever the US wants to.
> It seems China seeks to return to pre-WWII conditions, where great powers have the opportunity to pursue their ambitions in absence of any group uniting to keep them in check.
China is one of the most vocal supporters of the UN as the central organization for regulating international affairs, and of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign countries. I don't see where you're getting the idea that China wants to overturn the international system.
Chinese government takes a much stronger involvement in their companies than the US government. Do you know the chaos that would ensue if every Huawei router injected 100+V into the LAN cables connected to it at a fixed time? What if the phones all caught fire at the same time as well, and all the 5G modems jammed everything from GPS to WiFi bands, including aircraft communication, sattelite comms etc. This could easily bring a country to it's knees for a week, never mind the time spent cleaning up and purging the mess. Compare that, and the US's still ongoing reaction, to just two buildings in NYC being destroyed over 20 years ago.
American companies are much more active in the Chinese market than vice-versa. If China starts reacting in kind, a lot of American companies will be in for a world of hurt.
The US will just keep increasing bans and sanctions as the Chinese stategy seem to be not to respond in kind, but instead build capacity to become independent of US-controlled technology, something that might take a decade.
> "National security" has been increasingly been used over the last 5 years as a justification for measures that are actually much more broadly geopolitical in nature.
Consumer devices with sufficient adoption are most definitely a national security threat.
Let’s for a moment imagine Iran (instead of china) has a significant amount of the low end consumer cameras sold in the US. Imagine they push propaganda, or build in a back door to control them.
Frankly, I don't really give toss if the US decides not to trade with X, Y and Z. That's the US's business. What boils my piss is the certain knowledge that their lickspittle acolytes in EU, UK and AUS will dutifully follow suit.
Living in a snivelling vassal state is so embarrassing. The more so when Brexit voting fuckwitts bleat about 'taking back control'.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that in the event of a real war between China and the US that our Chinese-made smartphones and drone toys would suddenly not be trustworthy. The NATO IC's (and SV) software wizardry (like super clever driver weaknesses snuck into mainline linux) always gets trumped by a little this and that added to hardware (an extra component on the pcb or worse, a tiny corner of a chip image).
To what extent do the industrial designers of consumer hardware take into account the threat of a last second modification of the design to suit the needs of the manufacturer? To what extent would such modifications be detectable by...anyone, ever? And what would it look like? The software version would be a bad network driver that examines all traffic for a specific triggering pattern that would take over the machine at first as uninvasively as possible, starting by modifying the kernel and the boot image (to stay activated). Establish contact with attacker and examine the user and their accounts. Some users are more valuable than others, having privileged positions in large companies, control or knowledge about important infrastructure, and so on. Or they may be celebrities or other people of note. Or they may be friends of those people. It would be useful to undermine everyone at once, but using a stochastic process that minimizes a torrent of data. Oh and it's probably better for china to maintain at least some of their C&C outside of China to make it less obvious who the actor is, and to maintain connectivity for longer. Ideally the adversary C&C would exist within the target country. In the USA you'd want a confusing relationship that is plausibly legitimate, and turn it into a free speech issue, slowing down the legal system, and so working to China's benefit. While the justice system tries to do it's job, you use the data you gather to build a very accurate and detailed picture of the nation's capabilities, all with names and leverage attached. Over a short period of time, say a few days, what havoc could such an entity do to our nation, if it could send messages as anyone to anyone and be undetectable as illegitimate?
And we worry about DDOS botnets!
(Note: if we had on-shore manufacturing it wouldn't solve the fundamental issue which is that humans can mass manufacture invisible machines that can't be inspected. These machines are so small they cannot be perceived, not even with the most powerful magnifying instruments[0].)
Of course, all of this could be way off base. An equally valid (if more cynical) reason for sanctions like this is that regulatory capture and campaign generosity is finally paying off for someone.
Every article I’ve ever read that cites “national security concerns” never, ever explicitly goes into the exact, computational mechanism in which it is a security concern. It’s always something like “Chinese company under Chinese government, therefore bad”. Never anything concrete or substantive from a software engineer POV, such as what exactly is phoned-home, or what actual subversions are happening currently, only hypotheticals.
Many examples, e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/31/16072786/amazon-blu-suspe.... “In November 2016, security firm Kryptowire detected pre-loaded remote surveillance software on BLU phones sold online through Amazon and Best Buy. In August 2017, Amazon pulled BLU Products from its website over security vulnerabilities that resulted in BLU consumer user data being covertly sent to China.”
This.. doesn’t answer my question still. Even if data goes to China, how that data is used, what it is, and by what mechanism is what determines whether it’s a threat or not. Why do we continue to use boogiemen when it comes to explaining threats? Why don’t we apply this kind of scaremongering to any data exfiltration to every shady company ever?
Also in your specific reference:
> “Now almost a year later, the devices are still behaving in the same exact way, with standard and basic data collection that pose no security or privacy risk. There has been absolutely no new behavior or change in any of our devices to trigger any concern. We expect Amazon to understand this, and quickly reinstate our devices for sale.”
So, clearly I’m not the only one who wants clear, explanatory, descriptive answers to these threat models.
I find it interesting how democrats fell into a pit that I used to think was something only Trump and his ilk followed.
The two parties really are the same at the core. One may pretend to be conservative and the other screech in woke language but they always converge on the parts that actually matter like geopolitics.
When Trump duked it out against China, democrats pretended to be offended. Now, democrats are in power, and they're pushing even harder to ban China.
The US is such a sham democracy.
You will not hear anything from the brainwashed apart from "things coming from China are bad because it's China !111!" when in reality those bans exist because American companies simply are not competitive and are looking for America to become a captive market for American corpos. Can't have people selling phones almost-as-good-as-iPhones for less than iPhones.
The underlying reasons detailed in that report, again, are gripes about the corporate structure, transparency, and illegal practices. There are no current or past hardware or software threats detailed in that report. The "National Security Threat" posed by these companies is potential not actual. The justification to eliminate this potential is predicated on corporate shenanigans. The real threat they pose, in my opinion, is likely to U.S. corporation's stock price.
Would this help shape policy in some way or are you just curious as a technologist? I don’t really need to know, as a long time infosec practitioner I have a fertile imagination for the shenanigans they could be up to.
Of course it will help shape policy, AND I want to know, as a technologist! How can we know what standard to apply in our work when we don’t know which standard has been broken?! As a fellow infosec practitioner who works at one of the world’s biggest security companies, I don’t want to leave it up to imagination, I want to know exactly what the wrongdoing is, because my job may depend on it in the future!
That is fair, but the threat model is pretty open too, right? In a few hours in a room we could come up with a pretty credible one I bet.
* hardware
* deep backdoors in radio chips
* physical supply chain TM goes here
* etc etc
* software
* we can audit and monitor this easier
* etc
There is a lot to read between the lines, but it is guess work based on supply chain advisories and high level behaviors of govt entities on both sides and our community is good at missing the forest for the trees on this speculative thinking. I think also there is the possibility of minimal actual wrong doing. It could just be entirely political. Ahh well, I guess I have seen enough of this over the years that I accept there is stuff we will never learn about.
It's national security, what do you expect? Even if specifics are known and they're not operating under a general precautionary principle (maybe they are, but so what?), the specifics would be classified, not broadcast to the public. That's just the nature of national security concerns. Everything gets overclassified.
Top dogs hate competition. Simple as that. I fucking hate how the US pushed them out of Europe due security concerns when we fuckin know for a fact the US is the worst offender when it comes to spying and sabotaging the competition.
What it is called when the US sells weapons to European countries that are connected to the US network, share data and can only be activated by US officials?
Your article is about a program to: "provide[s] F-35 international partners the capability to review and block messages to prevent sovereign data loss" and by adding this program, it will save our partners millions of dollars because they wont need to do this work themselves (which they knew they needed to do because the ALIS program was part of the plane and disclosed in its specs when they bought it).
I feel like you skimmed this article, and thought it was about something nefarious... so added it to your post because you thought it confirmed what you already thought.
No, it's the proper article that talks about its capabilities, it's food for thought, the "official" line, to avoid any conflict of interest when you develop your opinion, otherwise i am taxed as "conspiracy theorist"
And that's just for the future ones, and it only covers the front end, i let you imagine what other systems are over there, including what's int their auto-pilot system
Yes, exactly. The US knows full well how powerful that sort of control and access is, and other countries are (apparently) ok with that. The implicit social contract in the West is that the US maintains global peace anyway.
Obviously the US (and other countries) do not have similar levels of trust and cooperation with China, hence these sort of responses.
the US promotes liberalism for others, but internally they promote their very own interests
double face
after blocking you from doing commerce with their enemies through multitudes of sanctions and lobbies, they'll start to punish you if you try to protect your interests
To quote the article: "Washington announced on Wednesday (2 October) that it would hit European products with punitive tariffs worth $7.5 billion after receiving the green light from the World Trade Organization (WTO), following a 15-year legal battle between aircraft manufacturers Boeing and Airbus."
I still don't get the specific objection here. The USA argues for its own interests, and is inconsistent, at best, on persuing principles in the rest of the world. Yes this is selfish and annoying. But what does that have to do with the decision at hand?
There are a lot of people on HN arguing against sanctioning Russia for invading a sovereign state, they believe that the west should just turn a blind eye to it.
It's quite interesting, it's pretty much the only place on the internet I encounter such posts.
>It's quite interesting, it's pretty much the only place on the internet I encounter such posts.
You can find similar or even wierder ideas on reddit. Like one dude that said is from USA was telling me that Russia is the victim, was provoked by USA and on top of that he was on the opinion that countries in Easter Europe belong to Russia sphere of influence, that we the Easter Europeans have no rights, only USA and Russia have the rights to split the world and if Ukraine or Mopldvoa wants in EU is USA fault and is against the rights of Russia to "influence" countries East of Berlin.
I am curious, is this something many USA people think, that the "sphere of influences" crap is still relevant today and that we the small countries should not have a choice in it?
They may be arguing against sanctions because they are ineffective and hurt the West. I haven't seen the stance to ignore the Ukraine invasion altogether.
I wonder why you would single out HN for these posts. They appear in every comment section even of the mainstream press, on YouTube and other places.
Ineffectiveness of sanctions is an old and legitimate topic. Certainly the topic is discussed behind closed doors everywhere. There is a difference between hardliner isolationism and realism. Ultimately, the Western economies have to function if $billions in weapons are to be provided in the future.
To quote the article: "The Russian military industry was heavily dependent on Western-made components and products. It used U.S. and European tools to service drone engines and motors. It relied on Western producers to build gear for radiation-proof electronics, which are critical for the satellites Russian officials use to gather intelligence, communicate, and carry out precision strikes. Russian manufacturers worked with French companies to get the sensors needed for our airplanes. Even some of the cloth used in light aircraft, such as weather balloons, was made by Western businesses. The sanctions suddenly cut off our access to these products and left our military weaker than the West understood. But although it was clear to my team how these losses undermined Russia’s strength, the foreign ministry’s propaganda helped keep the Kremlin from finding out. The consequences of this ignorance are now on full display in Ukraine: the sanctions are one reason Russia has had so much trouble with its invasion."
Sanctions can be effective but they work best in the long term, less so in the short term.
> They may be arguing against sanctions because they are ineffective and hurt the West. I haven't seen the stance to ignore the Ukraine invasion altogether.
There's a certain large part of the Republican party that goes way beyond that and are openly hostile to helping Ukraine in any way.
A lot of Americans are American because their European ancestors got sick of European affairs and wanted a clean break from it.
Nonetheless, a lot of the anti-interventionist rhetoric seen on the net today feels very astroturfed. Anybody accusing NATO of warmongering is safe to write off as a Russian-aligned troll, considering Russia is the one who actually invaded a foreign country. NATO's "war mongering" amounts to offering sanctuary to the countries with a rational fear of being invaded by Russia.
I'm not European descended and could care less about what those people think of their home countries. My parents and family gave up ours when they came to this country and became citizens. I recommend those of European ancestry do so too.
All those nations decided to join NATO freely and sent an application. NATO then approved those applications. Those nations are also free to leave NATO again if they want to.
The other side annexes territories of a neighbouring souvereign nation and bombs the infrastructure to rubble with the goal of making the freezing population surrender.
Russia, like many former colonial empires, hangs onto its dreams of Greatness and Restoration. It is up to Russia to find a new befitting place and way for its nation in the international community and history. Many other former empires were forced to do the same.
Maybe because technical oriented minds better understand the subtleties of the conflict? and are able to methodically read articles like they able able to read through a documentation?
And i don't think people over here advocate against sanctioning Russia, you hear about people against sanctions from the politics, usually from the opposition camp
I think it's pretty clear that everyone here is sanctioning the actors of the war, both actors, the ones who participate in the conflict, and the ones who feed the conflict since 2014
The US complaining about Russia's influence over their elections
And the US meddling with Ukranian ones to promote Zelensky [1]
Countries that compromise their own national security so that people can have some sort of warm fuzzy feelings about how nice and good they are don't get to continue existing as countries for very long.
As an American, I call that stupid on behalf of Europe. Doesn't mean I want my country making the same mistake with China.
If you're a European, I would support parties that cared about your own national interests, instead of kowtowing to America. However I am an American, so I can't change Europe.
Exactly, why would you sell weapons to even an ally (who at some point could broker those weapons / IP to a near-pear adversary or grey area state) anywhere near as capable as your own?
Obviously, when it comes to terrorist groups and broke eastern european nations the U.S. has made mistakes with this line of reasoning. Re: captured weapons in ukraine ending up on the black market...
This is why every country should develop its own industry, technology and weapons. Imagine the US or China just turning off your weapons remotely if you decide to cross them.
If Russia is bargaining with Iran trading "hundreds" of captured anti-tank weapons and guided artillery munitions... it doesn't take a genius to come to conclusions as to what other non-state affiliated actors are doing...
Ukraine has also arrested a number of Ukrainians in known smuggling rings selling captured weapons on the black market [1].
> If Russia is bargaining with Iran trading "hundreds" of captured anti-tank weapons and guided artillery munitions... it doesn't take a genius to come to conclusions as to what other non-state affiliated actors are doing...
Im not seeing any sources saying that Russia is giving Iran hundreds of anti tank weapons? or guided artillery munitions?.
I think there are so many weapons that it must occur (either by Russian capture or traitorous Ukrainians) but that should not deter the US and allies from sending as much as needed for Ukraine to expel their invaders.
Is this an executive measure?
Does the executive have authority to do such a thing, based on vague and nebulous claims of threat to national security? Were these companies providing sevices/supplying goods in the US market subject to necessary US regulatory approvals? On which grounds can such approvals be rescinded without evidence that will stand in courts?
Moreover this is infact a restriction on US citizens/ firms from buying these goods?
Does it not impinge on their rights to fair choice?
> Does it not impinge on their rights to fair choice?
What are you talking about. You just made up a legal right that has never existed. Try going and opening up a restaurant in any city in america without submitting to any health department inspection. You will get shut down.
There is no such universal right under US law to "fair choice" when buying goods, whatever that might mean. There are millions of pages of laws and regulations affecting buying and selling of goods in all 50 states as well as in the federal government.
Don't waste too much energy on the sock puppet. This person has less understanding of the U.S. system than my 5th grader, yet is commenting very confidently all over this thread. Account is 20 days old.
That's the quandary with sock puppets, though. The comment is written well enough to withstand a quick skim, and if no one rebuts it, it may convince some skimmers.
That said, for some reason I doubt that hardware deployed in the 5 eyes nations won't also be used for surveillance purposes, just that the institutions controlling the systems will be different.