seeing the reasoning includes violations against ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) its difficult to see how the US isnt creating some sort of whipping boy for its own agenda. Bluecoat, Intel, IBM, and hundreds of other companies have been accused of ITAR violations as well yet were not subjected to a 7 month long PR campaign from Washington to ablate them from the economic playing field. This feels like telco's flexing their close relationship to washington and pushing for a scorched-earth policy rather than be caught completely unprepared for 5G. "if we cant sell it, you cant have it" sounds rather less like a capitalist nation.
it also bears remembering that none of their CEO's were detained in foreign airports and led to Jail to await US extradition.
While 5G may be a new front in this battle, US suspicion of Huawei goes back a long time -- at least as far back as the Bush administration. The current administration might be antagonistic toward China, but in no sense did they invent the war against Huawei.
The suspicion might go back a long time, but the PR campaign is relatively new, at least at the current level. I do remember the occasional story a few years ago, but not this barrage of articles.
ITAR violations wouldn't be against Huawei though, they would be against the companies selling controlled items without a valid license. However, I think this just reinforces the idea that they're doing anything they can to justify the ban on Huawei's products.
I'm not at all surprised that suspected violations wouldn't result in a public war against US-based companies. What would be the point in that? The violations would be addressed quietly I think.
Since we are mostly talking about hardware; it should be possible to proof the existence of a backdoor or similar by careful analysis.
I remember a few years back where all of sudden it was made an issue that members of the Danish parlament had Lenovo laptops. I think it turned out to be unfounded. Today the largest 4G network here in Denmark is made by Huawei; though they have lost the bid for the 5G network to Ericsson.
I've got a Huawei laptop that's pretty nice . . . but I'm reluctant to use it for anything even remotely sensitive.
Am I being overly paranoid? Or should I treat it as basically trustworthy as any other major brand of computer?
The system requires a special app to update drivers and so forth, but frankly this is not additional security exposure, since Huawei bits are all over the machine to begin with.
In a post snowden world, why would you trust a 5E product anymore?
Not saying that you should trust Chinese companies, but the notion that they're any worst by speculation in the face of evidence for the alternative's being complicate in spying on their users is rather absurd. People can't shake off the good-guy-bad-guy narrative, can they?
> In a post snowden world, why would you trust a 5E product anymore?
Because I’m one of the people the 5E apparatus is trying to protect, and if my local spy agency got in touch with me to ask me for my data, I’d give it to them without a second thought.
I have a Xiaomi phone. The hardware is pretty nice and I enjoy using it. But I don't trust it and find it creepy as hell.
The built-in file browser shows ads related to random conversations I've had(not related to searches or my general interests) way to often for me to consider it a coincidence.
I'm seriously considering getting an iphone again, just because I trust Apple a bit more(and only a little).
But there would be no way in hell I would do sensitive work on Huawei or Xiaomi laptop.
I have the same experience. The hardware is nice for the price but it's loaded with crappy apps.
Some of them are badly translated, updates to a simple calender app suddenly requires ridiculous permissions.
And worst of all, enabling USB debugging test apps through Android Studio requires a Mi Account. Maybe I'm paranoid but I can't think of a reason other than corporate espionage.
As with all Android phones (and to a certain extent iOS devices as well), trusting the default operating system is a very bad idea. Unlock the bootloader, flash it with something trustworthy.
There is no perfect security in this world. You can only mitigate your risk exposure.
If you have substantial business interests in China, you’d prefer a non Chinese brand laptop.
If you are more worried about IRS going after your financial records, US based advertisers tracking your online activities or NSA monitoring your contacts with people in Arab countries, huawei may be a better choice, since it won’t work with IRS, Facebook or NSA.
Are there recorded instances of the IRS actually breaking into people's computers remotely instead of, at the most, getting a warrant for the device to be seized? I guess you'd never know if they did that for parallel construction.
b) Brands are tied at different levels to their nations, and go after people from different kinds of reasons.
I suggest given the controversy, there's probably a lot of legit risk about using Huawei for any reason.
Unless you're doing something really dangerous, I would not be worried about Windows. There are zillions of tax evaders and otherwise criminals who 'use computers' and don't get caught for that reason in the US.
If you're going to do something really bad, well large American corporations may help out the Feds.
Carriers, web sites and other such places are probably more of a risk than your OS.
The security concern over Huawei is legit, even if there's economic war, and a hint of jingoism mixed in.
I would barely trust Lenovo if I had completely wiped the drive, and even then I'd be wary. Huawei is a whole different animal. I wouldn't allow a Huawei device in my home or office unless it had the battery removed and it was enclosed in a Faraday cage.
I just recently bought a Lenovo for someone close to me. Would you mind elaborating on why you say this about them, and if you really think they can be made somewhat privacy-safe for general use?
One thing that I think too many people forget is: you actually want to be spied by China (change with any relevant country) rather than by your own country because your own country is much more likely interested by you than China! I always try to choose hardware or services in countries that are not mine for that reason.
For my children, I chose mail adresses in India (zoho.com) because I am french; not that I trust India more than France but because being spied by India will certainly be less harmful for French citizens than being spied by some European country. I will myself never use a French service or app.
I really laugh when I see my country releasing some new "trustful" services for French citizens: maybe it is true but I have very little to win (not being spied by a country that does not care about me anyway) and too much to lose (if a country is about to annoy you it will certainly be yours).
If I were a chinese citizen I would certainly not use Chinese products for the very same reason, but an American citizen should be more confident in using such services than in using american ones! Why do American people want to be spied by the very single country they really have to fear?
You as an individual don't matter. However, there are plenty of individuals with power inside whatever organization they're a part of and/or in the political process of the country they live in, who are vulnerable to the exact same issues.
Are you worried about China, or the company itself? They probably don't care about your credit card info. State secrets, closed source code, or proprietary business processes might be more useful. But anything nefarious would need to be worth getting caught.
I'm sure people will be scrutinizing them a lot closer now?
Huawei is a proxy for the Chinese government so the question is moot.
China is indeed mainly focused internally, but there's no limit to how far they'll go in support of those ends. China attacked Google, Yahoo, Adobe, many others, using a zero-day IE exploit.
Of course they'll use your laptop as part of a botnet, C&C proxy, ransomware vector, etc. There's no benefit of the doubt remaining.
I don't trust that the Government's motives are truly public (maybe the ban is just a consequence of them not being able to implant a backdoor) and I don't trust Huawei... but I also don't trust any other computer/phone manufacturer ever since the Snowden leak. I still use them though because I am not a high value target.
Out of curiosity, does Huawei provide a way to update drivers without the software? I know Dell has a similar offering but you can still download the drivers from their website
You would be much better off just getting the drivers direcly from the manufacter of each component. The only one that is likely only from Huawei would be the Bios which I guess is one of the more likely ones to be tampered with. :/ Reinstalling the OS with a known good source will likely defeat most attempts at spying on you.
I have yet to become allergic to Google snooping but understand that lack of trust to be very well founded. I think I understand their secure boot architecture, though. Whereas I simply cannot trust Windows Secure Boot based vendor firmware.
Apple iOS devices. Their macOS Intel computers are about as trustworthy as Chromebook Intel.
Not-so-recent ThinkPad laptops with OpenBoot BIOS are ok.
But.
All of these devices have radios with each their own, black-box operating systems. I don't know how to develop a basis for trust there.
So I am left with very few alternatives.
A Raptor Talos II Workstation, with a custom battery-based power supply, locked inside a Faraday cage. Turned off.
It will be interesting how the unintended consequences roll out with this.
With Chinese companies already having Google free software/service stacks in China, being able to get adoption of those stacks internationally may allow the full bifurcation of the Android ecosystem, essentially eviscerating Google’s monopoly.
Long term it could be a turning point to deflating American dominance of the most important market in the modern world.
"Long term it could be a turning point to deflating American dominance of the most important market in the modern world."
The most important market in the modern world is oil and gas.
Global digital ad spending (which is what these software/service stacks are proxies for) will be $327B in 2019. Compare this to $360B for a single oil producer, Saudi Aramco, in 2018.
Note that none of the FAANGs are even in the top 10 of this list:
... and only 2 are in the top 20. And google is not on the list at all. 5 of those top 10 are oil and gas (and it would be 6 if Saudi Aramco were listed).
It will split the internet, not so sure about hardware because there's less propaganda value in that.
In many ways the internet split is already done, there's hardly any overlap between the Chinese and US web. Probably because most of the non-chinese web is blocked in China.
Theoretically, this makes Chinese web companies less competitive. Many US companies are dominant worldwide, but the majority of popular Chinese tech companies are only popular in their captive market.
IMO it's similar to the captive markets of the Soviet Bloc. Strong protectionism and state sponsoring like China has done, and the Soviet Union did historically created companies that weren't globally competitive. The day the iron curtain fell, treasured trabants were abandoned on the side of the road.
Will history repeats itself? Who knows, but the situation is very similar. China produces a lot of good products, probably moreso than the USSR at it's peak. But China also engages in many practices that eventually made Soviet products inferior.
If you keep the training wheels on your economy forever it would certainly make it uncompetitive. The U.S. engaged in such practices too, and continues to do so in areas like pickup trucks. At the end of the day, you can’t really fudge leadership.
The U.S. has been fudging leadership for some time. Now it’s looking for someone to blame. It’s looking for a Plaza Accords 2.0. But China is not Japan, geopolitically.
Thing is, would you trust an appstore infrastructure based in China? If they had a more trustworthy 3rd party country like South Korea then they'd have a better shot.
I kind of wish they'd embrace something like Firefox OS.
The government doesn't need to. The Chinese population will decide if they want to drop Apple themselves. They already have basically stopped buying Samsung after the S7 issue and the US military base.
barring U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms posing a national security risk
Huh. Did the US government just make my cell phone illegal to use? Replacement is on my list of things to do, but I wasn't really planning on it this month.....
Not to mention basically every other option I could look at is also made in China, with the exception(?) of Samsung - which I'm not inclined to cough up the $$ for.
Two different things here. The odds that all Huawei hardware is setup for mass surveillance is low. The odds that the Chinese gov could use that hardware to target specific people for spying is close to 100%.
Just got a Galaxy J7 V 2 for less than $250. Does what I need it to, snappy, expandable storage, and an actual all-day battery life (probably day-and-a-half). I guess I don't understand why people want super-powered phones: just carry a decent laptop. It's not easy to make use of that much power in that small a form factor any way, particularly now that very few manufacturers allow bootloader unlocks and root. Also, people buy 8-core cpu, 8-gb-ram, 1440p screen phones and expect a long battery life? It's much easier to drive a reasonable processor, reasonable ram, and a 720p screen.
I guess the market has different ideas. I get the "it's a slick piece of tech" factor, but can some one who likes flagships talk about what makes them good?
For what it's worth, I consider the Samsung Galaxy S3 the pinnacle of smartphone design. It retailed for $250 at launch. I feel like prices are going up because the smartphone industry is trying to innovate faster than chips are improving.
Because people like to play games, take photographs (the camera on your J7 while probably adequate pales in significance to top end phones) and other high processing tasks that your budget phone simply can't do and that is often inconvenient to pull out a laptop for. Such as photos, or gaming on public transport.
Eh, I'm on a 2 year old Honor 8 that may have now stopped getting security updates (last patches were the 12/2018 ones) that was under 250 when I got it and which needs a new battery.
I'd probably be on a Nokia right now if they'd released a 6.2 this spring. I haven't looked at the J7 specifically but my impression in the past has been that there are a variety of midrange phones that are a better value than Samsung's offerings.
Never had an S3, but I had an Aviator and an S5. I miss the swappable batteries on those models...
On the other hand, I have an S8 now and it labors to render most websites. That's more an indictment of the websites, but such is the world we live in.
I will just repost this article here from Tyler Cowen, I don't think I read anyone has said it better.
>The U.S.-China Cold War Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better. That’s because the major issue between the two nations is not trade or ideology but a lack of trust.
banning them from buying components from the USA is going to encourage them to develop it themselves. stuff like this is how we lose our edge in tech, if we haven't lost it already.
Canada is nice and all but China has a Japan-level quality of human capital and an enormous population. Anything we can do they will be able to do, and probably better. Absent crazy stuff like AGI or genetic engineering changing the source of innovation, China will become the leader in high technology.
Here's to hoping that RISC-V takes off in a big way over the next decade. AMD and Intel's cross licensing agreement has essentially created a duopoly in this space.
Readit News
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trump-telecommu...
seeing the reasoning includes violations against ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) its difficult to see how the US isnt creating some sort of whipping boy for its own agenda. Bluecoat, Intel, IBM, and hundreds of other companies have been accused of ITAR violations as well yet were not subjected to a 7 month long PR campaign from Washington to ablate them from the economic playing field. This feels like telco's flexing their close relationship to washington and pushing for a scorched-earth policy rather than be caught completely unprepared for 5G. "if we cant sell it, you cant have it" sounds rather less like a capitalist nation.
it also bears remembering that none of their CEO's were detained in foreign airports and led to Jail to await US extradition.
While 5G may be a new front in this battle, US suspicion of Huawei goes back a long time -- at least as far back as the Bush administration. The current administration might be antagonistic toward China, but in no sense did they invent the war against Huawei.
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I'm not at all surprised that suspected violations wouldn't result in a public war against US-based companies. What would be the point in that? The violations would be addressed quietly I think.
I remember a few years back where all of sudden it was made an issue that members of the Danish parlament had Lenovo laptops. I think it turned out to be unfounded. Today the largest 4G network here in Denmark is made by Huawei; though they have lost the bid for the 5G network to Ericsson.
There are not many things I agree with the current US Administration on but their hardline stance on China is certainly one of them.
Am I being overly paranoid? Or should I treat it as basically trustworthy as any other major brand of computer?
The system requires a special app to update drivers and so forth, but frankly this is not additional security exposure, since Huawei bits are all over the machine to begin with.
I'm sure y'all got opinions :-)
Not saying that you should trust Chinese companies, but the notion that they're any worst by speculation in the face of evidence for the alternative's being complicate in spying on their users is rather absurd. People can't shake off the good-guy-bad-guy narrative, can they?
Because I’m one of the people the 5E apparatus is trying to protect, and if my local spy agency got in touch with me to ask me for my data, I’d give it to them without a second thought.
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The built-in file browser shows ads related to random conversations I've had(not related to searches or my general interests) way to often for me to consider it a coincidence.
I'm seriously considering getting an iphone again, just because I trust Apple a bit more(and only a little).
But there would be no way in hell I would do sensitive work on Huawei or Xiaomi laptop.
Some of them are badly translated, updates to a simple calender app suddenly requires ridiculous permissions.
And worst of all, enabling USB debugging test apps through Android Studio requires a Mi Account. Maybe I'm paranoid but I can't think of a reason other than corporate espionage.
If you have substantial business interests in China, you’d prefer a non Chinese brand laptop.
If you are more worried about IRS going after your financial records, US based advertisers tracking your online activities or NSA monitoring your contacts with people in Arab countries, huawei may be a better choice, since it won’t work with IRS, Facebook or NSA.
a) It's not a simple relativism.
b) Brands are tied at different levels to their nations, and go after people from different kinds of reasons.
I suggest given the controversy, there's probably a lot of legit risk about using Huawei for any reason.
Unless you're doing something really dangerous, I would not be worried about Windows. There are zillions of tax evaders and otherwise criminals who 'use computers' and don't get caught for that reason in the US.
If you're going to do something really bad, well large American corporations may help out the Feds.
Carriers, web sites and other such places are probably more of a risk than your OS.
The security concern over Huawei is legit, even if there's economic war, and a hint of jingoism mixed in.
For my children, I chose mail adresses in India (zoho.com) because I am french; not that I trust India more than France but because being spied by India will certainly be less harmful for French citizens than being spied by some European country. I will myself never use a French service or app.
I really laugh when I see my country releasing some new "trustful" services for French citizens: maybe it is true but I have very little to win (not being spied by a country that does not care about me anyway) and too much to lose (if a country is about to annoy you it will certainly be yours).
If I were a chinese citizen I would certainly not use Chinese products for the very same reason, but an American citizen should be more confident in using such services than in using american ones! Why do American people want to be spied by the very single country they really have to fear?
China is indeed mainly focused internally, but there's no limit to how far they'll go in support of those ends. China attacked Google, Yahoo, Adobe, many others, using a zero-day IE exploit.
Of course they'll use your laptop as part of a botnet, C&C proxy, ransomware vector, etc. There's no benefit of the doubt remaining.
I have yet to become allergic to Google snooping but understand that lack of trust to be very well founded. I think I understand their secure boot architecture, though. Whereas I simply cannot trust Windows Secure Boot based vendor firmware.
Apple iOS devices. Their macOS Intel computers are about as trustworthy as Chromebook Intel.
Not-so-recent ThinkPad laptops with OpenBoot BIOS are ok.
But.
All of these devices have radios with each their own, black-box operating systems. I don't know how to develop a basis for trust there.
So I am left with very few alternatives.
A Raptor Talos II Workstation, with a custom battery-based power supply, locked inside a Faraday cage. Turned off.
https://www.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/intro.html
With Chinese companies already having Google free software/service stacks in China, being able to get adoption of those stacks internationally may allow the full bifurcation of the Android ecosystem, essentially eviscerating Google’s monopoly.
Long term it could be a turning point to deflating American dominance of the most important market in the modern world.
The most important market in the modern world is oil and gas.
Global digital ad spending (which is what these software/service stacks are proxies for) will be $327B in 2019. Compare this to $360B for a single oil producer, Saudi Aramco, in 2018.
Note that none of the FAANGs are even in the top 10 of this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_r...
... and only 2 are in the top 20. And google is not on the list at all. 5 of those top 10 are oil and gas (and it would be 6 if Saudi Aramco were listed).
In many ways the internet split is already done, there's hardly any overlap between the Chinese and US web. Probably because most of the non-chinese web is blocked in China.
Theoretically, this makes Chinese web companies less competitive. Many US companies are dominant worldwide, but the majority of popular Chinese tech companies are only popular in their captive market.
IMO it's similar to the captive markets of the Soviet Bloc. Strong protectionism and state sponsoring like China has done, and the Soviet Union did historically created companies that weren't globally competitive. The day the iron curtain fell, treasured trabants were abandoned on the side of the road.
Will history repeats itself? Who knows, but the situation is very similar. China produces a lot of good products, probably moreso than the USSR at it's peak. But China also engages in many practices that eventually made Soviet products inferior.
The U.S. has been fudging leadership for some time. Now it’s looking for someone to blame. It’s looking for a Plaza Accords 2.0. But China is not Japan, geopolitically.
I kind of wish they'd embrace something like Firefox OS.
No less than how much I trust the five eyes we have right now.
The only thing preventing me from using Chinese based stuff is the language barrier.
And Firefox OS, why would they embrace something nobody else has?
The free market in action...
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Also, there's nothing stopping China - or anyone else - from doing as they please with Android 'stack', hint: it's not the valuable thing.
Beyond that, I think Huawei is the #3 mobile phone seller in Europe (behind Apple and Samsung) and #2 in Canada.
The DJIs and Yuneecs etc of the world have already set the standard here.
Huh. Did the US government just make my cell phone illegal to use? Replacement is on my list of things to do, but I wasn't really planning on it this month.....
Not to mention basically every other option I could look at is also made in China, with the exception(?) of Samsung - which I'm not inclined to cough up the $$ for.
A loose enough reading of that includes Chinese manufactured iPhones, it seems...
I guess the market has different ideas. I get the "it's a slick piece of tech" factor, but can some one who likes flagships talk about what makes them good?
For what it's worth, I consider the Samsung Galaxy S3 the pinnacle of smartphone design. It retailed for $250 at launch. I feel like prices are going up because the smartphone industry is trying to innovate faster than chips are improving.
I'd probably be on a Nokia right now if they'd released a 6.2 this spring. I haven't looked at the J7 specifically but my impression in the past has been that there are a variety of midrange phones that are a better value than Samsung's offerings.
On the other hand, I have an S8 now and it labors to render most websites. That's more an indictment of the websites, but such is the world we live in.
Deleted Comment
>The U.S.-China Cold War Will Get Worse Before It Gets Better. That’s because the major issue between the two nations is not trade or ideology but a lack of trust.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-23/u-s-ch...
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