Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network

axios.com

58 points·Maxious··5 comments

Perhaps it's the Trump name in the headline, but this seems worthy of much more attention/debate than it has received, given the potential impact.

Also confirmed by Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-5g/trump-securi...

First sentence of the Reuters article:

"President Donald Trump’s national security team is looking at options to counter the threat of China spying on U.S. phone calls that include the government building a super-fast 5G wireless network, a senior administration official said on Sunday"

It's interesting how in most previous administrations, newspapers would simply say "The Whitehouse." After all, it's more than just Trump. Really it's all the lobbyist, advisers and special interest groups that really run the country.

Second, the China thing is just so stupid on so many levels. Exactly where are we going to get all the infrastructure to build a 5G network? It all gets manufactured in China. So whatever intentional and unintentional security holes are in that hardware, it's going to come over here anyway.

It sounds a lot like the effort to push Apple to build iPhone in US. End of day, consumers pay for it. It's hard to see how it could work economically.

I think electronics could work in the US. Lead times are very important. It takes a very long time for a component to arrive from Shenzen. If you have a domestic electronics industry, even a bad one, it's always at a huge advantage - since they're just a phonecall away. If you have an acceptable one, you can have really low inventory, make phones as people buy them, and cut a corner on your competitors that way.

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