Comment by turc1656 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by turc1656 | Hacker News Reader

"There is a risk of letting any company "beholden to foreign governments" inside the country's telecommunications infrastructure, he said."

At it's face value this is indeed true. However, it is interesting there is no mention of Samsung then, right? Why would they be exempt from this recommendation, especially given Samsung phones are hundreds or perhaps thousands of times more prevalent than Huawei and ZTE phones in the US.

Shouldn't the argument from the FBI, CIA, and NSA be that US citizens shouldn't purchase any non-US manufactured phone? I'm skeptical as to the true purpose of the statement. This might possibly indicate that for whatever reason Huawei and ZTE don't play ball with the US when it comes to surveillance and the US intelligence agencies don't like it. If anything, this just raised the probability of me purchasing one of these phones. I'll probably stick with BlackBerry, but I will at least consider these next time I need to buy a new phone.

However, it is interesting there is no mention of Samsung then, right?

Well, if you follow the news, apparently South Korea is beholden to Samsung, not the other way around ;)

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/27/south-korea-prosecutors-seek...

The US has 23,000 soldiers in South Korea.

It may also be relevant that there are no US-manufactured phones. Indeed, even Samsung phones are full of chips from mainland China and Taiwan.

Isn't the issue more about design though? It seems to me that it'd be easy enough to take a random sample of chips made by your Chinese manufacturer, cut the top off and verify it matches your design with a microscope. However if the complex product is designed by an adversary it's easier to hide a backdoor, probably also easier to plausibly claim it was an accidental bug.

Samsung is "exempt" because they are beholden (in theory) to a government that shares American values (in theory).

It's notable that Director Wray's response included language about "foreign governments that don't share our values":

> "We're deeply concerned about risks of allowing any company or entity that is beholden to foreign governments that don't share our values to gain positions of power inside our telecommunciations networks."

Their military is also quite intertwined with ours -- the US maintains operational control in the event that S. Korea goes to war, at least for a few more years.

Because US has a military presence in South Korea. The US army present on SK soil is a very strong deterrent against them trying something like that. If you have tens of thousands of soldiers stationed in a foreign country it means the country with army in your backyard has quite a lot of influence over you.

The government lost this argument with me, when they outsourced missile chips to be manufactured in the same country as where the missiles were pointed.

Samsung is not a Chinese company no?

It's South Korean.

The reason is probably that Samsung caved to the US intelligence industry while Huawei and ZTE did not.

It was laughable that the Australian Government forbade NBN bids that included Huawei equipment, but happily accepted gear from Cisco.

Australia? We're totally in lockstep with America on foreign policy and surveillance as part of 5-eyes and ANZUS. Duplicitous politicians walk a fine line between China being our biggest trading partner and "All the way with LBJ".

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