U.S. lawmakers want Google to reconsider links to China's Huawei | Hacker News Reader

U.S. lawmakers want Google to reconsider links to China's Huawei

reuters.com

53 pointsvthallam26 comments

With Huawei being the second largest Android vendor after Samsung, there is nothing unnatural if Google wants to collaborate with Huawei to make better phones. They might also want to collaborate with the 3rd and 4th largest vendors, Xiaomi and Oppo

Our current administration's push towards Isolationism and against Globalism has hit the hills of Silicon Valley.

Personally, I agree with the U.S. Govt here. I don't trust China either and neither should Google after they were effectively kicked out of that market. Android be damned - let them figure out their own technology. We need to just start manufacturing things here, with armies of robots if we have to. Let's compete for real with the rest of the world.

If only HTC had not dwindled. Remember when they used to quietly make the majority of Android phones?

> “While we regret that Google did not want to continue a long and fruitful tradition of collaboration between the military and technology companies, we are even more disappointed that Google apparently is more willing to support the Chinese Communist Party than the U.S. military,” they wrote.

The amount of cognitive dissonance in this quote is ridiculous. When I originally read this qoute, I was expecting to find further down that Google is doing defense research with China.

But nope. Google is contracting with a Chinese manufacturer to build cell phones, not performing weaponized AI research with the People's Liberation Army.

Apparently, it's unpatriotic and borderline traitorous to say "you know what? I'd rather focus on building some decent cellphones instead of finding new ways to kill people from afar."

Miniaturizing electronics, increase battery, signal processing, improved cameras, ML on phones, voice and command recognition on phones, computational photography, object detection on phones - are just some of the stuff that can be used to improve phones, but are really easy to find military uses for.

If google co-operates with teaching kinematics to Chinese teenagers, many of those teenagers may grow up to use them to shoot rockets at the US.

We can't help them to learn arithmetic either! They'll raise a generation of killer robot engineers and enslave us ;)

...and all those things are developed by literally hundreds of other companies that often interact with Chinese businesses. The US could prohibit export of advanced battery technology or image processing or...

This is not about national security. This is very explicitly a response to Google's desire not to cooperate with the US military on explicitly defense-related research. Two senators literally drew that line for us.

It's worth noting that US Senate Intelligence Committee members (specifically, Mark Warner (D)) have previously stated concern about the apparent closeness of Huawei to the Chinese Communist Party.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-devic...

https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/...

Even assuming Huawei is wholly controlled entity of the CCP, Google's collaboration with them is for generally peaceful purposes. Obviously, widespread use of Android phones manufactured by Huawei could present a security risk. But peaceful collaboration inherently creates such risks.

Surely, give and take is the simplest way to put favourable global relations. This unfortunately doesn't seem to be the mode as of late. I'd wager the risk was recently increased with the tariff one-upmanship the US and China are currently engaged in.

Ah... Tom Cotton. So this can be ignored.

“While we regret that Google did not want to continue a long and fruitful tradition of collaboration between the military and technology companies, we are even more disappointed that Google apparently is more willing to support the Chinese Communist Party than the U.S. military,” they[0] wrote.

[0] The letter was signed by Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, Republican Representatives Michael Conaway and Liz Cheney, and Democratic Representative Dutch Ruppersberger.

They are more impatient than I thought. This is meant to be read between the lines. I would be amazed if some Google exec is not already on his/her way to D.C. to meet the esteemed Senators.

It’s a new low even for U.S. lawmakers.

Apparently nobody in DC understands how capitalism works.If the worst happens Alphabet can always spin off a subsidiary, or maybe teach US lawmakers that global corporations can change headquarters very quickly if threatened.

> or maybe teach US lawmakers that global corporations can change headquarters very quickly if threatened.

That's incorrect. The US was willing to do almost anything necessary to prevent Pfizer from pulling an inversion and moving their HQ. They can craft legislation & rules almost overnight and stop Google from being able to easily move HQ.

If that power move somehow fails, they can go a more malevolent direction (see Joseph Nacchio) to make an example of you. Big tech is very, very aware of this fact. That's why they all got in line (eventually) and signed on to prism et al. The Feds were perfectly willingly to bankrupt Yahoo for example, if they kept resisting. [1]

The US is not an unregulated free market. The US is a massively regulated welfare state with dramatic intervention into the economy by the Federal and State governments. 40 or 50 years ago it may have been reasonable to call it a mixed economy, the power and size of the state has drastically increased since ~1970.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2014/09/feds-yahoo-fine-prism/

What lesson would Alphabet be imparting to US Lawmakers by moving head quarters?

I agree after the disaster that was the Nexus 6P. After one year the $500 phone proceeds to boot loop. Huawei says they can't do anything because they ran out of replacement parts. Soon after my spouses 6P does the same. Out $1000. Luckily my credit card warranty paid me back the full amount. I'll never buy Huawei products again.

Sorry for your story but it’s not related in the slightest

Certainly frustrating, though my 6P is working nicely still, so I have a generally better impression of Huawei, I suppose. As long as I can unlock the bootloader, I'll probably choose Xiaomi for my next phone.

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