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Comment by sonnyblarney | Hacker News Reader

Large international dealings are never about 'truth' - they are about the balance of a web of geopolitical issues.

Also, this is not paranoia, it's a geostrategic fight based on the reality that a) China and US/West are doing a lot to actively spy on one another b) they're in a trade war.

Also China does not have an open market for US/Western products and I don't see any reason why the same rules applied by China to the West should not apply to Chinese companies coming to the West. That would be closer to 'fair free trade'.

But yes - if the hardware and software are both open for inspection - that is a kind of 'truth' as you say.

and companies should then be able to decide for themselves.

Question: is it true though that both hardware and software are in fact fully open? How do they maintain their IP in this case?

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Uh, hardware being open means nothing. Your supplier can swap your standard chip for a spy chip and open hardware will not be able to help you catch that.

This isn't really about spying. The reality is that Huawei's equipment is the best in the world for the money. It's not even close. Given a free market (remember that?) there's really no doubt that Huawei will go on to completely dominate this market over the next decade. It's already the largest telecom equipment maker in the world [1] and its size only makes its products and architects more and more competitive with each day. It's a virtuous cycle at work that nobody can deny anymore. The numbers don't lie: what you have here is a technologically sophisticated market where the West cannot compete with China at all. This is supposed to be impossible!

Now there is a legitimate national security concern about having the world's telecom equipment manufactured by a single company. But there's only so much can do under existing trade treaties. It's also really not a good look for the US and the West to be seen actively trying to disrupt the free market at work. And so we get this concocted story about spying. It's concocted because nobody, despite spending millions and millions of dollars investigating Huawei and studying its boxes, has ever shown the company participating in anything like espionage. Most people can see through this blatant protectionist hypocrisy [2]. Ironically all the security research on Huawei has only served to make their products much more secure than the competition.

[1] https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-03-19/huawei-now-worlds-la...

[2] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/11/comment_huawei_usa/

" Given a free market (remember that?)"

Huawei is a state-backed organization working from a closed, controlled economy where not even information, let alone products, services and capital flow freely.

So if the cost of having to inspect every single piece of Huawei gear, plus check and load the software still keeps them 'competitive' then it might be worth it to outsiders, but probably not.

Given that it's commodity gear, perhaps someone will come along, say from Taiwan ... and produce the same thing at competitive costs, wherein security is not a factor and then, yes, that entity would be poised to dominate on price.

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