Huawei Facts: An open letter to the US media
huawei.com
huawei.com
Then, after your employees have done all that hard work, you just fire them and call them "mediocre"[0].
Hehe, this is the very reason of why I as a Chinese IT worker, refuse to pay my own money for any of their product.
[0] https://bgr.com/2019/01/21/huawei-layoffs-ceo-mediocre-emplo...
Imagine that, not being a national citizen, but from an allied country, and being told point blank that you are a-okay for spying without any kind of shame.
AFAIK China does not intercept all of my country's communications, which the US has been doing for decades.
Sigh, it's just a bad choice between sleazy US or dictatorial China. At least there are some other 5G choices available.
This was the case from the beginning of modern countries - even back in old Greece or in 400 BC with the introduction of doves (per https://www.focus.de/wissen/mensch/tid-5865/geschichte-der-s...). It was and is always a case of tacit acceptance - you as a country knew you were spied upon just as you were spying on other countries, and you relied on this to get your own spies traded back alive.
Yet everyone does it. The NSA snoops up everyone and their dog, same does GCHQ, same does the BND, same do the Russians and Chinese for anything they can get their paws on.
Doesn't even matter if it's own or other countries' citizens - the NSA simply asks BND or GCHQ to spy on US citizens on their behalf, and vice versa. Laws meaning to protect citizens from their own secret services are for all practical measures null and void.
Well I think that's a brash assumption.
Without Snowden, we wouldn't have known about the extent of US surveillance.
A "Chinese Snowden" would not have their revelations accessible to China via their great-firewalled internet or state-run news, nor would the chilling effects of their Orwellian surveillance state likely produce such a person to begin with.
I don't know what you accomplish by denying something so basic and provable.
As was pretty much every other male adult of his generation. I don't see what this supposedly proves.
> the early funding came from government sources
Something which isn't all too uncommon, both in China and across the world. Silicon Valley itself was built on DoD money. Again, this is grasping straws.
> and several official gov white papers state Huawei as a national security priority.
That can be interpreted in a lot of different ways. For one, Trump made the exact same statement about the US coal and steel industry. Is the rest of the world supposed to ban US coal and steel now because of that? Again, this doesn't prove anything at all. It's just interpretative fear-mongering.
I'll tell you what we have: Numerous backdoors in Cisco equipment and official government documents that the NSA used Cisco for spying operations. This is a fact.
On Huawei's side, all we have are comments from the US government. The very organization with a decades long track record of global mass surveillance, among other things. There is no proof of backdoors, despite GCHQ having inspected their hard- and software for the past 8 years. In fact, there isn't any evidence at all that the Chinese government has used Huawei for their spying operations in any capacity. They most certainly could force them to, but the exact same thing can be said about the US government, who also has a track record of having done exactly that already.
Show me actual proof and I'll revise my opinion, but until then I'll call this out for what it is: Just another US-gov-led witch hunt.
^citation needed
HPSCI (Rogers/Ruppersberger) report (2012):
https://republicans-intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligenc...
Story about Rogers report (2012):
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/09/us/us-panel-calls-huawei-...
Australia Bars Huawei From Broadband Project (2012):
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/technology/australia-bars...
CBS News interview with Rogers (2012):
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/huawei-probed-for-security-espi...
Analysis: Who really owns Huawei? (2010):
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/analysis-who-really-owns-huaw...
Foreign involvement in the Critical National Infrastructure (UK 2013):
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
The History Of Tech Giant Huawei And The Chinese Government (2018):
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/07/674467994/huawei-and-the-chin...
Everyone is spying on eachother and we are not safe from that, despite what is said. I’m more afraid of the NSA having far reaching powers to spy on their own citizens than I am of China hacking into the NSA
> imprisoned, tortured, or killed on the basis of your religious or political beliefs
You've entirely failed to refute the parent comment.
Surveillance of Muslims vs. China kidnapping Uyghurs and putting them in re-education camps? Are you even seriously comparing the two countries here?
(a) Social credit system which centres around facial recognition of the entire population ?
(b) Reeducation camps where tens of millions of Muslims, Uyghurs, dissidents, journalists etc are sent to based on surveillance of their online activity ?
(c) Free reign to do whatever they want unfettered by any judicial or political oversight mechanisms ?
(d) Companies and the government stealing intellectual property on an industrial scale ?
The answer to all of those is no. US is a democracy with checks and balances provided by Congress, Journalists and the Courts. China has none of these.
From the outside, USA with its more noticably overbearing propaganda or China with its disregard for US set morality don't seem that hugely different. These moral arguments from US side are laughable for anyone who was sitting on the other side of diplomatic table.
Lesson here is that we (as in europeans) need to get rid of dependency on both of those nations for core services.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-45474279
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
But if your choice is between being spied on by the US or by China, why would you prefer China?
And I mean, we even do have European businesses in that sector but it seems we're not even trying.. Unfortunately.
No, it isn't.
> It's like saying a government backed army and a guy with a gun are the same because they can both shoot people.
This however qualifies for that title, since you're probably underestimating China if you're comparing them with a single person with a gun.
> This however qualifies for that title, since you're probably underestimating China if you're comparing them with a single person with a gun.
You totally missed the analogy. Here, China/US are the armies, and Huawei/Cisco are just some folks with guns. When governments intervene, they bring an enormous amount of resources that even large companies cannot compete with.
That's what they claim and given the repercussions, both legally and commercially, for admitting to willingly giving the NSA all the access they want or deliberately planting backdoors, it's not all that hard to see why they'd be lying about this. Saying that it was without their help or consent is the only sensible choice they had / have.
> In contrast, it is largely understood that Huawei freely assists and cooperates with the Chinese government.
The only "proof" of that are statements from the US government. The very organization with a decades long track record of global mass surveillance, among other things.
Doesn't really take a leap of imagination that this is more about holding back a successful Chinese company in favor of something more "controllable" than it is about Huawei being an actual security risk. After all, we have a new Cisco backdoor like what, every other week? Whereas proof for those alleged Huawei backdoors has yet to materialize and that is with GCHQ having inspected Huawei's equipment and source code for more than 8 years now.
If you ask me, this just boils down to anti-China propaganda from the US. Which doesn't mean that we should simply trust Huawei, but in the absence of any compelling evidence we Europeans are better off policing them - the GSMA for example wants a Europe-wide equipment-testing organization for suppliers like Huawei - rather than banning them outright.
My only argument here would be that choosing China means we're choosing equipment where everyone involved knows that due diligence must be made to keep spying out and communication channels secured. I feel like this is not done enough when using US equipment and has exposed us to too much risk, considering the increasing hostility of current US government and its also increasing push to leverage spying to attack our companies.
You can argue many other avenues (like having better quality of life if we stay aligned with US vs. China), but doing moral handwringing about Huawei after Snowden's leaks and failings of current US government is a bit hypocritical.
23m Chinese have been banned from buying plane or train tickets based on their social score. Show me anything in the US that is remotely equivalent.
Show me a re-education camp in the US where tens of millions are being detained. Is Guantanomo Bay even remotely the same ?
Try to rent apartment without or with low credit score...
It seems that some European countries are already reacting to this needless hostility by slowly realigning themselves to China: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/10/04/chinese-invest...
We're in for some interesting times.
UK!=US
>Guantanamo Bay with prisoners without due process and oversight,
It's been a lot more documented than people who "disappear".
> police killing black people without punishment and military industrial complex lobbying established government all exist.
This is an issue that our officials refuse to address.
The US is not some shining beacon of justice and fairness, it's just as corrupt and capricious as all the rest.
Relying on a few references - precisely because it's not common - in a country of 330 million, does not support your claim. The reason cases of denied legal process get so much attention in the US, is because they're rare. The reason a million detained Muslims in China isn't causing an uproar in the Muslim world, is because they know China has no protections for human rights and it does no good to protest. Contrast that with the protests regarding Abu Ghraib. Why was that an massive, international embarrassment for the US, if it's just the same as China?
> it's just as corrupt and capricious as all the rest
Saying it, does not make it so. The fact that that is incorrect, is precisely why so many people - of such diverse backgrounds - want to immigrate to the US and have for the past century. Much of Latin America would immediately immigrate if given the option, because of how corrupt the majority of Latin America is (see: how low Latin American nations rank [1]).
The US routinely ranks high among nations on the quality of its justice system, the independence of its judicial system and its protection of property rights. That has been true for a very long time.
Transparency International ranks China #88 on corruption and Russia #138, to name two prominent examples.
Denmark is ranked #1 for lowest corruption, New Zealand is #2. The US ranks comparable to France and Japan. So your premise is there's no difference between the US, Denmark, New Zealand, France, Japan, China and Russia - since everyone is just as corrupt and capcricious as all the rest.
Of course that's not true. The US is a liberal democracy with vast protections for human rights. China and Russia, as contrasts, are regressive dictatorships with few protections for human rights.
Anyway, the US has more systemic problems in how it affords legal process to the accused. The widespread racism that still permeates the country's institutions. The misuse of plea bargaining, which seems almost designed to deny proper legal process to the accused, unless they're wealthy enough to challenge it. Even in sentencing, the US still uses the death penalty, something that most other countries, especially highly-developed countries, have abolished.
On the topic of US corruption, it will be interesting to see the outcome of the Mueller investigation. I suspect most of those at the top will get away with it with scant repercussion. At least, that's what usually happens.
Us has a lot of flaws, and the justice system (for less affluent people) is a shame but it is uncomparable to a totalitarian regime.
But of the two things you list, it probably depends on whether it is wartime or peacetime. In peacetime, better to be spied on by foreign governments and in wartime better not to be.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/detention-of-an-australian...
Sorry but I will always prefer the US where at least there is a functioning judicial system.
One reason why Tencent investment on Reddit became such as issue.
China is playing a really good geopolitical strategy game. If any other country was doing the same attrocities as them, they would be criticized and sanctioned. But China has gained enough power to stop that from happening.
Fixed that for you.
Lots of propaganda materials or internet trolls, or paid keyboard warrior tends to name Huawei being the No. 1 in 5G patents, (which is not true) bringing the most innovation and doing majority of the 5G standard works ( Which is again not true ). And they will attack or threaten you for saying it is not so.
Huawei have the best implementation, one reason because they have much more resources and has a very diverse testing scenario. Just as the letter noted, they have system in Artic Circles and to Sahara, their equipment are well tested in these Edge Cases, and they have 900M Smartphone population in China to test again the most crowned situation, and in places like Hong Kong where not only do you have the highest mobile density within given radius, there are huge amount of concrete building making it extremely difficult for wireless reception.
And another major point, their competitor sucks. Ericsson and Nokia, whatever is in their management's mind I have no idea. But thanks to competition from Huawei it was a wake up call for them and they are finally not sitting on their bottom and doing nothing. Ericsson manage to shake things up a little should be in a slightly better shape. Nokia, whatever happened to them during the M$ / Nokia era, and they were never the same again. Samsung, which for some reason hasn't been in media spot light, are working hard and I expect them to fill the gap. The only problem is Telco Equipment tends to have an extremely long lead time, Samsung might be too little too late.
The problem isn't with technology, it is many of the western MNO have Huawei equipment in one form or another for their 4G, and some of these hardware are 5G ready meaning they are upgradable to 5G via software update. Switching out Huawei now means they will have to redeploy all those infrastructure that are already in place. And it is labour intensive as well as time consuming. Which is why many MNO are frustrated.
I wouldn't disagree that Huawei are ahead right in terms of products available right now, the other two are behind but there will be a competitive market.
I have no idea why Samsung even get a mention. That confused me.
Disclaimer: I work for Nokia (but not in mobile networks, or whatever they call that division these days).
I assume there is a missing word built their network soley on them. Vodafone, Three, are two big Operators that has some Huawei deployed in EU. It is rare that any Operator relies on one single Telecom Equipment Vendor. Even China Mobile have both Nokia and Ericsson, as it was part of the deal between EU and China.
>No serious operator is doing a software upgrade for this.
They were deployed as part of the Capacity expansion in 4G LTE Massive MIMO. This is strictly Sub 6Ghz, all those mmWave are totally different thing. May be deployed isn't the "correct" word. Widely tested, especially in places where an Operator uses TDD spectrum.
>I have no idea why Samsung even get a mention. That confused me.
Samsung is a relatively new comer to telecom equipment. New in terms of Public knowledge, they were doing it during LTE era but never seems to get anywhere internationally. They are even smaller than ZTE, which is one reason you don't seen any TE market share dictate any special note on them. But they have been active on 5G ever since the possibility of Huawei Contract replacement. I have no information on how they perform in real life though. And I have yet to see any Operators had testing notes using Samsung's Equipment. But knowing how competitive they are, I was hoping they would do well.
"Many Canadians believe that Huawei stole the core technologies and business strategies from Nortel and used that knowledge to drive Nortel out of world markets and into bankruptcy. "
[0] https://www.assemblymag.com/blogs/14-assembly-blog/post/9063...
But Huawei is incredibly opaque – at least by Western standards. Ren’s still there (now about 70 years old) and still has veto power, but rarely makes public statements. He attributes Huawei’s success to collective leadership. That leadership? Huawei won’t say.
National champions aren’t state-owned businesses, but they typically get market protection, financial support — sometimes as direct funding, but more often tax breaks, subsidies, low-interest loans, and government contracts — and even diplomatic help. That means the Chinese government could have a significant influence on Huawei, since so many purse-strings lead back to Beijing. And the company has a reputation for playing fast-and-loose with intellectual property: in 2003 Cisco accused Huawei of copying its source code and documentation – all the way down to typos.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren_Zhengfei#Communist_Party_a...
Not really a complete domination is it. Lol.
It is so blatantly clear that the motivations to fight Huawei are mainly because of losing the technology race, that it is not even funny.
That the US pretends to dictate to free countries what they should buy or sanction (Iran) is not cool.
That the US complains about state intervention when its whole technology lead was built on state investment is funny.
That the US complains about technology stealing when it built its industrial base by stealing European technology is insufferable.
You know what? Just let the world be.
So don't comment then, if you want to let the world be.
>because of losing the technology race
It's not that US companies are "losing the technology race." If you read accounts from actual employees of partners, contractors, and others in the industry who work with Huawei, what you will read is that apparently Huawei has set up systems and incentives for copying and stealing technology.
And then to pair up with that, it sounds like they have been extremely aggressive about patenting everything they can identify as possibly patentable, which would include, if you think about it, others' technology innovations and techniques that they have stolen.
So it seems these people, with these ethics, who also happen to be organized under a unit of the Chinese military, end up getting IP protection on things that others invented, in areas that are critical to sensitive global communication standards that will cover transmission of private, commercial, governmental, and otherwise sensitive data.
I'd like to read those! Where can I find the direct cites or even comprehensive review with them (that didn't mystically pop up on the Net within the last year period)? Google seem to fail me.
You think powerful countries just "let everyone be"? They normally act way, way worse than anything the US has ever done.
Read a history book.
This isn't a uniquely American thing. Russia and China are doing the same things (heard of the Great Firewall?)
Opening doors to journalists is a good and appropriate step. It won't fix the underlying issues, though, as they stem from National Security competition - not wrote press misunderstanding.
I suppose it depends which "approved devices" list you're using. If I look at the US Department of Defense's approved products list I see Korean brands like LG and Samsung but I don't see Lenovo or Xiaomi:
"Chinese PC maker Lenovo has reportedly been banned from supplying equipment for the "secret" and “top secret” networks of many intelligence agencies, due to concerns its products are vulnerable to being hacked." ... "The ban is only thought to apply to the most highly restricted networks, and Lenovo remains a significant supplier of computers for “unclassified” government networks in these countries."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10208578/Spy-age...
(That said, I have a Lenovo X1 Thinkpad, bought partly because of all the recommendations on HN, and in particular seeing Troy Hunt using Lenovo. I'd forgotten that article when I bought it.)
Fact of the matter is they're being singled out not because of the their Iran dealings (Numerous US corporations have done this in the past and paid only modest fines), but at the behest of corporate lobbying efforts on the part of Huawei's competitors whose high margin business models are under assault.
Huawei has been free to operate, and even bid in large contracts. Name one Western company allowed the same degree of freedom in China.
If Huawei wants to get equal treatment, its CEO should ask the Chinese government to truly open their economy, and allow outside companies to truly compete.
Has anyone come forward with /any/ hard evidence that implicates huawei spying on their customers? This is my biggest gripe in this whole mess. The fact that no evidence has surfaced yet, despite how easily obtainable it would be for govs, indicates to me that that these accusations are motivated by geopolitics and have little to do with whether huawei customers are being spied upon or not.
As for disingenuity, I think that hurtling accusations at people without any sort of supporting evidence is what's disgustingly disingenuous.
The only reasonable question is whether you believe Huawei will exploit this opportunity if asked or "asked" by the Chinese government.
I plan to continue using huawei as long as their pricing remains competitive or real hard evidence of foulplay is made public. Expecting people to single out a single vendor just because the a government with a history of lying said so is just silly.
I would probably agree with you that attaining evidence of this spying would be somewhat easier for governments than for others. However, the rest of your assertion that these accusations are only due to geopolitics is pretty out there given it's almost universal at this point that people think Huawei are not on the up and up.
Hurtling accusations without any sort of supporting evidence is literally what you've just done. There's a ton of evidence out there to not use them.
Here are some pieces of evidence for you that literally were on page 1 and 2 of a search:
CIA, NSA, FBI just last year saying the US shouldn't use them: https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2018/11/25/u-s-...
At least the US and Australian Intelligence services have hard evidence of them spying for the Chinese government: https://www.axios.com/report-australian-intelligence-know-hu... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-huawei-security/former-ci...
Huawei is never singled out - it is protected by Chinese government, supported by Chinese government and run by Chinese government. It is not open to the market.
For the case, Huawei is unusual. It seems to have a few case (down to even the glass cover!) Hence the company ... But more important imagine if IBM ship to Iran their products via a faked HK company and lie to HSBC about it so money can be transferred (based on the limited amount we heard), the case is there but the difference is USA threaten Canada for doing what the treaty is bounded. Or would USA pool resources to do it in court instead in diploma channel.
Now this action on country level (as seems in the news also in other European countries) not using just company resources but diplomatic resources.
Is Huawei a firm represent the country? Is it a department of communist China?
Back to the device part, the government and core network shall be on its own whatever the countries are. It is just dangerous for Russia/China/USA to use other hacking country.
I think we should isolate and contain them as much as possible, free market BS be damned, we should grow a spine and do without them by working as closely with the neighbors they've stepped on for years and who are much more open to ideals we agree with. We should actively work against them and I'm glad we're finally doing something.
As much as I hate Trump, the one thing he's done I agree with is putting the screws to China. It's actually a popular stance with both parties, and it looks like it will continue after he's likely impeached. Good.
I hope you take a clearer look at the current geopolitical map and have a more updated view of the world.
Apparently you can do the same thing every time and cause catastrophic devastation, kill millions and put millions of families in disarray and continue to claim 'innocence'. And some here talk about Tienanmen in 1989 as if none of the above happened, while colluding with regressive regimes like Saudi Arabia as we speak to bomb Yemen.
In the same way some care about surveillance, but only in China. The NSA revelations, secret courts, secret orders, Snowden and Assange being hounded and not a single person held accountable has nothing to do with surveillance, rule of law or democracy. Google, Facebook and others making billions spying on the world and building invasive profiles is not surveillance. US law enforcement demanding to go through your phones and laptops at airports like the stasi is not a police state. Credit scores and social credit are somehow different. This is a culture of smug finger pointing based on dissonance.
This is an orchestrated sabotage of a company perceived to be a threat by some interests with zero evidence or due process in collusion with a global media that is apparently not too reliant on evidence or investigation. This will be lesson for many on capitalism, free trade and the 'natural constraints' of our global system.