MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE | Hacker News Reader

MIT cuts ties with Chinese tech firms Huawei, ZTE

reuters.com

309 pointsgmishuris197 comments

I was a PhD student at MIT CSAIL a few years ago and recall an incident where a visiting scholar from a corporation who had donated money had to be asked to leave because he essentially scraped every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home.

What was amazing to me was that he was allowed to return a few months later with the explanation “it was just a cultural misunderstanding”

I want to be careful not to point fingers at a particular country or culture, but that experience taught me that a grey-area version of corporate espionage is _very real_ in academia — an environment that operates with all guards down and no defenses against it.

[Edited to fix tappos]

What grey area? It was bad enough they decided to send him home.

It's bad because MIT reprimanded him for "scrap[ing] every piece of internal data and code in the lab and sent it back home"? That's felonious territory. He should have been deported indefinitely.

Or imprisoned locally indefinitely.

But not bad enough that they could resist the pressure to have him back with just an excuse of "oopsies".

How was it bad that they sent him home? A spy is a spy. In China they would have just killed him or imprisoned him if a student were sending information "back home." If you don't believe me that China simply kills spies, look at the spy purges in the Obama years after a breach in the CIA's communications.

Reread their post. They said their action was bad enough for them to be sent home. Not that it was a bad decision for them to be sent home.

I have read enough spy novels to become convinced that both sides just send each other lies and siphon off their budgets for personal luxuries.

By home, do you mean their personal network, their employer, or their country?

One would assume to the corporation donating the money. I wouldn't naturally assume it was to his Mom or "China." I think a fair number of corporations assume that if they're paying you to do research, that they're entitled to the research and any results you obtain from it.

If I were sending data "back home" I wouldn't be sending it to "England." I'll be honest, I wouldn't have the first clue who to contact, unless MI6 had contacted me and asked me for the information, which I doubt they would - I'd be honestly astonished if I'd ever done anything in my life interesting enough for them to even notice who I am, and I wouldn't have the first clue who to send it to unless they came to me. I doubt forqueenandcountry@mi6.org is a valid place to send file dumps. The only "back home" that would be relevant to me would be my employer.

The reason I asked the question is because sometimes there is a tendency to think of "China" as a monolithic entity and say "China" is spying on companies or putting bugs in the cellular equipment and so on. I've even caught myself doing that. But it's a lazy way of thinking because China is full of individuals pursuing their own goals.

It is for the same reason that I asked whether the person copied the files to his own system or his employer's. No doubt this person has their own interest in computers and technology, and it's entirely reasonable to think that they would want the MIT CSAIL files for themselves, outside of any orders from their employer to copy the information.

Assuming they want the files for themselves is also a fair assessment. Being able to come back to data at a later point and trawl through it again to gain different or more nuanced understanding is useful. This is something I could imagine doing. I would definitely ask before I did it though. Just assuming you could is taking liberties somewhat.

Being a big believer in Open Source and Freedom of Knowledge, I think we, as humans, would progress much more quickly if we broke down barriers to knowledge sharing. It would help everyone progress much more quickly. Keeping knowledge secret, especially in research, which is usually publicly funded is not the right thing.

We can debate all we want but the reality is that China has progressed and its people have benefitted through better living standards. Now those people are investing in other countries creating jobs and improving living standards across poor countries. Weirdly enough one such beneficiary has been India and African countries. Just 5 years ago India could not domestically manufacture cell phones. Now there are over 260 factories with 95% of the phones being produced in the country. This has been a big benefit to India and its people.

Funny how that worked out?

I am not sure what counts as "stealing" in terms of IP. I am a firm believer in protecting IP but at the same time you cannot argue that freely sharing knowledge has its own benefits. IP laws (especially patents) need to be revisited to make sure they serve their purpose and reasonably help inventors benefit from their inventions.

Edit: I must also clarify that this goes both ways. The way Chinese don't end up sharing knowledge is bad. They also do not respect IP law and contracts which needs to drastically change. If they would have respected those and given a fair playing field for foreign companies, I don't think this would be a big issue today.

I agree with the general spirit of what you're stating, but the fact of the matter is that the Chinese government has proven conclusively that its vision of the future is not one that incorporates a free flow of information or the preservation of individual rights; the Chinese government as an entity is not a viable partner in the task of building the society of free information you envision - it is an obstacle standing in the way. Unfortunately, the Chinese government has chosen to use its economic prosperity to brutally subjugate ethnic minorities and construct an authoritarian nightmare that fully realizes Orwell's visions of state rule [1].

Every bit of available data indicates that the Chinese government would censor you and everyone you know if it had the ability to do so; the ruling party have demonstrated their willingness to violently destroy any person, group, or ideology that they disapprove of. Any other assessment of the situation is, at best, naive to the point of being dangerous. The twentieth century (not to mention the past ten years) has taught us that democracy is a fragile thing; it is extremely important that western citizens be vigilant and open-eyed when assessing who to deal with in educational, political, and business theaters.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/04/world/asia/xi...

Individual rights is a Western philosophy. Eastern philosophies have long favored collectivism, including the “free” Japan.

I've read your comment several times and am having trouble understanding your underlying point - could you elaborate?

It's a common apologia tactic for authoritarian regimes, in which their authoritarianism is justified by saying that, actually, that particular ethnicity prefers to be ruled by an iron-fisted dictatorship.

Basically, the structure and ideology of the regime is assumed to be the authentic expression of something inherent in that particular culture, rather than the product of material circumstances or deliberate choices by a political elite.

Chinese culture encourages sharing ideas, not copyrighting ownership. Some things I've read say it comes from Confucianism. Regardless, they think it's good to spread and remix existing ideas instead of giving one party exclusive rights for 20-100+ years for their own profit. I agree with them that sharing ideas and tech seems to be a better default. If we had protections, they should be much more selective and careful.

In Shenzhen especially, you have to out-compete the others on implementation of ideas instead of rest on your laurels (err, copyrights and patents). Wired has a great documentary of its history and culture here with examples:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJ5cZnoodY

One I like that's about improvement more than stealing is the iPhone copy. That company got the copy out about a year before the iPhone hit China. Apple refused to let customers swap their batteries and SIM cards easily. Their I.P. protections let them pull bullshit like that. The Chinese knockoff did let you swap those. The chargers come to mind, too. If your interface is proprietary, a company will likely spring up offering a modified product or cheaper adapter that lets people keep their existing one.

Except the communist party which controls all of China, and takes a highly authoritarian stance on the free spread of information they dislike and fear of course. They have a literal and digital Great Wall, I’m not sure how your square this fact with what you’re claiming is a cultural bias to collective information policies.

"Except the communist party which controls all of China, and takes a highly authoritarian stance on the free spread of information they dislike and fear of course. "

They don't dislike foreign I.P. that their businesses can use to get rich. They also don't seem to dislike what Shenzhen is doing since they're not throwing the copycats in jail. It looks like the communist party is fine with this concept.

Controlling information they fear to stay in power is a different topic entirely. They're all about that. That's why they have the Wall, censhorship, etc. You also seem to be conflating what Chinese individuals and businesses will do if they aren't restricted vs what their government imposes on them. The culture I'm describing applies to the former. I have no idea how the latter thinks past preserving and expanding their power.

I'm not so sure this is actually a cultural thing and not a convenience given the times thing.

The Chinese education system seems to emphasize that many "Chinese" ideas were stolen by "foreigners"in previous generations. This hardly seems to jibe with the claims of merely cultural understandings of ownership.

China's technological contributions to the 20th century were next to nill. It's easy to share when it means playing with everyone else's toys.

Really? Blatantly ignoring patent laws, IP, international waters, the sovereignty of other countries, as well as their well documented strong arm capitalism-for-the-sake-of imperialism, like their infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka and other places for the purpose of bankruptcy is just seeking the common good? Its very funny to me how you praise them for championing "open source" philosophy with other people's IP etc... adn then at the end of your statement wonder allowed about them not sharing any of their own. Uh, thats not "open source" thats imperialism by any and all means. Disclaimer: Im not trying to paint this onto China as an entirety or as a culture. There are government forces at work, as well as private entities supporting and abetting this behavior for the purpose of Chinese Imperialism. There are good people and good institutions in China, unfortunately they are not the winds of progress there currently

"Its very funny to me how you praise them for championing "open source" philosophy with other people's IP etc... adn then at the end of your statement wonder allowed about them not sharing any of their own. Uh, thats not "open source" thats imperialism by any and all means. "

Yeah, it's not the same as open source. They certainly don't give anything out like in open-source. Your comment is misleading, though. The Chinese companies, which include lots of competitors internal to China, just copy everything in their process of iterating products out. So, Chinese companies and/or government takes the I.P., create their own products, and other Chinese copy them. All this stuff keeps spreading cheaper and getting forked kind of like open source. Hits overcharging, proprietary suppliers hard like open source. Just isn't open source with the full benefits.

Uh, if there was explicit instruction at the beginning not to scrape internal data and code, then there would be no misunderstanding in the first place. Was there any NDA???

Maybe the cultural misunderstanding was that you actually need to pay attention to those explicit instructions.

"Woah, I didn't know it was like... a rule, bro."

Here's an anecdotal story.

My team was interviewing engineers last year. We had a Chinese engineer come interview with us. She was in the States on a work visa, and her first job here was for a state government project. She was on a team building a web application that had public-facing and internal-facing UIs, and she was apparently working on both of these.

Anyways, she comes in for the interview, and shortly after our conversation begins she pulls out her work laptop, opens up her work project, and start going through the code with us! I asked "is this open source?" and she said no. I could even see slack messages coming up from her team mates.

I honestly couldn't believe it. We asked her to stop. As you can imagine, she didn't get an offer from us.

Sounds like a FOIA request should fix that "open source" problem. If its software developed by or for a governmental agency in the US, we as citizens have the right to access it as the public domain work it is. The recent ORCA fare enforcement app shenanigans with Sound Transit is a great example, even with a contracting company as a layer of indirection for developing said software doesn't escape said code's FOIAbility.

>ORCA fare enforcement app shenanigans with Sound Transit

Can you please provide a source for the details?

See Fare Enforcement Apps: https://www.muckrock.com/agency/washington-54/central-puget-...

Edit: Litigation is here: https://kevin.wallace.seattle.wa.us/v/vix/

This is what a commerce war looks like.

It's not about China being an oppressive state, spying, etc. The former didn't matter all these decades, and the latter goes on forever from all sides and nobody bats an eye.

It's about China catching up to (and surpassing in some cases) US tech, and not being content to be the mere "factory of the US" but sell its own stuff. Like Korea, Taiwan, and Japan each did in their own timelines decades ago (from laughed at copycats and cheap foreign manufactures, to competitive themselves).

Expect to see more of China as the "enemy du jour" going forward.

Japan caught up and surpassed the US without the corporate espionage or subsequent commerce war.

They did this decades ago, and without time for the US to react. Also the US shaped Japan’s government so it’s difficult to criticize them due to competition.

> Japan caught up and surpassed the US without the corporate espionage or subsequent commerce war.

No, Japanese corporate espionage against US firms, Japanese transfers of sensitive US-origin technology to regimes the US wanted it kept away from, and a US-Japan trade war are all things that happened and were notable news items during the Japanese run up.

This despite the US and Japan being geopolitical allies at the times involved.

You should brush up on the history of Japanese-US trade relations during the Reagan era if you are seriously convinced that is a remotely faithful retelling of history.

Enlighten us?

The US felt extremely threatened by Japanese manufacturing in the 80s and in fact most of the world had this cultural idea of Japan becoming the dominant global technology force. As a consequence the US government imposed a 100% tariff on Japanese electronics, accused the country of "currency manipulation" (sound familiar?). And on the topic of IP Japanese faced the very same copycat accusations that China does now.

Let's just take this fortune article from 1987 as an example:

http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive...

Try and replace every occurence of Japan with China and see how it sounds.

It even seeped into fiction. There's a reason neo-tokyo imagery is at the forefront of Gibson-era sci-fi.

The big difference is that while Japan was frequently accused of IP theft, the actual occurrences were few and far between as the result of individual corporate activity.

Chinese IP theft isn't just rampant--it's actively promoted and paid for by the Chinese government, which even goes so far as to identify targets for IP theft and provides governmental assistance in extracting stolen IP from the victim country.

>The big difference is that while Japan was frequently accused of IP theft, the actual occurrences were few and far between as the result of individual corporate activity.

The accusations against Japanese companies at the time were including that the Japanese government were assisting them, and that the IP theft was part of national competitiveness policy. (And of course in Japan - as in S. Korea - corporations and state go hand in hand, though not to the degree of China).

Not that the inverse was also not happening (then and now):

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/31/national/wikile...

Your own article contradicts you with respect to Japanese and IP theft. Its thesis is that they were just playing the game better:

''Are the Japanese picking our brains?'' a congressional staffer asks. ''Yes. They're doing it very well. They're doing it legally. The question is whether we have a two-way street.''

The Chinese accusations are that illegal methods are used. Which is a major difference.

>The Chinese accusations are that illegal methods are used. Which is a major difference.

It's really not until the accusations are actually proven to be true. Remember that Bloomberg story about Chinese spy chips in every device on the planet ? Whatever happened to that one? In the current dispute with Huawei, how many accusations are substantiated?

Do the Japanese simply get the benefit of the doubt because we're just taking it on faith that they never cooperated with their government in a country that is notoriously corporatist, but the Chinese we'll just designate as thieves?

It is notable that in prior episodes with Japan the accusations were never made.

The accusations were extremely common, in newspapers, pundits opinion pieces, politicians etc, in the era of Japan's rise (70s to 90s). From accusations of spying and government subsidies helping their corporations, to tarifs, threats, "taking our jobs", being unpatriotic to get Japanese cars, etc, down to diplomatic pressure (that succeeded) to enforce US-led changes to their currency, to make US exports more viable.

The US required Japan to back down from its ambitions during the 80s. Part of it was currency devaluation that debased Japanese industry and inflated the real estate bubble. Of course, Japan had to do it, because you know, they don't have an army. Things are different with China.

Maybe you didn't follow the news at the time of the Japan meteoric rise in the 80s/90s (and the even more prevalent accusations of copying etc in 60s/70s).

Here's a speech from the House of Representatives (1989):

https://fas.org/irp/congress/1989_cr/h890712-japan.htm

And here's the blurb of an earlier 1983 book -- do the accusations sound similar?

"This analysis of Japanese business practices covers industries from automobiles to computers and argues that the success of Japanese business is founded upon methods such as industrial espionage, government subsidies leading to unfair pricing, dumping, and exploitation of domestic labor"

Here is a famous example:

https://www.nytimes.com/1982/06/23/business/japanese-executi...

In the 90s, when Japanese started dominating and buying American firms left and right accusations in the press and politicians got even worse -- and the political threats and warnings against Japan were common occurence (similar to Trump's anti-globalization speeches/promises, but at a time when America-first wasn't a taboo of both Republicans and Democrats, and politicians pay more lip service to factory / blue collar jobs). There were also tariffs involved, and the whole thing...

But then again, aside financially, Japan was a neutered ally of the US since WWII (when Japan was put under military supervision), and their dominance was capped -- whereas China is 8x Japan's population, and not subservient politically and diplomatically. It makes sense things can get uglier in this case re: the commerce war.

E.g., one difference was that Japan could be pushed (as did Germany, another neutered since WWII ally at the time), into this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

However Taiwan, Korea, and Japan all did this without pissing everyone off.

China needs to learn to play by the rules

Not really. See my answer with links and info above. Exactly the same things you hear about China (accusations, threats, fears, tariffs, etc) also happened with Japan for example in the 70s to 90s.

Or with the US from Europe with weaving, steel production etc.

Are you sure? We've always been at war with Eastasia. Or maybe we've always been at war with Oceania.

it's both, you can tolerate a tiny infection, but when it starts to be able to wipe you, you take action

First off, I am not pro or anti USA or China. Just curious and hoping to have a constructive dialogue.

What moral high ground is USA on in the Snowden era? Why trust Cisco or Apple or Google or Facebook or Microsoft in USA's Prism? With the "Five Eyes", how to trust Nokia or Ericsson or Blackberry? What ethical high-ground are the tax evading tech giants on? Lets not forget how the pharma mobs are gaming the patent system to run an extortion ring on life saving medicines like insulin or the planned obsolescence when the world is rushing to reduce global warming.

Its sad to see a place of learning is getting into politics & business. How different is this from the patent battles between Oracle & Google or Apple, Microsoft & Samsung? Google is poaching chips guys from various sources to compete with Apple. Then all the poaching in AI & self driving & electric cars. Lets not forget the "borrowing" done my Jobs & Gates from Xerox PARC that founded the Silicon Valley.

As a consumer, due to Huawei & Mi. Samsung & other brands have started lowering the price. Hope Google poached the right team to make a better chip than what Apple has. Hopefully Apple also will start selling sensible priced devices. MIT should instead be working for growing an opensource culture in China. Which already seems to have something of that sort but limited due to all being in Chinese language.

> Why trust Cisco or Apple or Google or Facebook or Microsoft in USA's Prism?

You don't have to trust them. Definitely you better not to. But that doesn't make you to trust Huawei either. At least Google/Facebook are subject to US government, which is controlled by a (still) functioning democracy. Huawei is controlled by a violent authoritarian dictatorship. I'd say however I mistrust Google, I'd probably still mistrust Chinese Communist Party more. There are mechanisms in the US that prevent or impede governmental abuse. They are not faultless - they still get a lot of abuse through. But some is caught, and some becomes public (yes, Snowden - but the things were starting to seep through even before he blew up the dam). In China, I don't see even these partial and faulty impediments to government control.

> Its sad to see a place of learning is getting into politics & business.

Most major educational institutions are already billion-dollar businesses. And with this size, connection to politics is inevitable. And if Huawei does business in the US, it would be subject to the same rules other US businesses playing by - where being suspect of performing surveillance on the users on behalf of the government - let alone the government like Chinese one, - or enabling widespread human rights abuse - is a big black mark. The one which mere lower prices are not going to erase.

I get what you mean but it has more to do with who's running those companies.

Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are American companies. In all honesty I'd rather have an American company spy on American people, rather than a Chinese company doing so.

China is catching up with tech and their government is totalitarian. Privacy doesn't exist in China, and it could be scary to think what they would do with data gathered from spying on us. I don't want any involvement of theirs in American schools or companies.

Hmmm. From the article: "MIT is the latest top educational institution to unplug telecom equipment made by Huawei and other Chinese companies to avoid losing federal funding."

It seems like my government is pulling out all the stops trying to compete internationally against Chinese companies in the 5G market. I understand that other countries also pull out all the stops in trying to help their industries compete internationally.

I just finished reading 'AI Superpowers' and I hardly understand now if US has any single chance to compete with China's Tech fairly, openly, democratically, with respect.

> fairly, openly, democratically, with respect.

Why would the US change its modus operandi ? :P

What makes you believe US completes fairly and openly? Don't you see news on China import embargo and capture of it's executives.

You also don't see TMobile stealing robots from China or Facebook luring Baidu developers to "interviews" for interrogation.

You don't?

No, you don't. Zero examples come to mind.

Which US tech companies have literally attempted/stolen proprietary lab tech from a Chinese tech co?

Are brain drain interviews the same as being invited back to your native country for a job interview and being detained?

And that's just comparing magnitude, not even talking about frequency.

I don't think that novaRom was not saying that we compete fairly. I read novaRom's comment to say that we can't win if we play fairly.

I also read 'AI Superpowers' and I agree with the book's premise that long term China will win the 'AI war' economic competition because their society allows broad use of data and since they are more of an online Internet-connected society they have much more data to use for training deep learning systems. China is also throwing a ton of money at supporting startup AI companies.

I pains me to be too critical of my own country (the USA) but I think we are really making bad mistakes by: 1) not sufficiently supporting research at the government level. 2) turning our students into life-long debt slaves with student loans. 3) screwing up our long term economic and social health by, for example, not providing free meals to poor kids in schools (one of the very cost effective ways to get a more educated work force - kids who are hungry in school tend to not do well). 4) stop allowing Facebook/Google/etc. unfettered use of private data while at the same time not figuring out a way to get more training data to people doing basic reseaerch.

I haven't read the book, I'm adding it to my encumbered reading list (this site spins off so many excellent recommendations it's difficult to keep up).

1) Is the argument then that only the government can succeed with large scale initiatives? Pretty much everything that government is involved with becomes encumbered, if it's liked to a code base it drives up complexity for diminishing returns performance wise. I like the mission that NASA does and private initiatives are much more cost effective. 2) Schools are expensive with the rise of access to cheap money and ballooning administrators vs instructors. Should this be regulated? 3) I'm not against the "lunch" program. I'm curious why is it a schools job to feed students? The meal programs extended from lunch to breakfast and dinner. Isn't it a parents basic job to feed their kids? If this were someone with a pet would you consider them a good custodian if they can't meet their obligations? I'm not talking about someone on hard times I understand crap happens but more of an extended living scenario. 4) Stop giving information to these companies. This is akin to "I can keep a secret but the people I tell can't". Is it really private data if you share it? If you have a spending problem, stop buying crap.

What are your proposals to drive research domestically? If there were a market for it that's untapped seems like a goldmine.

Thanks for your comments. For 1) occasionally the government does a fine job. I worked on two large scale DARPA projects that were well managed and had good results. Also early funding of the Internet, grants for university research, etc. 2) then why can countries like Germany provide tuition free college, even for foreign students? To me, education is starting to look like big business. 3) because the free food for hungry disadvantaged children is cheap with a large potential payoff. 4) well. It would be better to have a long talk about this, but briefly: I alternate from being a long term FSF/ACLU supporter and decide that the benefits of giving up privacy are worth it. My latest ‘sin’ in this regard is signing up for G Suite and using it for my whole work/research workflow. I try to be mindful about privacy and decide in a case by case basis the value from sharing private data.

Correct, both the U.S. and China plays dirty tricks. In fact the whole world plays dirty tricks. The only difference is that the U.S. is expected to be the role model of the world, and will always look worse than others even when carrying out an equivalent dirty act. China, Russia, and others know this and they use this to their advantage.

...in what area is China actually leading? Catching up and leading require two very different skill sets.

Do you follow ML ? A lot of big-impact papers in Computer vision has come directly from mainland China and Hong Kong. MSRA, CUHK, Sensetime, and Baidu have made quite a few advances in the field.DMLC a group of members composed mostly of Chinese students basically wrote things like MXNET and Xgboost.

Granted most of these are collaborative ventures, but calling China 'catching up' at this stage is ignorant.

And yet nearly all SOTA research is done in the US.

Eventually folks in China realize they could easily be making $500K+/yr at FANG and be financially independent in 10 years, so they leave for the much, much greener US pastures, and stay here.

Here's an example, these are the golden standard. Which would be the US equivalent?

https://www.dji.com/gr/products/drones

Here's another -- better than Google by a wide margin:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/1/18290215/huawei-p30-pro-ca...

DJI is impressive - but is DJI leading because of AI? To me, that is mostly manufacturing. And this is indeed an area where "the west" is severly lacking. (Disclaimer: I am no drone expert, so this is a real question)

The verge says the camera is "...somehow even better than Google’s Night Sight". That is nice - but not a "wide margin".

1) Huawei phone has more cameras and sensors 2) Google's version is ~6months old

So yeah, some caveats there

I don't think Google couldn't put more cameras (or that the cameras make the real difference, this is an algorithmic ML matter -- expensive DSLRs with fast lenses and still can't do it as well).

Or that Huawei developed all this in the span of 6 months that Google put out theirs. They were developing it before Google released their version.

>DJI is impressive - but is DJI leading because of AI?

No. But I was answering the parent comment "...in what area is China actually leading?" -- not specifically about AI. And those are just 2 examples I'm familiar with personally (as a consumer). There could be tons of others.

>The verge says the camera is "...somehow even better than Google’s Night Sight". That is nice - but not a "wide margin".

No, the Verge gushes over the camera throughout the review. You just read the subtitle ("somehow even better"), but missed their qualification of how much better it is in the review:

"I spent this past weekend comparing its camera against Google’s Pixel 3 and struggling to believe my eyes"

"The Pixel shot is, by any other standards, impressive. The P30 Pro is simply in another league, and the quality of its photo doesn’t require explanation."

"The less light there is in an image, the stronger Huawei’s P30 Pro advantage grows. In the following example, featuring an unlit bathroom where my eyes could detect shapes but no colors, the P30 Pro does the unbelievable by actually focusing and producing a very respectable image. With 30 seconds of editing in Google Photos, I can make it look like it was taken in the daytime. The Pixel attempt, by comparison, is out of focus. The Pixel, like the vast majority of mobile and even pro DSLR cameras, can’t obtain focus with so little."

The US has overwhelming technological advantages over China, breakthroughs in AI still largely come from the US. China has more data and state support though.

You should go back and read that book much more skeptically.

That whole book is a PR piece from a VC trying to generate deal flow. Scratch below the surface and there's not much substance to his 3 big arguments.

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Well, thank you this was a pretty good read. I'm volunteering in a small nonprofit and do believe we work on interesting stuff but when I try to reach out to the press I feel they are totally uninterested. (Most of the time... The state/public TV usually is more open to us)

Is there any evidence that these two companies aren’t Chinese government operatives?

Does it make any difference when US companies are participating in PRISM anyway?

As an European, I would rather get spied on by the US than by China.

The US does not have execution vans for dissidents whereas China does, for instance.

They also don’t have re-education camps for religious minorities, a social credit score, and no rule of law. The U.S. is deeply flawed, especially when you take their war on drugs into account, but I’d still prefer them over China any day of the week.

The US does have execution drones that target people based on metadata [1].

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”

1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...

I am not a Chinese dissident. China is not going around the globe putting people in execution vans there. So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited. The possible impact on my life is in no way comparable to the possible impact of the same by the US. I would like to not be mistook landing on no-fly lists, being banned from international banking as well as from making business with any company.

> I am not a Chinese dissident....So my personal consequences of Chinese surveillance are rather limited.

I would recommend that you think of yourself as a dissident, including as a foreign dissident, even if you aren't actually one. I think that attitude can be a great source of moral guidance and perspective.

Which has nothing to do with the question of what would be preferable to European citizens, US surveillance or Chinese surveillance. The possible effects are rather clear cut, which is why I dont understand why anyone would views this differently. I understand that for a lot of people this becomes a moral question quickly, but thats not whats up to debate here. Its not about the justifications for surveillance programs but their direct effect on people living in Europe. I also have less to worry about from North Korean surveillance, simply because I am not a north Korean. We dont have that luxus with the US, despite not being a US citizen. Or more fittingly because we are not US citizens.

> Which has nothing to do with the question of what would be preferable to European citizens, US surveillance or Chinese surveillance.

> Its not about the justifications for surveillance programs but their direct effect on people living in Europe.

That's a bizarre question and pretty self-centered. Also, as a European, if you're trying to somehow choose between one or the other, wouldn't you want to most strongly oppose the surveillance run by the regime that's least aligned to European/Western values?

Its the post we are responding to though. And the notion, that if you could chose, Europeans would prefer to be spied on by the US is absurd. My posts are about nothing more. The threat analysis for most Europeans is rather straight forward on what will have a larger potential to have a larger negative impact on your live.

> The threat analysis for most Europeans is rather straight forward on what will have a larger potential to have a larger negative impact on your live.

Please expound on that threat analysis.

I did it a bit further up. Like you can ask the toddlers who ended up on no fly lists, mistakes happen. And if you are not a US citizen, you dont have any legal recourse. And if you end up with a case of mistaken identity, you can not just be put on no fly lists, but be banned from international banking as well as having any company doing business in the US be banned from engaging in any transactions with you. Which is basically every company. Not even mentioning the worst cases of illegal renditions and being put in torture black sites as well as drone killings if you went on holiday in the wrong region of the world.

And even if you assume a perfectly working surveillance system, there are still people being targeted for legal behavior, like being employed by someone who has business relations with Iran or something trivial like having your PayPal account canceled for transactions to Cuba.

Where as with china, what exactly is the possible personal impact for non Chinese citizens? Having my bosses IP stolen? Not being allowed to travel to China?

I'm actually not sure I agree. I have the nagging feeling that China spying on me is most likely to have zero consequences for my daily life, while the US spying on me can get me on a no-fly list or something.

Well when they copy and outcompete all your industries, then I think you’d notice some consequences.

The US has been caught doing industrial espionage as well, more of a pest or cholera situation here.

The US is not regularly directing its hackers to break into the worlds companies to steal all their IP and then put it into play across all industries. The amount of blatant copying is insane... just head to any market in Asia to see the abundant fakes that flood the markets. There is no comparison.

False equivalency. The US has not been caught on the scale of China and its forced tech transfer policies. US may have some limited targeted activity, but they aren't wholesale strip mining industry IP.

This is an amazing case of whataboutism.

Every single time China appears on HN these days, it seems that it's nearly impossible to make headway in the threads because of the whataboutism that inevitably crops up. I was recently told that it's not _actually_ whataboutism, it's $SOMETHING_ELSE.

Source?

Snowden [0] made very broad allegations against the NSA in that regard.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/25907502

Really? I would expect China to not have much interest in you individually, whereas the US might.

[flagged]

I'm not sure the US isn't imperialist by your definition. At the very least the second Iraqi war hints to the contrary. It appears the main agenda there was a grab for oil and not a security threat. Not to mention its behavior in South America during the cold war. Now, I prefer the US over China, because its ideals are at least against imperialism and pro human rights, democracy and freedom. They might not always do what they preach, but these ideals combined with soft power approach, is (was?) A source of good. (If only they didn't hate socialism so much, and didn't prefer corporation freedom over human freedom, it would have been even better... well, let's hope the EU can survive)

As a Canadian I would tend to agree. My take on things is that while both countries spy, the reasons they do it are what matters. Broadly speaking the US spies to prevent terrorism and violence, where as China spies to steal IP, control their international diaspora for political purposes at home and abroad, and to destabilize democracies. The CCP worldview is incredibly cynical.

US did, and still tries to destabilize countries. See Iraq, covert CIA operations. It’s well within the norm.

I think what you mean is that The US is Canada’s ally so being spied on by the US is less of a risk.

The US says that it spies to prevent terrorism, violence, etc... but that is just a pretext to justify it. The main reason is to stay the richest.

The only companies that participate in PRISM are government security contractors. You appear not to have understood what PRISM is, which is astonishing given how much documentation we have about it.

Reading the answers to your comment, can get pretty depressive. As people are just taking spionage for granted, trying to choose who we would want to let spy on us.

Please, can we try, or at least pretend we are trying to defend our rights to privacy of data that should be private?

I dont want to have to choose who should spy on me. We are entering into this dystopian reality, and somehow we are fine with it.. but there will be a time, we will understand it's too late, and theres no going back.

I hope we wake up sooner than that. Dont just accept it as it is, it will have severe consequences to our future, if we let them to have all of our data, because this means complete control of our lives and the end of the little free will we still have.

It feels to me like choosing which mob lord would be the less evil to me.. We need to understand we dont actually need to make this kind of choice. Resist. Dont let them have it.

Is there evidence they are?

I don't trust Huawei all that much, rather I think whatever alternatives might also be whoever's operatives.

As a matter of government policy, all Chinese companies are government operatives. The Communist Party claims "overall leadership over all areas of endeavour in every part of the country".

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. It's legally and practically true.

isn't all companies subject to the laws of their respective host countries? The narrative of "party rules all" is way too simplistic to form an argument. At least I would be curious to look for past events of how the party exerted influence on non-state-owned-enterprises.

Laws, yes. Will, no. The Chinese Government regularly leverages influence on it's largest companies to great effect. Apple is subject to the laws of the United States (allegedly) but the US Government hardly has a say in what they do within the scope of those laws.

And laws are the will of the government ratified by justice (sometimes meaninglessly). How did will of the people held up against the canning of net neutrality? What say did the people have in the sanction and re-sanction of Iran?

The OP claims government policy dictates everything. Has anyone passed a thought what "policy" actually mean? Is it law or under the table practice? Not you nor the OP said anything substantial other than "they do it". No shit. FBI is also working their hardest to gain access privilege through everyway they can in the scope of their capacity. The real question to ask is not whether the Chinese government will influence Chinese companies, but HOW and whether companies like Huawei can resist or has resisted in the past.

So it's like a National Security Letter on steroids?

Or just a national security letter, not even on steroids.

No. The CCP has literal ownership in Chinese firms in the form of equity.

It's written in their "anti-espionage law", where all companies based in China have the duty to actively comply with spying requests when asked.

Sounds like Australia, except it extends to all citizens so it’s worse.

Is there any evidence you've stopped beating your wife?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

That's not the same thing.

Right, because it's an apt analogy.

Couldn’t you count any US based company that takes major government contracts, or has board members who were formerly high in government (eg. Dropbox/Condoleezza Rice) as a “government operative”?

Is there any list of such companies?

As long as National Security Letters are a thing, that can encompass most companies.

Nope. Presumably their former positions on their resumes are why former government employees are on such boards/in such positions. Expecting/wanting certain things on a resume are standard practice.

Many large companies in China are partially owned by the state. Great for Chinese-domestic only companies as the government will give you favor, bad for international companies based in China as the government has power to use you like a trojan horse.

In logical perspective it is very difficult to prove a negative even if absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I wonder if US carriers can start discouraging consumers from using Huawei, ZTE cellphones. They know the IMEI numbers.

How would this work? A monthly ZTE surcharge? The consumer already bought the phone. Retroactively punishing them when they already gave money to ZTE isn't the right solution. Just ban new phones from joining the networks.

ZTE is super popular amount the more "budget" carriers like boost, cricket, metro, etc. Not to mention their parent companies like Tmobile and Sprint which I'd still consider semi-budget carriers.

Source: Work in phone repair. We don't repair phones that cost 100USD new and have a non-existant parts market.

What is a “premium” carrier and what are they offering for the extra price?

Mostly just AT&T and Verizon, and Verizon is definitely the more "premium" one. I consider them premium because they cost more, they don't try to be the most affordable, they own other brands for that (cricket, etc.).

The biggest difference is their coverage. If you live in, and mostly travel within a metro area you're fine with sprint/tmobile, but anybody who's ever travelled will find that verizon is the only option if you work in, or go to the middle of nowhere at all. Basically Verizon has towers everywhere, including farmland that I can't figure out why they'd want to cover, but hey you get coverage while picking blueberries!

(This only goes for the USA, and includes my experience living in Michigan working in phone repair/retail, as well as my travels with other people/their carriers outside of Michigan)

This is true that Verizon (AT&T included) cover a lot more physical area. I was in the middle of the forest in northern Michigan, and the only signal out there was from AT&T. As it turned it turned out, T-Mobile allows you to roam if there is no T-Mobile coverage, so I was getting AT&T coverage.

I don't think Verizon can be considered high end, at least not definitively. Wherever T-Mobile does have coverage, their speeds are higher, and their offering of international roaming and by-default unlimited data are clearly geared to the "upper" end of the market of professionals that live in cities, that travel frequently.

"Our network support of your handset has been deprecated due to national security".

EDIT: I admit I was initially skeptical about the claims being made against Huawei and ZTE, but as more evidence arrives, I (personally) think caution is warranted. Critical infrastructure is a thing. Offer trade in/replacement rebates if you want to reduce friction during the device purge.

Not that it's desirable, but maybe they could (de)prioritize internet traffic at the infrastructure level from specific phone manufacturers now that internet neutrality isn't a thing anymore.

Illegal and unconstitutional. It's not up to the carries to dictate which phones work on their Network. That's the reason for standardization of network protocols

Do you really want, hypothetically, a phone maker, say Apple, to get into a sweetheart deal with AT&T and make phone service on non Apple IMEIs unreliable? Or for AT&T to target certain political, religious groups ....

Unconstitutional? The carriers are private companies, I'm not sure what in the Constitution would apply. (I'd agree with "illegal" for the same reasons Ma Bell can't require that you use one of their phones on their phone lines, but that's just because lawmakers decided it should be illegal; they weren't constitutionally obligated to make it illegal.)

It could be an antitrust problem (which wouldn't make it unconstitutional, to be sure.)

They are pseudo-governmental de-facto public utilities. They have been heavily invested in and subsidized by the government, and given special permission to provide vital infrastructure.

So no, they can't just do whatever the hell they want.

With that said, They SHOULD have a surcharge for ZTE phones, if they are hostile to their network.

I think I missed the part of the Constitution that prohibits a telecommunications company from determining which devices can operate on its network.

I guess I missed out on the unconstitutionality of many carriers not carrying Nokia Windows phones or Sony Android phones or Motorola phones...

It's not the cellphones they're worried about, its the network infrastructure. A cellphone simply has access to the carriers internet connection, whereas building a carrier's infrastructure on Huawei equipment means Huawei can spy on whoever is using that network.

Not necessarily. If the devices used end to end encryption the pipes will be just dumb pipes.

That's a big "if".

Ultimately the freedoms we take for granted here stand on preserving sovereignty.

Is there any chance Chinese phones will stop working too?

As the owner of Huawei and Xiaomi devices, I would say the chances that they stop working is extremely high.

I wonder how China will retaliate after this. This is a pretty public thing.

It could be argued that if the news needs to introduce you as "an elite US school", you aren't really an elite school.

That's an odd conclusion to draw about MIT though. Who's the target audience here? MIT really is internationally known.

Elite != Culturally recognized

Every American knows Harvard, many wouldn't know Cal Tech or MIT.

I'm going to call bullshit on Americans not knowing MIT. It's TV/movie shorthand for someone being a tech genius, same way Harvard is shorthand for being a top lawyer/politician/writer. "Top of his class at MIT"

I grew up in America. I went to MIT. Three(!) of my high school teachers didn't know what it was.

Its where all nerd Minstrels in the USA go

I see your point, but IMO "elite" refers to its level of excellence, not how well known it is.

For example, my understanding is that IIT was elite well before many of U.S-born software developers had heard of it.

Nah, 'elite' refers to the level of prestige. Prestige != Excellence.

So... you don't think MIT is in the top tier?

It's bizarre that they felt the need to introduce MIT.

I've heard of the school but first thought wouldn't have been elite.

I'm Australian maybe elite has different nuances here I've always consider elite universities as the ones with centuries of pedigree Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard - the "sandstone" universities with their "old boys network" and all of that...

Compared to those schools I only have a passing familiarity with MIT, Richard Stallman was from MIT his really the only person I can think of off the top of my head compared to Cambridge which had people like Steven Hawking, Isaac Newton etc.

Surely that depends on how many schools you think the top tier should include. I don't think it's #1.

But as Armisael16 says, I think it's strange that Reuters had to qualify it as an "elite US school", implying that it isn't one. What would you think of a news article beginning "The Pope, a prominent religious leader, ..."?

What’s #1 then? :)

In terms of prestige? Harvard.

In terms of academic excellence? Cal Tech.

Found the Caltech student!

Jokes aside, why not include MIT or UChicago? The former is arguably a bigger Caltech, and the latter is extremely rigorous, even if not focused on engineering.

> Jokes aside, why not include MIT or UChicago?

...How many schools do you think can fit in the #1 spot?

Touché! I suppose I'm partially criticizing the idea of a #1, but that aside, there's a fair point to be made that MIT would beat a smaller version of it on any nominal measurement rather than per-capita.

Additionally, if you want to learn something academic that isn't technology, I'm not sure MIT or Caltech would win (or even be applicable), hence UChicago as a possibility for a general "best at academics" university.

If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options. They're top-tier by virtue of the glory they borrow from their students. We judge the "eliteness" of a school by what you can predict about an individual by the fact that they were admitted there.

And by that measure, Caltech is significantly outperforming in "academics".

> If you want to learn something, top-tier universities aren't much better than many other options.

Very true. In fact, at colleges like Harvard and Columbia, higher grades are often easier to achieve than at the mid-tiers like Boston University and NYU.

With that said, there are colleges that force you to absorb copious amounts of information and fail you otherwise. UChicago is known for this. Is that not symbolic of being top in "academic excellence?".

What you're implying seems more like the "prestige" category, in which Harvard was mentioned as the winner above.

All of this aside the point, this doesn't explain how Caltech would be #1 in academic excellence for a college, above UChicago, and Caltech's larger equivalent, MIT.

Everyone in the West knows MIT. That's a clue the Reuters headline target audience is in the East.

They know MIT in China too. They don't read Reuters much though.

I used to live there and they don't really know MIT in China. I'd say only among the academics. Certainly not a household name.

Are you sure? Because there’s a bus load of fascinated Chinese tourists clamoring to look at MIT every other hour.

China has many people: a large number of tourists for Cambridge MA, but only a few percent of Chinese citizens knowing about MIT are compatible facts.

I live in South Africa. One of my local malls has a busload of Chinese tourists arriving not hourly but possibly daily. Not a special mall.

China is so big that even if a tiny percentage have any interest in you, you'll think it's a heck of a lot. MIT can be a non-household name and still attract hundreds of thousands.

Yea they used to say for startups that any number of users for your free social app considered significant in Silicon Valley, you’d have to multiply that by 10x (paraphrasing) for the Chinese market.

I used to live in China too, and I'd certainly say it's known among the university educated.

Name dropping is a big thing in China. "Oh, my son went to Beijing University/Harvard/etc".

You overestimate the knowledge of MIT in Europe. I worked there and had to explain it to a small but not negligible fraction of my German friends.

In the movie about 4 students winning the underwater vehicle contest, the MIT team was dinged for not defining the MIT acronym.

https://www.wired.com/2014/12/4-mexican-immigrant-kids-cheap...

They A/B tested the headline with and without “elite” and the headline including “elite” got more clicks. Then they ran that headline and got you to click on it/comment on it/engage with it.

Reuters is writing for the world wide audience here who may not know the nuances of which Uni outranks another.

It's more a way to draw attention to the headline than anything.

It may surprise some of you but the idea of "elite school" is unknown to a good percent, possibly the majority, of people even in the US. I went to an "elite school" and my GF didn't think much of it. She just thought that it's a school where a lot of politicians and rich people send their kids but didn't infer any special status or qualifications from that observation. In some ways, she's absolutely right but culturally among some circles the idea of "elite school" exists and value is placed on that idea. It happens that the same circle of people who hold this idea are often themselves "elite" or at the very least privileged in some ways. So by labelling MIT "elite" the news article is signaling to people that this news is a "big deal".

This is simply not true. Everyone in the US knows about Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc. They are culturally significant institutions. So much so that people use "MIT" as a stand in for "excellence". "MIT of X".

"kind of like the M.I.T. [sic] for magic."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_in_popular_culture

If your gf didn't think much of your school, maybe it's not as "elite" as you wish it were. Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc are as elite as you can get in the US ( and the world ).

This may be true in the kind of upper-middle class bubble where people discreetly brag about going to Yale, but if you stop random people on the street and ask them to free-associate about MIT most of the time you won't get anything except some vague understanding that nerds go there, although now the Big Bang Theory may have shifted that kind of common cultural cachet to Caltech.

It's one of the three schools you just listed. Don't know what to tell you.

There are people who are different from us. I think your assumption that a large percentage of people think or believes the same things as us is a bit shaky. Sure maybe there are references to those schools in popular culture but can you really assume: 1. Popular culture is actually popular for the majority of Americans? 2. People consume all of popular culture? 3. People pay attention to the details in popular culture. Someone might say a line in a movie and not everyone is going to understand it nor is everyone going to look it up in Wikipedia or Google. 4. Even if people paid attention to the detail, are you sure that they understood it the same way?

It's not as if my GF haven't heard of those schools. It's just that she didn't think they are particularly elite. In her words, she thought my school is the New England version of Notre Dame. A good or even a great school but she didn't think it is "elite".

> Harvard, Yale, MIT, etc are as elite as you can get in the US ( and the world ).

I'm not too sure about that, especially when it's applied to the world. "elite school" is an idea that lives in the heads of people. It's not an actual club that grants special privileges. There's the Ivy League but that's an athletics association and you left out most of the schools in it from your list.

Regardless of the semantics of elite and what she thought it meant, she knew that you went to a school associated with kids of politicians and rich people.

That’s consistent with the general definition of elite. Maybe what she and you were thinking of was “smart.”

If US wants to compete and be a leader in tech, then they are going to have to focus on an open-source mostly patent-free future.

Lackluster outline of implicated strategy regards placement of a fore-settled time-line(course of action); thoughts?

There has been a lot of fud and scaremongering on China and Russia with very little evidence and facts. This makes it look like the commitment to competition, free markets and due process is hollow and self serving and the moment it doesn't benefit you you try to change the rules.

China is now running into some of these invisible barriers and constraints that have been in place all along and this brings them into light and exposes the self serving hypocrisy of the current system to the rest of the world. There are global mechanisms to take complaints with evidence yet this 'war' is not being fought in the trade commissions but in the public press with innuendo and smears and political pressure on allies.

How do we then even talk about words like competition, free trade and innovation in neutral terms when companies like Qualcomm can succeed unhindered while others like Huawei are politically demonized and constrained in market access.

Without a doubt, China, Russia, AND the US are most certainly engaged in large scale espionage and stealing each others intel and corporate R&D via any means necessary by nation-state backed hacking and etc.

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