How the United States threatens our security | Hacker News Reader

How the United States threatens our security

kowabit.de

125 pointskowabit135 comments

I’m kind of surprised by the response here. For one thing this helps European telecoms suppliers. On top of this there is this weird expectation that the way things have been is good and should continue. I don’t see this justified. Huawei exists in large part because of the history of the US opening it’s markets to China which helped the Chinese economy grow immensely (not to mention copying Cisco).

I’m not going to defend the US on everything but it has its own interests and nobody should be surprised over the coming decades if it starts closing off its market and withdrawing its guarantees on securing other countries trade.

Europe has had a lot of time to grow up and should at this point realize this probable future and decide what such a future means for it, and decide how it wants to present itself in such a world.

Exactly. When the going gets rough, the US is just as willing as any other authoritarian state to sacrifice all justice, friendship, goodwill and fairplay to secure their profits.

Why should the EU follow the US into their dirty game? The first 70 years after war, the US at least tried to keep the illusion of being decent. Now everything's an all-out free-for-all, and EU should be looking after themselves than the interests of somebody else.

US is also threatening to stop business with whoever doesn't ban Huawei, so that's why

Without trying to imply some kind of opinion as to Huawei or Trump here: I don't think that's a serious threat.

It's one thing to make a lot of tough-looking noise as a matter of protectionism to curry favor with voters thus protected - it's quite another to actually hurt those same voter's economic interest fairly quickly without clear, short-term benefit. In other words: protection classical industry makes some sense politically (whether or not it's a good idea), setting off a real trade war with your allies when you're also in a trade war with china makes no sense at all.

Also, I doubt Trump needs to. He's quite capable of harassing Huawei without much foreign support. Why risk a recession - and thus reelection - if you don't have too?

For mobile telecom equipment: 1 Huawei 2 Ericsson 3 Nokia

How helping out 2 of the largest actually competitive companies in EU to gain more market share in US threatens EU security is beyond me

The fact that the US has such a large impact on EU markets is a threat in itself. Sure, Europe and the United States are on decent terms now, but nobody knows how things will look in 5, 20 or even 100 years, and being that dependent on external parties is definitely a risk.

Currently the US has an impact on the world markets. Not just the EU.

While everyone agrees Trump is a buffoon the fact he is leveraging that in an attempt to benefit the US is waking people up to that fact.

> Currently the US has an impact on the world markets. Not just the EU.

Absolutely! As a European I'm only looking at this from an EU-perspective, though. People from other parts of the World should do the same.

> Absolutely! As a European I'm only looking at this from an EU-perspective, though. People from other parts of the World should do the same.

Isn't "only looking at this from a [MY NATION]-perspective" exactly what Trump is doing and is being criticized for?

It may help those two firms, but the point isn't to make these two private entities rich it's national (and union) security: Huawei's existing customers - which exist in the US, but particularly in the EU - must now rely on a partner that through government fiat suddenly cannot be a reliable partner anymore.

Also remarkable is how little power has to do anything about it. If they wanted to ensure continued reliability of existing infrastructure and infrastructure investments they can... try to nationlize huwawei's relevant IP? Nationalize Google's relevant IP? Both are extremely far-fetched, not to mention the fact that it's not just a matter of IP - replicating those companies respective skillsets probably isn't even feasible. The executive order could probably be subverted by passing along whatever info/IP huwawei needs since that info is likely also present in places outside of US reach, but that threatens escalation (and it's possible EU leaders don't trust huawei either, so they might not even want to do that, even if they could).

Additionally, the implied suggestion that the EU is somehow better off because there is less competition for EU-headquartered (but not necessarily EU-owned) firms is pretty absurd. Less competition is almost certainly bad for the EU (and the US), regardless of who gets rich, simply becuase there are vastly more and more important users of this network tech than there are sellers. A nepotistic short-term win won't even budge the GDP needle, but reduced innovation in tech might.

However little empathy you might have for Huawei's shareholders, the consequences for their clients at the very least bear pause.

>the implied suggestion that the EU is somehow better off because there is less competition for EU-headquartered (but not necessarily EU-owned) firms is pretty absurd

Distantly that has been part of the argument that somehow that allows for the EU to legislate the internet as it has .... but considering the legislation I'm not sure it has proven to be a positive.

Where did anybody argue that "regulating the internet" is a good idea because it reduces competition for EU-headquartered international companies?

Oh well, people say crazy things sometimes. It's definitely a bad motivation - I don't think it's even remotely relevant as a practical motivation however, not least because there's just not a lot of upside to be had.

The idea has been put forth here and other places quite a few times that a lot of the recent EU regulation exists because of a lack of influence of those companies.

Granted, you also would want to belive those regulations and laws are good things to enjoy that argument.

I agree it is a strange POV. If anything I'm pointing out how kinda terrible that is as an argument.

There's a part of USA culture that thrives on cold-war-style paranoia. It's in conflict with another part of our culture that thrives on openness and cooperation.

The paranoid part of our culture is in ascendance in these decades (partly due to the success of malicious state actors exploiting our openness and cooperation.)

This has been a back-and-forth struggle for much of the USA's history. It's never static. This balance will continue to change in future.

In the meantime, of course, it's helpful to their careers for politicians to stir up fear of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.

You do realize things do go bump in the night ? The world isnt all that nice.

And that’s why the military and intelligence agencies get funding. But what good does it do to get the general public scared and worked up about these issues?

Voters should know what is going on.

There’s a vast difference in making information available and to “stir up fear of ghoulies and ghosties”.

How do you define “stir up fear of ghoulies and ghosties”?

Concerns you personally don't share?

Imagine a politician / military telling you "trust us, we know what is good for you"

You really like that idea ?

Considering the privacy implications of technology. I think there is good reason for every nation to be paranoid.

Planty of articles on HN are all about that.

I honestly believe that there was a lot of paranoia in U.S. during the cold war, but USSR wasn't a ghoulie. Half of Europe (and half of Germany specifically) has been occupied until U.S. won the cold war.

> China itself could, of course, also impose bans on American producers and products. A stand-still would possibly bring peace again.

I think we are missing something here. China is already banning western services. No mainland Chinese person is using Google directly. No Outlook, Gmail, Facebook, Skype, AppStore, Google Play, etc. I don't think they can ban USA services even more.

China can only ban exporting to USA, but it's like cutting off your own legs to make a point. In a certain sense, China is losing the game they started a long time ago.

While Europe... Well, we are a total disaster in the IT sector anyway. Nobody gives a damn about the EU.

Realistically, the best bet for Europe is to play the part of the USA in the lead-up to WW1. By remaining unaligned with either the axis or the allies until the war was essentially decided, they came out of the conflict as the sole winners.

Unfortunately, I expect that the EU will stick with the US, and get dragged into whatever that entails. I hope that the world has changed enough that total war between incumbent and upstart great powers isn't possible - but I don't really see any clear reasons why it shouldn't happen.

What I hope is that China is aware of the parallels between their situation and the situation of pre-WW1 Germany, or pre-WW2 Japan, and goes a different route. If they simply wait, focus on soft power, and ignore all provocations, they'll no doubt end up taking the USA's place.

In the book, "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" by George Friedman, the author predicts that China will start to fragment. Although this hasn't been happening probably because of the increase in strict authoritarian rule. Perhaps this trade war will intensify the pressure until some kind of uprising against the authoritarian rule emerges. Besides, China is more keen on keeping economic harmony than fighting a war. History has shown us what happens when its citizens aren't happy time and again.

I find it amusing that the US is accusing Huawei of doing to the US for China exactly what Xerox did to the USSR for the US.

"Something something it's righteous when we do it but evil when they do it"

That does seem to be the message from centuries of history.

> "Something something it's righteous when we do it but evil when they do it"

That's too simplistic a take. There's a moral angle that you're missing: "they" are authoritarians with terrible human rights records (see: Dissidents, treatment of), "we" are a liberal democracy that's quite a bit better at human rights (though not perfect).

Well, it's not hypocritical unless the US administration claims some sort of moral superiority as a result. No one as far as I know is seriously saying that the US is better than China for not having a Huawei (that we know about), but that the US and presumably its allies have an interest in avoiding this technology purely for their own self-interest.

The Russian embassy would have be within their right not to use a Xerox machine.

Not to mention Bullrun and the Dual_EC_DRBG affair.

I assume that all US-designed technology is backdoored and I think I have good reason to make that assumption.

The good news is that Huawei already sucked at making security updates and even claimed to have updated, but hadn't, so it's no huge loss. https://www.wired.com/story/android-phones-hide-missed-secur...

Here's another part of the story. Huawei were not able to show what they used to build their software. When they tried, the end result did not match the source code they said they were using: https://commsrisk.com/interpreting-huaweis-failed-uk-securit...

Fair enough, but reproducible builds are hard, especially on an OS scale.

And I'm all for demanding verifiability, but why should manufacturers from particular regions be singled out? Just because the US is trying to fan their domestic "reds under the bed" paranoia for political reasons?

I don't agree. Android builds aren't that big

In terms of the monster I want living in my attic, I won't swap the US for China any day soon.

I've occasionally rationalised this on the basis that I'd rather China knew everything about me than the US on the basis that I visit the US once every few years and am relatively unlikely to visit China.

You know that China has for a long time has been secretly kidnapping people in other countries:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-r...

Yeah but so does America lol

When the USA does that, it's called Extraordinary Rendition: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/20-extraordina...

Their main claim to legality is sufficiently questionable that they legislated to deny officers of the International Criminal Court entry to the USA:

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

The GP's point was that not planning to travel to China doesn't eliminate the consequences of trusting China. Trusting the US was already stated to be a problem because they travel there.

So has the US:

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

To be fair, I also don't go out of my way to piss either of them off.

But we only have a monster in the attic, because we choose to choose one of those two.

I believe that's the point the article is trying to make: That the EU should stand up and be an actual 3rd party and possibly mediate between China and USA. But then the article also concludes that it's not surprising that doesn't happen considering the parties in Europe.

What would "mediate" mean?

The EU is hardly in a position to actually address any security concerns.

> The EU is hardly in a position to actually address any security concerns.

Why?

Because all the nations of Europe have significantly under invested in defence and security for decades.

'catchup' would require 30 -60%of one years EU gdp over 5-10years + current spend...

Until that happens the EU is a spectator or victim.

We wouldn't need that much defense if we play out the US and China and Russia against each other.

Apart from that - I had suspected that "security" meant "defense" and I think this is far less important globally, than many would like to believe.

Of course if you're a country that doesn't know how to negotiate and compromise and do politics, all you'd know is military intervention.

>We wouldn't need that much defense if we play out the US and China and Russia against each other.

How does that work?

If anything European history shows how non major players become the chips the players play for / the worst consequences land on them.

Most of the significant Euro powers hit around the 2% NATO guide figure, the smaller ones don't, nor does Canada. Germany has some special restrictions on defence. Overall I doubt that deprives us a carrier group or tank division.

America badly wanted Pax Americana, got it, and just as Pax Britannica and Pax Romana did, it costs.

The US has spent double the nato figure the last decade. 2% per UK, Germany, France and Holland would be five carrier groups and ten divisions.

Germany and Holland are really delinquent here, Holland now has no actual navy, Germany would be unable to mount any defence of itself or Poland in a war with Russia.

This will matter in the next few years.

They have, but I'm not even convinced that's the result of the choice to seek the post-war US hegemony and Pax Americana, that's been a significant benefit to America. The US doesn't have to spend that, she chooses to. Drop rate to the Nato agreed 2% of GDP as well and still be the world's dominant and most advanced military power. Halve spending and the US would still reach the old two power standard in terms of spending - easily. It would be nearer a 3 power standard. Right now it's more than what, the next seven or eight combined?

Germany has constitutional limits placed on her defence demanded by the post-WW2 allies, even if they did spend more. There's limits on when and how they can operate outside of Germany - though I'm very unclear on the detail. Holland may not have much navy - but it certainly still exists with frigates, submarines and what have you, and plans for new vessels - just rather few of them. They recently increased budget to get nearer that 2%. They've a population of about 15m, I think a modern carrier is simply out of reach without completely unbalancing their defence budget. They're way past their projecting power era anyway.

I do completely agree all signatories should stick better to that Nato agreed 2% though, or any future agreed amount.

I have understood the discussion to be in the domain of computer security not in "who has a bigger ... own nuclear weapons" or whatever.

I can imagine that the former would be technically doable, if there were enough political support (e.g. also to demand on the highest level from the U.S. companies to provide for the technical support to the project which would be managed from Europe for Europe). But yes, politically, I understand there wouldn't be much readiness, because of the long term established practice of depending on the U.S. "solutions" even in these aspects.

why do you think that?

Really, German government even failed to see any security threat in Kaspersky Antivirus on computers of public servicemen, and it is literally a backdoor for the Russian secret services.

How is this different from using an OS that sends the names of the files you have accessed to a foreign country if you don't use its enterprise version or have misconfigured it? A situation that is true throughout public services and across your entire country's industry.

Not quite sure what you're referring to. They also failed to replace MS products with open-source alternatives, because, you know, the icons are on the wrong places.

> That the EU should stand up and be an actual 3rd party

That would require allignment of international politics across every EU state. If that is ever going to happen, we are very far, perhaphs hundreds of years, from that.

Not necessarily. It wouldn't need to be a total unified process where you can't start before everybody agrees on every detail and it has been translated to a million local dialects.

If you get Germany and France to work together, you're half way there, just like with Airbus/EADS. Nobody needs or wants to wait around for Luxembourg or Ireland, and we really only need the heavy weights - they're the ones paying for it anyhow.

Right now, Germany, with Nord Stream 2, is acting in a way that threatens the security of Poland (EU's sixth largest country). If Germans, the supposed leaders of Europe do it, I can't see anyone else rising above their particular interests.

The EU is very serious about developing an integrated foreign security apparatus; those efforts have taken on a particular urgency since the Ukraine crisis.

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

Ignoring the technical difficulties of such a project: I don't trust the EU anymore than i trust the US or China.

You're wise not to trust anyone in those spheres.

Still I'd feel more comfortable with three or more powers arguing over one thing than just two. It's more balanced.

Whataboutism. Have you considered the option of no monster at all?

Yes I have. My conclusion to the thought experiment is that it is irrelevant. History shows that in the face of one monster you can’t control, the only solution is to build your own. De-weaponise the only opponent it has always ends with the monster destroying everything you endear.

Let's hope this mess brings us at least a stronger FOSS mobile ecosystem...

Free Open Source Software is easy, Free Open Source Services are harder, not impossible (OpenStreet Maps, Wikipedia, IRC (Freenode specifically)), but it is really hard because the cost increases with users unlike software. And what Google brings is service, very reliable and high quality one at that, though the history of Google search quality is up to debate as of recent.

Good luck hearing anything from EU.

EU should get permission from US to buy gas & energy or who to deal and business with, such a joke!

I'm not sure I agree on the last part re: LineageOS et al. They've not failed, they don't gain traction as it's more difficult to install them (in the case of aftermarket firmwares) due to having to gain root. For Purism or hardware+os combos, then they've not got the same market share or share of mindset. If a big player made a (truely) open Android, I'm sure there would be people all over it. If they went down this path, it may actually open up the Android ecosystem. (then again, the hardware still probably wouldn't be completely open)

How does OnePlus's Oxygen OS fit into this? I believe it's based on Cyanogen, which is an open version of Android which, if I recall correctly, was not allowed to distribute the proprietary parts of Android.

So doesn't a big, open version of Android already exist there? Or is it just as tied to Google as stock Android is?

Depends, Oneplus are growing but at 2% of share, whereas Huawei have 10%. Versus previous year of 1% and 8% respectively.

(source: https://www.androidcentral.com/oneplus-breaks-top-five-globa...)

Ancedotally I've never seen any Oneplus advertised on any traditional media here in the UK. Huawei, lots.

I had no idea OnePlus was already a top-5 brand. That's bigger than I thought. Obviously Huawei is larger, but not by as much as I thought.

Honestly while using OnePlus Two I didn't feel it being open at all. In fact I have a very strong suspicion that OnePlus is using OS updates as planned obsolescence.

One day my OnePlus Two installed the system upgrade causing the battery to fully drain in a span of 30 minutes - 2 hours and the phone getting super hot while idle. I tried doing all the recommended steps of fixing the problem (clearing cache, factory resets etc.) without any improvement.

As soon as I installed Lineage OS I started getting a 24+ hr battery life and didn't experience any issues so the issue was not related to hardware.

There was the instance a couple of years back whereby they were sending lots of data back to base, made me very dubious of them since.

I've been running LineageOS on my OnePlus 3 ever since this incident and couldn't be happier with it. I'm planning on upgrading to the OP7 once that has good LineageOS support too.

My Fairphone had an issue a couple of month where it managed to use a couple of GB in a matter of minutes and drained my data subscription. I still don't know why, but I think it's a genuine bug, and not anyone trying to steal my data.

That said, I would prefer an OS that provably puts my in charge and doesn't allow foreign companies access to everything I've got. Then again, I also like convenience.

A co-worker with a OnePlus has experienced this problem a few times: an update that causes the battery to drain really fast. He claims it's because you're the first to get Android updates, and they may still have a few bugs, which are generally fixed in a few days.

I wouldn't mind waiting those few days before I get the update.

The problematic thing for me back then was that it was the final update to OP2 (and on the forums they said that there will be no updates for the OS in the future). That's why it looked like planned obsolescence to me.

I see a lot of people on the internet having an attitude like "geee, it's 3 years old phone, time for an upgrade". All while hardware is still perfectly fine for 100% of the things average person needs the phone for.

I'm no fan of planned obsolescence either, which is why I got a Fairphone, which was supposed to be easy to repair and possibly even get modular hardware upgrades. Never happened, of course, and my phone just developed a fatal problem this week.

So this thread about more secure phones is coming at an excellent time for me. Legacy OS seems like a prime contender. Not sure about the hardware yet.

The Oneplus One came with CyanogeMod, tho after that they made they're own thing, and at a certain point they hired the Paranoid Android team, that did't last long iirc... Long story short , it's not based on CyanogenMod, and it definitely isn't Open Source.

Is it completely different? I assumed it was a fork of Cyanogen, but I guess that could be a bad assumption.

I think the author agrees with you: the installable AOSP-based distributions are currently inconvenient, but they could potentially become more convenient and popular given more support.

i do not know what the espionage evidence was. it must have been a lot to throw a lot of european consumers under the bus like this. definitely an issue for diplomats, but it could in the long run lead to more competition on the software markets, with neutral play store clones gaining a foothold.

Don't tell me there is also a single country that controls the global (oil-trading) currency?

Most oil trading is done in US dollars, but by no means all. It's a convenient and popular unit of account for international trading, but the Euro and Yuan are used too.

I don't disagree, but I think the perspective is a bit weird. Especially this part:

>But the fact that the market power of the Americans has such a big influence is our own fault. European governments have failed to create framework conditions to create competition here as well. If you know which parties in Europe are in charge, it is not surprising.

Europeans have been specifically willing to let the US and China dominate these markets. Most of Europe literally relies on the US for their security with NATO. Many of our companies have been sold to China, or are manufacturing in China. Of course we can't have our cake an eat it too. (Unless it is something like this that you meant).

I agree, and I understand the OP to say that as well.

I don't know if it is/was incompetence to not support domestic industries, or the wish to not anger the US by competing on this area, or something else, I don't know. I believe most of these areas (the hardware, the software, the services) are of such high importance that is indeed of national (talking EU wide) interest to not have to rely on foreign interests.

We trust Google to not unfairly kill hardware vendors, to not manipulate search results, but ultimately, we're powerless if they do, and having to "trust" a foreign government on these essential things sounds bad. Whether it's China or the US ("America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests") is secondary imho. Yes, we have better relations with the US, but who can tell whether our interests will align 10 or 20 years down the road?

This and plus whenever US sanctions a country, EU is the first party to jump and follow them. (_tasting their own medicine now somehow_)

EU only has a sense of independence but in reality it doesn't, it's too depended on US, so much that they can't move a needle without US permission.

Just have a look how they're under pressure to buy Gas from Russia or import oil from sanctioned country like Iran.

EU needs to grow up :D

Yes, EU kind of 'outsourced' large part of technical platforms to US much like what happened to NATO (many european countries don't have real military forces to speak of and rely on US armed forces for protection). EU has no search engine to speak of. European antiviruses are a joke. There's no european 'office suite' that I know of. Should the United States apply the pressure, Europe has very little to counter the pressure with.

Qwant.com is European.

And very European in that it favours user privacy.

Yeah, but last I checked, I think half a year ago, they were (still?) getting their results piped from Microsoft's Bing search engine.

I'd find it more important to develop the search engine technology than to, well... just rebrand another US search engine, essentially...

The problem with some of these European initiatives is that they sound more like a political project than a technical one. Lots of "values" being discussed – granted, decent values to support – but very little technology.

Perhaps I'm too jaded an engineer, but if a solid product or technical idea isn't at the base of a project, no amount of values and goodwill is going to glue it together into a reliable working whole.

Mojeek (mojeek.com) is truly independent search engine. Many others are just resellers of Bing results, like Oscobo (oscobo.com). Yandex (yandex.com) is also quite nice.

While I agree about our lack of (usable) search engine, I disagree on your second claim. Europe has a strong background in cybersecurity. Kaspersky is Russian (to be fair, not EU), Avast is Czech, ESET is Slovak, AVG was also Czech before bought by Avast. All of them are popular antivirus programs used today.

UK's Sophos isn't exactly struggling. Always one of the better ones back when individual anti virus mattered. Their Network Protection - UTM still seems well thought of. I think it's even free for home use.

Completely unlike the vastly over priced marketing junk of McAfee and Symantec that got pre-installed on just about every Windows machine. First thing to do with a friends machine? Get them to install something else instead and see the performance gain!

Oh, and Spybot Search and Destroy (German) was first choice for getting rid of the crap Norton and McAffee happily let in for about half a decade or more, and just about only choice for a while.

I feel most of the comments here don't correctly lasso this on a fundamental level. This article describes a single data-point in a context where protectionism becomes a guiding policy principle. The world coalesces (will coalesce) in economic alliances with military power to back their interests, and it is an extremely dangerous path.

To people who want to point fingers at individual players, saying "it is the fault of Trump, (China, Putin or whoever)" please don't, unless you want to be part of the warmongering hysteria that lies ahead.

It's not anyone's fault, this is just the result of economic and political history. What we need is to make sure this doesn't end in a man-made catastrophe, larger than anything hitherto.

Considering the spotty nature of updates as it is... I'm not sure I buy into the idea this is a dramatic change as far as risk goes.

> By order of the American government, Google must now end its Android support for Huawei.

Google will continue to support existing Huawei phones.

To provide a source here: https://twitter.com/Android/status/1130313848332988421

Resulting article: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/19/google-says-its-app-store-...

(un)ironically, Huawei recently stopped allowing bootloader unlocking, now they will probably have to use AOSP

AppStore? Or did they mean Google Play?

AppStore ... Better for understanding for the most Readers.

But you are right. Google Play Store.

After reading this, it occurs to me that a side effect might be the EU getting its act together and provide some real competition to US tech dominance. I would consider that a good thing. Not sure that's what Trump intends...

I would love to see that but I doubt it would happen - there seem to be major cultural problems holding the EU back - which is something that isn't unique to them - every nation has their own frankly stupid cultural dysfunctions which if addressed could make things so much better for everyone at no real cost except selfish and irrelevant vested interests.

The EU nations are generally far too protectionist and unwilling to allow disruption or breaking of fiefdoms - just changing where ancient province lines for agriculture regions fills them with rage - let alone absurd. Then there are the issues with German publishers and Spanish newspapers.

Until that changes they will unfortunately fail to have more than a relatively minor presence - they really should have a larger tech industry for their size and educated population base.

Quite disappointing that German anti-Americanism goes as far as siding with China. And quite ironic that the author plays the Trump card, who has gained a lot of his notoriety by having ties to another authoritarian regime.

I don't find the author is siding with China, I find he's playing fair.

Everything (?) the US accuses China, the EU could accuse the US of as well.

I'm guessing it's for historical reasons things are the way they are now, and because of economic inertia that this has yet to change.

I don't want to be pro-China nor pro-US. But I see two people wanting to sell me something, and one of them is trying to stop me from buying the better product.

Thanks

Sure, but we should be thanking you! :3

Siding as in not morally but practically - doing/willing to do things that favor someone, not necessarily liking someone.

> But I see two people wanting to sell me something, and one of them is trying to stop me from buying the better product.

This willingness to compromise on global security for a little profit is siding to me. Exactly the same willingness as in Gazprom/NordStream case if you follow the topic.

> Everything (?) the US accuses China, the EU could accuse the US of as well.

It could, but what the author seems to propose is tolerating China's violations, not opposing these of US (which EU couldn't realistically do anyway).

To be fair "global security" has been cried wolf about enough given its use as a scurtiny terminating cliche for reasons that are irrelevant like embarrassment to officials that it could be replaced with "nothing" and have approximately the same meaning. If you don't trust the message the argument goes the other direction it becomes "compromising nothing for a little profit". Why leave money om the table for the sake of a known bad actor?

If you sincerely believe it that loss of credibility should be deeply troubling. If you don't it is as it should be - they lost their abused cudgel and can deal with it.

Because Europe is the bastion of morality.

It is.

No it's not, but let's not fall into the trap of not being able to criticize anything unless we're saints.

No morality without free speech.

the US cannot disclose why as that would disclose capability used in detection that would teach the others how to circumvent it.

I for one support the decision and would rather have my data and whereabouts in the hands of the USA rather than CHINA.

What does China do with your data that the US government doesn't do?

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