Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

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They're subject to the US government sure, in the same way that Huawei is subject to the Chinese government, which is why the US is so nervous about allowing it's equipment into their critical network infrastructure. It doesn't even matter if Huawei doesn't want to do it, if the Chinese government says jump they will ask how high, as with Google in this case. As with any company issued a lawful instruction by their government, for which there is no clear legal challenge.

Bear in mind the US and China are currently engaged in an espionage war[1]. The US has an active network of informants in the Chinese government, while the Chinese are actively conducting espionage and counter-espionage in the US including stealing commercial secrets and suborning US intelligence operatives to undermine the CIA's Chinese network. Google and Huawei are being caught in a crush between the spy war and the trade war.

EU companies are no different. If Google was a German company and Germany decided to impose trade sanctions on a non-EU country, they would have to comply.

[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-48319058

Security considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the Huawei ban. The US has provided no evidence, and has refused the offer by Huawei to collaborate in any investigation.

This is part of the trade war, and the fact that the US is openly lying about the motives of the ban shows how risky the position of US customers have become: there is absolutely no recourse.

And even if the security claims were true (they are not), so what? Why I, an European customer, must be affected by security concerns of a far away country? Why is Huawei in a position to be forced to let down its customers?

Non-US companies must rethink the way they rely on an increasingly isolated and belicose US.

> Security considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the Huawei ban. The US has provided no evidence, and has refused the offer by Huawei to collaborate in any investigation.

I'm not sure we (the general public) have enough information to know either way. There are legitimate reasons for not releasing supporting evidence about counter-espionage operations. It's also entirely believable that the U.S. executive branch (POTUS, CIA, etc.) would lie as you suggest.

Indeed. UK intelligence is certainly twitchy about Huawei involvement in 5G - and the UK is not marching in lock-step with the US over the chinese trade war.

The private researchers and companies around the globe could find the backdoors and make them public. But we only see each month more and more issues with US equipment (routers with default passwords set and remote access enabled by mistake or convenience)

After the Snowden story about the CISCO routers there's really no reason to assume any given piece of technology from any country isn't potentially manipulated by a government agency.

The idea that Chinese hardware is somehow more troubling in this regard only holds true if you're in the US (and fully trust your government).

>Bear in mind the US and China are currently engaged in an espionage war[1].

But US has spies in all countries, so why is in China an espionage war?

Any idea if US wants a concrete thing? Like if China does X all is fine or is just an economic war and US is trying to weaken China and fix the trading balance ?

Because there are casualties. Dozens of CIA contacts in China have disappeared and a handful of US citizens and even CIA employees have been convicted of spying for China.

I mean if China found some traitors and detained or execute them why is this an espionage war? I am not convinced that this is related with the Huawei sanctions, it must be some economic or political strategy but I don't know what and why now and why with such a pathetic of excuse.

While all true it doesn't change the risk (on either side).

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