Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw20102010 | Hacker News Reader

throw20102010

Every American company is at the beck and call of the US government at all times, with their existence in peril if they disobey. The US government has been regulating trade like this since before we were born, and most of the time we don't even notice. This is not the first time that Silicon Valley had to obey US government regulations. Notice that there are hardly any Iranian or North Korean tech companies doing business around the world- any US company that transfers technology to a hostile country gets shut down and people go to jail, and it's not even controversial.

The only thing that's unique with this case is that it's rare for the US government to be so openly hostile toward a major trade partner.

View on HN

So why does the US government accuse Huawei of being a risk for being at the beck and call of the Chinese government?

The lever here is export control, e.g. "you can't export this tech to these people, countries, vendors" etc, rather than a request to perform some affirmative action at the behest of a government. ( a "writ", if you will; c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act#Application_to_e... )

So the USG can tell a company "you cannot transfer this controlled material to these people, 'cause NatSec", but (probably) can't compel a company "build a tool for us that does X".

Not doing something about national security because the US might look hypocritical is not a concern to those making the decision. Countries spy on each other while complaining about the other spies. The US tried to stop North Korea from getting nukes while holding the world’s largest stockpile of nukes. The US has put multiple countries on blast for human rights violations while also being allies with Saudi Arabia.

The fact that Google and affiliates are being used in a similar manner that we’re accusing Huawei probably makes the people in charge laugh even harder.

The real question should be that if Chinese government policy creates a security risk for the US, why are they only going after Huawei? Why not a blanket ban on all sophisticated Chinese electronics? Lenovo has been caught before putting spyware on computers, but somehow the US government still buys Lenovo laptops...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com