Huawei has trademarked its 'Hongmeng' operating system
news.cgtn.com
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The level of confrontation now is nowhere close to that but that has been the usual state of the world for a longer time than the current open and free Internet and commerce. If we are heading into that direction (if!) all the major players (USA, China, Russia) will build some walls again and pull the strings of their allies. It's both a defensive strategy and an offensive one and it's going to reduce the flow of goods, people and information. Technology stacks will be rewritten and operated locally as barriers are raised. Factories will have to be rebuilt in the west. I wonder if the EU can survive being pulled in three different ways or each country will go its way toward the party that suits them best.
We can look at the 1946-1989 cold war as an experiment to predict how this is going to play out. The winner was who was able to create more wealth for the people in its block. Nuclear weapons were (and are) a strong enough deterrent to make a real full scale war impossible. Be prepared to hear more about them in the next years. However there were many wars fought by proxy, or against proxies.
Tangentially, you might be interested in learning about the origin of the words First, Second and Third World [2], which somewhat changed in meaning since their origin in 1952. They where USA + allies, USSR + allies, all the others. They were not about being rich or poor. Maybe we'll end up with more than three worlds this time or (I hope) business as usual.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction
Except grain, which the USA provided in vast quantities to the USSR in order to prop-up its system in the wake of poor harvests.
There was a brief blip in 1980 when President Carter vetoed it, before resuming under President Reagan.
Why not use it as a lever to bring down the Soviet system 20 years earlier? Because the balance of power was quite convenient.
A civil war in the USSR at the time could have literarily ended the world as we know it.
The fact that the only major thing we got at the fall of the USSR was the attempted 1991 ‘August Coup’ is a miracle as things could’ve ended so badly for Russia and the entire world.
I feel it's something that the EU wants and we surely care more about the Western democratic culture, but not at the risk of our own financial ruin.
It could also be a continuation of the German "Wandel durch Annäherung" policy ("Change by Rapprochement"). People you do business with won't shoot at you, and will generally be more willing to talk to you about human rights, nuclear disarmament etc than people you don't do business with.
I don't understand what is the point of this. Sure, government/companies doesn't have to buy anything from Huawei but why they are not even allowed to sell Android to others?
In my view, it is absolutely about security, and much more broad than "spying."
China is absolutely an adversary of the USA. If you give your adversary control of a national asset such as the entire wireless network, then you are a fool. I am no fan of Trump, but holy crap did we allow our security interests to get dominated by business interests in the past.
One great example is that for unknown reasons, we allow Chinese POPs in Canada, however there is certainly no western POPs allowed in China. Here is a story about Canada-to-Canada data being routed through China via a Chinese POP. [0] I remember it being discuss on HN, but now I can't find it.
[0]https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/01/31/israeli-cyberexpert-d...
Multi-national corporations are what they are because they have no loyalty to any country. Profit is the god they worship. Giving our national assets to any multi-national corporation is foolishness.
Are you not able to separate a nation's business interests from its national security interests? Can you not imagine how the two could easily be in conflict? I am truly dumbfounded by this view. I don't even know where to begin.
There is a reason that countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc have either banned the company outright or had to take measures to ring fence their products.
Because Australia, for example, decided to ban Huawei in a closed door national security meeting.
We have a long and storied history of making bad decisions to appease greater powers.
Since you name the "five eyes" countries. Is it because Huawei's products make it harder to spy on the population?
So yeah, I guess everything is eventually boil down to that.
They do not play by the rules, which is why they became a big competitor in the market. Treat them like a normal company, and you will have a chinese state company monopolist eventually.
See Boeing and Airbus, where state intervention was a fraction of what Huawei gets.
Finally, foreign companies are not free to do business in China, why should chinese companies be free to do so here?
Edit: to give an example. Firms in China rarely license correctly for domestic sales, merely for export. No other nominally developed country with so many manufacturers would get away with that. Imagine Germany not licensing for cars they sell in Europe.
So what now? Huawei has lost access to many licenses, such as cpu, memory, sd cards and whatnot. Do you think they will stop making phones? No. They will ignore it, and grt backed by the CCP. In China, this will have no impact.
What SHOULD happen as a reaction is to ban Huawei entirely, and come after other Chinese ccp backed companies next. Because if you ignore the rules of the market, you should not participate in it.
Please don't fall for the transparent disinformation spread by some media, and unfortunately by some commenters on HN.
Huawei Mate X being a classic example.
I'm not sure whether someone in the Chinese intelligence services could easily get Huawei to assist with espionage if doing so might hurt the profits of someone higher up in the hierarchy.
Also, board members and execs are CCP members, and functionally the company is controlled and supported by the CCP.
Context matters as well. Look how China treats its citizens, and those abroad who critique the CCP. Look how it has no ethical issue to control and spy upon every Chinese person within its borders. It has no state philosophy that would forbid it. Why would you think they would not spy abroad? And again, CCP members controlling Huawei is a fact.
Look how the doctrine of ip theft has been pushed even in past plans like china 2020, and how often unlicensed and nearly identical products and tech showed up after being stolen by someone. And Chinese politicians masterfully promising betterment and market access to EU politicians and giving nothing in the end.
There will never be a smoking gun. But to say its based on lies without evidence is, i think, misleading.
For years all this has been happening. And the damage to non Chinese tech and industry has been huge.
That is why it needs to be up to every country to choose whether to make deals with Huawei and the CCP or not. Judge the evidence, and circumstances.
If you wait too long, the consequences are clear. The US has decided it has seen enough, and Huawei is not a sincere market participant.
THEN, you have to take strong measures. If there is ip theft. If there even is spying, THEN you can not fight it by half measures. It doesnt work. Huawei denies and goes their merry way until it is untouchable.
Its a game of chance, not certainty.
I'm sorry, this sounds like "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.
> For years all this has been happening. And the damage to non Chinese tech and industry has been huge.
Not really, it was a conscious decision by most Western companies to go and produce in China. Fully aware that they will (voluntarily and via ip theft) transfer knowledge, they still chose to do it because the profit margins were so enormous. The Chinese actually hacking and siphoning off IP is relatively new, something that previously was the NSA's monopoly.
> If there even is spying, THEN you can not fight it by half measures.
Are you suggesting the EU should go into a full out trade war with the US to convince them to stop the spying?
Hmm, recently on BBC a representative for UK's GCHQ said there was no evidence of that.
>"The report comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump banned Huawei from buying vital U.S. technology without special approval and effectively barring its equipment from U.S. telecoms networks on national security grounds." (from article GP linked) //
There you have it, I think: Netherlands bought some deal from USA and supported their Huawei story with a "key finding" the following day. Smacks of propaganda.
>"The Volkskrant story did not contain any details" (GP's article, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-huawei-tech-i..., again) //
Ha, ha. No shit they didn't provide details that could be used to show it was entirely made up.
Or a company whose execs are literally CCP party members, spying for the party.
I am going to go with story 2 here. Occams razot.
"Allegations" aren't "strongarming". It's just telling somebody "off the record" that you heard something. Bloomberg recently claimed that Huawei had installed secret backdoors in equipment sold to Vodafone for use in Italy. Vodafone all but laughed in their face, saying it was a standard, obvious and not at all hidden telnet maintenance terminal that hadn't been deactivated.
It's possible I'm too cynical but I think here you're being too naive. De Volkskrant are cited as relying on "unidentified intelligence sources" which to me means their intelligence service contacted them and said "run this" (or some logical equivalent of that).
Occams razor is not truth producing, it's not capable of finding the truth. That said, either UK's or Netherlands intelligence are lying here as De Volkskrant refer to their being "evidence" and GCHQ (see my post history) said there wasn't (but were lots of holes that appear to be just bad coding).
The GCHQ spokesperson was a person interviewed on TV in a BBC interview, a noted rare occurrence.
The De Volkskrant source is anonymous with no evidence provided.
I guess you take your pick. Does GCHQ have cause to lie to promote Chinese intelligence activities that are proven to be actively operating in the EU? Or does USA have enough hold on Netherlands to get an "anonymous source says there's evidence but we won't show you what it is" pushed out by their intelligence service?
So, the day after Trump starts a propaganda war against Huawei just happened to be when Netherlands decided to make an anonymous no evidence comment?!?
I know which side I'm finding more believable.
We are and always will be uncertain who is spying. Further, we can not even say whether Huawei is a sincere market participant (although here the case is much clearer against it).
If you wait for certainty, you will lose. Its a political decision you can agree or disagree with.
But if it has been made, and for good reason in this case, then you will not fight ip theft and chinese protectionism and anti competitive behavior with small measures.
Op asked why ban Huawei instead of not buying from them. Because it is ineffective.
Otherwise the default should be you block ours we block yours.
Free trade for all. Not just free trade for chinese product.
I am an EU citizen and if I want to buy Huawei products, I don't want the U.S. to tell me not to, especially since you seem to conveniently forget that the U.S. has led many interventionist wars in order to forcibly open markets in other countries to its goods, so you don't have much moral ground to stand on here.
Additionally, the U.S. is also imposing tariffs on the EU and being abusive around the world, (Iran etc.) in general. The world is watching and American credibility is being eroded with moves like these, that's for sure.
International trade agreements can be renegotiated and confrontations can be managed professionally. The US would get much more done if it would have sane leadership.
But that's not what's happening. China just makes laws that require vendors to comply with censorship. You know, Germany does the same, only on different topics. Google and others have then decided not to do business in China, they weren't blocked.
The trade problem with China isn't about blocking companies, it's about state subsidies that China gives to key industries that are perceived as unfair.
Buying both Jolla (Sailfish OS) and Qt Group (QTCOM.HE) would be peanuts for Huawei.
What wil Huawei/HiSilicon do next? Jump head first to RISC-V or adopt MIPS variant. Who will they by to get there faster?
So likely just a Android fork/rebrand.
From Sailfish homepage " Our focus is in licensing the OS to be used in governmental and corporate environments, and Sailfish OS is already used to build local mobile ecosystems in Latin America, Russia, and China. "
I had this theory three or four years ago that the smartphone OS will be the next battlefield.
Japan, China, and Korea. Three countries that love eachother. /s
Based on the reactions I've seen, that was a good move to capture patriotic sentiments. On the other hand, I'm not sure how many patriotic Chinese were buying foreign phones, so they may end up only gaining market share from other Chinese competitors.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Meng
[2] https://m.sohu.com/a/316263123_526461/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_of_Mountains_and_Seas
Also, apps compatible with Android. Please, don't make me laugh. You're so naive. Android works because you can monetize apps. If you can't monetize them, you don't build them. Free apps are monetized with ads, which are completely embedded into Google systems (yes, you could use others, good luck with that). Paid apps are monetized by Google Wallet, so another thing Huawei has to build. And believe me, I sure as hell won't trust the Chinese government (AKA Huawei) to handle my money.
But good luck getting consumers interested. Because you can spot a website based app a mile away and they are universally awful.