Huawei staff CVs reveal alleged links to Chinese intelligence agencies
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That seems like a great dataset for some statistical analysis, but unfortunately we aren't even told how large the subsets are. (The figure of 590 million is from a news report about the leak.) So it's hard to tell how large the problem is, and how it compares to other companies or countries.
The results are presented as three profiles based on three CVs from the leak, but edited to obscure their identity. It's only mentioned in the conclusion that the profiles are actually composites, which I take to mean that they combine information from multiple CVs each. That's unfortunate, because many of the claims rely on one and the same person being involved in multiple activities. We'll have to trust the author that those modifications do not embellish anything.
The three profiles are:
1. A software engineer in Huawei QA since 2011 who from 2012 on also held a research and teaching position with the PLA's National University of Defense Technology, working on signals, remote management and scripting. The paper claims that this places them within a branch of the Strategic Support Forces (who are responsible e.g. for cyber warfare). It's not clear to me whether that's something specific to that person, or whether any similar research at NUDT is classed that way. NUDT also does civilian research, e.g. Microsoft was criticized for publishing a paper on beauty estimation co-authored with NUDT researchers: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=107...
2. A Huawei engineer who was responsible for building lawful interception capabilities, working on roll-outs in multiple countries. He served as a representative for the Chinese Ministry of State Security on one project "likely guaranteeing project specifications". The author tries to imply that this was to grant the MSS access to other countries' networks, but alternatively Huawei simply has product managers responsible for communication with the law enforcement agencies doing the intercepting in their own country's networks. The author also tries to link that person to a "backdoor" in infrastructure of Vodafone Italy. However, Vodafone has denied the allegiations in the Bloomberg article he cites: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48103430
3. A network engineer who developed civilian and high-security military communication systems at CASTC, then worked at China Unicom for a year and then went to Huawei to lead network expansion projects. At CASTC, he gained expertise using Cisco and Nortel switches. The author construes this to imply that he assisted in espionage attempts involving fake Cisco routers.
Of the three, I'm going to classify 1. as harmless research (otherwise Microsoft is just as implicated as Huawei) and 3. as "person with security clearance changes jobs". 2. however at least supports this part of the paper's conclusion: "the institutional relationship between Huawei and Chinese state security services directly contradicts Huawei claims that they have no relationship with these services." Huawei should probably clarify those statements to mean that the relationship doesn't grant Chinese security services access to other countries' data.
There's that name again. Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. How many times has Bloomberg published an article that they can't back up?
- I genuinely think that the Huawei stories are by and large protectionist fearmongering and that Huawei products would win in a free and high-information (and high-correct-information, of course) market. I think better, cheaper products are good for the US.
- If Huawei is actually using their products to spy, or there is even a belief of such, that incentivizes the use of end-to-end secure protocols that don't trust routers, open-source and verifiable devices for end users, etc. If it's just the US government, there's a strong pressure on US companies not to treat their own government as an adversary, which creates the danger that it's easy for the government to become an adversary (even if they are not today, it can change hands quickly).
- I don't think China is any more evil than the US. So if I'm okay with using infrastructure from AT&T and its Room 641A, Verizon and its Quantico circuit, and the various PRISM companies, I have no logical reason to object to infrastructure that may be similarly compromised by the Chinese government.
One big problem is that there is no recourse against China. Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
Say what you want about the USA's intelligence organizations but at the end of the day there's a path for change. We elect a new top of the house every four years and all our intelligence agencies (are supposed to...) report to our civilian leaders. China's is a black box that's only getting darker over time.
Through legislation and free deliberation.
> The NSA was found to be breaking the constitution
No, it hasn’t. Many believe it is, but the courts have so far upheld the NSA’s activities.
The American public’s views on the topic are mixed [1]. The fight is in convincing the public this is an issue.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/29/what-americ...
https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/yjolt/vol11/iss1/8/
The evidence suggests that blanket surveillance is a thing, and that's it very clearly unconstitutional.
Of course in this situation it's always possible to appeal to "national security" but that's an unconvincing legitimisation unless it can be proved that national security has been enhanced to an extent that warrants the suspension of constitutional protections.
So far as I know this has never even been tried in court, never mind proven.
That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed. That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
I'm not sure how it can be relegated completely to political representatives, given that the secreacy means that the check on representative desicions (an informed populace voting for their representatives) isn't present.
> That said, let's keep in mind context. Here we have a government program which we're able to freely debate. If enough of us prioritized its removal, it would be outlawed.
You can freely debate specific policies in China, and broadly unpopular policies in China are suspended.
That can't be said for the US, where whether a law is passed has more to do with whether the ruling class supports it, rather than it's broad popularity.
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
> That functions as a fundamental check totally lacking in China, moreso now that Xi is a dictator.
The whole 'Xi is a dictator' thing is severely overblown in Western media. Oh no, he has the same term limits as Angela Merkel now. Literally a dictator.
PS: linking to the states secrets wikipage to increase your number of citations is lol inducing.
The claim from upthread was:
> Unless you have some long term plans of joining their politburo and making changes 25 years from now, there's no way to way to apply direct pressure for change.
It genuinely seems like the most productive way for me to end this legal, constitutional spying (and China's spying is also legal and constitutional, mind you) is to spend 25 years being a wildly popular politician or entertainer, run for president, and issue an executive order, or to spend 25 years as an activist changing hearts and minds until there's support for a constitutional amendment banning it. There's clearly no direct way for me to apply pressure in the US.
... and if you say there's no demonstrable, specific harm, doesn't that support my claim at the top that I don't mind China spying on my traffic? Or does Chinese surveillance have demonstrable, specific harm in a way that US surveillance doesn't?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/australia/encryptio...
Not for the majority of people in the world. Why should I care more about China than about the USA as someone who uses technology from both countries?
> - I don't think China is any more evil than the US.
In my opinion, citizens of China have it far worse, due to things like the Great Firewall. I'd much rather live in the US than China, at least it's vaguely democratic.
>What do our findings say about democracy in America? They certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of “populistic” democracy, who want governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens. In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
I think you're looking at entirely the wrong metric.
3 million Uyghurs in internment camps have increased quality of life? ~400 million still stuck ineural farms? The gap between the to 1% in China and the bottom is vastly larger than in the US. And of course it is easy for China to “improve” coming from the ruins of the cultural revolution. There was nowhere to go but up.
I feel that over-priveleged peoples in the West with a really good life and pretty much every comfort available, often tend to just look at these superficial charts and numbers and tend to gloss over the context in these other countries.
It's pretty sad really that you are comparing China to the USA in this way just by mentioning that the USA is a oligarchy and somehow that's worse than being in China. The US at least has the option. Chinese people do not.
This worshipping of communist governments and downplaying the USA's freedoms and comforts really need to tone down a bit.
There are superficial differences in the tribal totems and rhetorical promises used to promote conformity, and in the mechanics of manipulation and repression.
Beneath that, the dynamics are very similar.
Life can be quite pleasant in any of the above if you're upper-middle class.
If you're on the wrong side of any of these regimes and on the receiving end of institutionalised government violence, it really isn't.
And there's no shortage of e.g. college students from China who want to return after their studies instead of trying to stay around America and get a work visa. They're smart, and they're under no Chinese censorship when in America, so it seems to me that one is not vastly better than the other.
(Also the unspoken question is how China, the USSR, Korea, etc. would be were it not for their economic suffocation by the US. I didn't bring this up in the context of the Great Firewall, but if we're talking about quality of life it's absolutely relevant. It's important for the US to buy Huawei because not doing so when they have a better product is just repeating the same immoral economic suffocation.)
Of course, there are those that don’t. That’s beside the point, there always are.
From memory it used to be about 80% and now it is closer to 20%
Like, what is Huawei going to do if it has information on you and you live in Boston, compared to the local police?
From the perspective of individual liberty it seems better to be subject to surveillance by someone who doesn't have legal authority over you than be subject to someone who does. I'm not sure the American prison population or minority groups have to fear a foreign government more than their own.
It could to take what your local industries you are researching and give it to a Chinese company that will take it into the international market. Is that not harmful? Do you think the US government would similarly take your work and send it to a Chinese competitor before it is made public?
Well, this idea is false. The CCP has power in the U.S. over people they surveil, through the information gained with that surveillance. It doesn't take much to compromise ordinary people, if you can watch a lot of what they do.
> I'm not sure the American prison population...
They're already in prison.
> ...or minority groups have to fear a foreign government more than their own.
Not sure what kind of minority you're talking here, but foreign governments can compromise you and take over your life just the same regardless of the colour of your skin.
What the average American does not need to worry about is the Chinese coming after him because he smoked pot on the weekend. The primary threat to American civil liberties is their own government, not distant foreign ones.
Sure, your own government is responsible for not trampling on your civil liberties; that doesn't mean it's somehow not worse to be also surveilled by the Chinese government, in addition to your own.
When China is spying on you, that doesn't mean the U.S. isn't; it means they both are.
As far as I can tell, your argument is: Because governments in the U.S. don't recognize some things you consider civil liberties, like smoking cannabis recreationally, you don't care that the Chinese government is also spying on you, and you don't think the U.S. government should take a stance on that spying?
It seems pretty incoherent to me.
> Since when is the Chinese government in the business of compromising ordinary Americans?
Roughly since they have had intelligence services. It's not like the Soviets invented Kompromat, and it's not as though they were the last to use it.
>you can’t really argue that America and China are equally bad to Americans.
Yes, the American government can be a 'bigger bad' for Americans than the Chinese government. And it's also not incoherent in a general context, because using China or some other cold war enemy as a strawman to divert attention from domestic civil rights violation is as relevant as it has always been in the US. The Soviet Union was no danger to ordinary Americans either (well nukes aside), because by definition ordinary Americans are.. well ordinary and entirely uninteresting.
Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government. As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
I didn't say the thing you are refuting, that was somebody else paraphrasing my more precise statement. I said that the Chinese government is more willing to be evil to Americans than the U.S. government. The outcomes are a matter of proximity and control.
The reason I made this distinction is because right now we are at a crossroads, deciding whether or not to potentially give the Chinese government more proximity and control when it comes to ordinary Americans. My point is that they really don't have your best interests at heart.
> Instead of falling in line with the US government circus of blaming China, Americans would do well to pay close attention to their own government.
This is not an either-or sort of situation. Americans would do well to pay close attention to both the domestic actions of the U.S. government (and their local and state governments), and equally close attention the foreign actions of the government of the PRC.
> As another poster pointed out, one of the primary reasons for this in the 5G arena is companies struggling to compete with Huawei.
I'm not even convinced there's much of a market for 5G in the U.S; but sure, there is a competitive angle to this. Tell me, though, why Huawei is so interested in making the carrier equipment, but the modems so much less so?
(I think you can construct an argument that America treats the rest of the world better than China, though. I don't think I believe it right now but I could be convinced.)
Being able to say that sort of thing with a straight face is the tremendous privilege of being an American.
> I don't think promoting the American intelligence apparatus is good for the world
In a vacuum I would not promote them, but in a counterintelligence scenario, I side with U.S. and Canadian intelligence services over the PLA, 100%. The thing I try not to do is believe the CIA when they say somebody is committing an act of war against the U.S, because their track record on that is not great. ;- )
> (I think you can construct an argument that America treats the rest of the world better than China, though. I don't think I believe it right now but I could be convinced.)
Well, look into it. I don't think you can compare the callousness and limitless self-interest of the CCP (and the culture of the people they empower) abroad to even the greatest excesses of modern U.S. foreign policy. China is ruthlessly raping the developed world of its natural resources, and leaving superfund sites in its wake, and nobody is tempering that; some because they're afraid, others because they simply never cared.
When the U.S. has an interest abroad, at least Americans feel they have a right and duty to keep tabs on it. That is a huge step up from most of the world. That doesn't mean that American businesses and U.S. government organizations don't do bad things abroad, but it does mean that ordinary Americans can say and do something about it.
There's a false dichotomy here between trusting U.S. intelligence services, and trusting the PLA. If you don't trust either, you may still be surveilled by U.S. intelligence services in America; if you "equally distrust both", you will be surveilled by both, in America.
Because America is the only developed nation...
I think this is a really important point. It's hard to be rational and idealistic when you're under the stresses of scarcity and oppression.
https://www.wired.com/story/inside-chinas-massive-surveillan...
Slightly worse, I would think. Another reason not to give up your guns to the benevolence of government.
Like, yeah, we have police brutality, and it’s a real problem. But did we crush a bunch of student protestors into human pancakes and then forbid anyone from talking about it? No.
The US doesn't need to suppress people from talking. There's enough social control that people don't talk in the first place. The information is all out there and technically public, which against the US populace is more effective in making sure people don't think of the police as they should.
I hadn't heard of these incidents before, but when I read your comment (which would have been censored in China) I searched for "philadelphia 1985" and quickly found an old clip from Frontline reporting on the events (which would have been censored in China) on YouTube (where it would have been censored in China, setting aside that YouTube is blocked entirely).
Wikipedia (which is blocked in China) also has an article (which would have been censored in China if not already blocked), saying that the police first evacuated the surrounding houses and there was a protracted gunfight before they bombed "a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the roof". This is not quite comparable to the military killing thousands of unarmed protestors.
Police brutality is a serious problem. But it’s not the same problem as those enabled the TS massacre.
> The US doesn't need to suppress people from talking. There's enough social control that people don't talk in the first place. The information is all out there and technically public, which against the US populace is more effective in making sure people don't think of the police as they should.
Anti police sentiment is a huge national issue.
I am seeing this as a sign of a person living in absurd comfort (includes me too) and trying to understand a developing nation without having to go through any of the difficulties.
That doesn't work for metadata. Also, confidentiality is only one aspect of security. You also want availability, which can't be assured with clever crypto.
No man is wrong except the man who says he’s right...
* There are millions of people imprisoned in China. Could be as few as 1.5mil, but likelier around 3.5mil, [2] including likely over 1mil in "re-education" concentration camps in the Western region of Xinjiang. [1] By comparison, while the USA's legendarily held the highest per-capita incarceration rate for decades, presumably this is because we are more honest than China about our rates. (Not to mention Russia.) Also, consider this map of incarceration per state in the USA. [3] Thanks, Louisiana.
* The Internet is neither Free nor neutral in China. [4] You can expect not just to be spied upon, but also to have lots of non-Chinese literature removed from your view, and also to face social consequences from your Internet browsing choices. You would already be known as outspoken for your posts, which would not be hidden or pseudonymous, and which would travel through both automated and manually-reviewed filters before being published. Rumor has it that both Russia and China are researching ways to construct their own Internet-like sub-networks and infrastructure so that they can disconnect entirely from the rest of the world.
* A family-and-caste system, hukou [5], is used to systematically deny freedom of movement to the vast majority of Chinese citizens. While the system has experienced reforms since Deng, in the time of Mao, hukou was an oppressive tool, and to this day, one must apply for a permit to move to large cities in Eastern China like Beijing. Worse, if I understand correctly, the hukou permits can be zoned within a metropolitan area, so that one is only permitted to move to certain parts of Beijing. As a reminder, for contrast, the USA has a strong history of legally supporting the right to freedom of movement since 1823 [6], even if we have often failed to ensure those rights. [7]
* The USA has freedom of religion written into the Constitution, in the First Amendment. China does not have freedom of religion. [8] Party members must be atheists. Christians must belong to state-run churches. [11] Tibetan Buddhism is state-managed; lamas must fill out permits for reincarnation [9] and the Panchen Lama has been kidnapped and replaced with a state-chosen impostor. [10] Falun Gong has been systematically persecuted. [12]
* Tibet. [13] Additionally, Hong Kong. [15]
* In more recent fields of human rights: Homosexuality and non-binary sexuality are only recently permitted, within the past few decades, and associated rights like marriage/civil unions are still forthcoming.
* Meta: The Communist Party of China wants to appear to have a unified will. To this end, they tend to allow whatever the Central Committee wants, to promote their ability and right to do whatever they like to the people of China, to dismiss individual human rights as deleterious to the Party and its state, and to concentrate power arbitrarily. Compare and contrast with the USA.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_China
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Peo...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corfield_v._Coryell
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_China
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Religious_Affairs_Bureau...
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchen_Lama
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_China#Subdivis...
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Tibet
[15] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Hong_Kong
Also, nationalistic battle is off topic here, even in a thread like this one, and your comment is a huge step in that direction.
Also, please don't snark. That's in the site guidelines too.
Please don't make insinuations about astroturfing. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you think that these aren't fresh words, then please explain where they came from.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. Do you have commentary on the state of human rights in China?
This is the principle of democratic centralism[1]. A case could be made for conceptions of democracy other than the western one, but with the abolishment of term limits China is not making that case very well.
It is a market decision. From the security point of view most vendors are the same.
The key is for balance and competitiveness on both sides to be maintained.
China backs its companies with government support more aggressively than the US does (in recent decades anyway) which means the US could lose its edge and end up totally reliant.
First. The allegations against Huawei are BS driven by internal US politics.
Secondly where does this weird nationalism lead us? To a world where there is no Chinese router or chipset in American infrastructure. And by extension no American router or chipset in Chinese infrastructure.
That is a world which is a lot poorer and filled with unconstructive paranoia.
- USA whataboutism
- Mass flagging (resulting in the story getting knocked off the frontpage despite having a great upvote, comment and submission ratio)
- Comments negative towards China receive 1-5 quick downvotes before slowly climbing back to normal again
It’s really unfortunate that an otherwise well moderated community is so easily defeated by this abuse, and that there appear to be nothing being done to fix it despite many obvious and simple solutions (ignore flags and downvotes by those who abuse them, ban shills that resort to whataboutism from posting in threads containing /China/Chinese keywords).
I've written tons about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
Here's a recent one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20314160
Your comment also broke the site guidelines against insinuations of astroturfing. People having opposing opinions on divisive topics is evidence of nothing other than that the topic is divisive. But the insinuation poisons discussions badly. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN. More on that from a few minutes ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20370575.
Banning comments about whataboutism? LMAO. Censorship because people comment about how bad the US are? And youre bothered about Chinese ruling?
When I hear the arguments against China and their tech companies, I don't have a problem believing them, however I do not expect anything less from the USA.
Remember Snowden? I'm simply assuming that Facebook, Google, Apple, Cisco or any other US tech company are tapped by the US 3 letter agencies. There were some reveleations on that(PRISMA) but it's probably just tip of the iceberg.
And now the Chinese. So what?
The message to me from that case is clear—if the US government tells you to jump, you answer, how high.
There is no reason to believe that the NSA doesn’t have the ability to access iPhones [0]. Either through explicit help from Apple or otherwise.
Tim Cook’s stance was within the fiction of constitutional order. The FBI wanted to pretend that they couldn’t access the phone and bully Apple to give them access. This is to:
1. Legitimize their own access 2. Be able to, more easily, use the courts to punish someone (instead of droning a foreigner)
That last one is important. The DEA is known to use (unconstitutional) parallel construction to prosecute drug smugglers. If they have legitimate access to your phone, it’s easier to pretend that they obtained their evidence legitimately.
Tim Cook also has an interest in maintaining the aura that iPhones protect your safety. There’s no reason for you to believe that w/out having the source.
[0] or do you believe that no one working on the iPhone has secrets that the NSA can’t leverage? Or that the richest security service can’t manufacture custom chips as needed to clone the devices SSD? Or hasn’t capped the chips in the iPhone already? Or run it through the most through fuzzer?
That doesn't seem to be the case but the narrative. There were enough leaks, document dumps, and whistleblower revelations to dismiss this narrative.
Sure, for the US having competition is a problem but sometimes the US citizen should zoom out on Maps and Google some labels they see. Literally, most of the people do not live in the USA and you can confirm that by Googling labels in the maps, things like "France", "Germany", "Turkey", "Azerbaican", "China", "Japan". You will notice that these are lands that are somewhat similar to the USA but are not the USA but using the stuff made or operated in the USA.
For people looking from that part of the world, the "Chinese are spying on us" panic is met with "Oh really, that's so bad. Poor thing" level of simphaty.
This ideation is moot if there are members of the US government on staff, committed to 'finishing the patriotic mission' of their spook-agency masters.
I mean, I suppose we could make an argument for all people being equal in all equal ways, but don't forget that the each state actor is driven by different sets of morality, politics and even philosophy, or perhaps lack of it.
The only conclusion we can derive is that this whole surveillance/spying thing will never stop, everyone does it and will continue to do it. It would be wise to assume that everything is bugged, everything has backdoors, and every hardware vendor has been compromised.
It's cute that US citizens have some spying issues and some targeted election interference issues but the sympathy is very limited because in many parts of the world they were dealing with this since ever and the USA was the culprit.
I think we are approaching a time in history where we are going to actually choose if we are human resources that are to be spied on and controlled by the political class or are we individuals.
Choosing the government or agency you are being spied on is a false choice because it assumes that you made the choice to be a human resource and you are to be exploited but you can pick your masters by fighting against your master's competitors.
The moral argument is unconvincing given what's happening in the USA with all those immigrant camps and political agenda.
Nations aren't single discrete entities, so everything from individuals to collectives of all sizes within a nation will want to align with the US or the Chinese, depending on money, politics, ideologies, etc. I personally would much rather have the NSA read my emails, not the Chinese. It may be an unfair choice, but it is a choice.
> I think we are approaching a time in history where we are going to actually choose if we are human resources that are to be spied on and controlled by the political class or are we individuals.
I don't think you are right about this bit. The oppressor/oppressed duality is never going away, because it isn't determined by some kind of social realisation that we could do better as a species. It is determined by our biology and our drive to acquire resources. That kind of change won't happen until our biology changes.
Many fights of the political elites are more and more about their personal egos than biological or natural necessities of the population they are responsible for.
Sure, there are still issues and global risks that may undo our progress but overall we are approaching a future where we are no longer depended on large political institutions but since we have these in place they will continue doing their thing and the risks will be due to fighting between those institutions.
This issue is relevant to non-US persons and countries because the USA is actively trying to prevent Huawei from doing business in these countries.
The US-centric views are so prominent on the HN that sometimes I wonder if ever anyone at the silicon valley intended to "Make the World a better place". How can you make the world a better place if you cannot recognise that a world beyond the USA exists? It's even in your statistic! Turkey or Sweden is not simply some data points, they are real countries, allies of the USA, with their own interests.
The Europeans are often accused of being anti-American but maybe that is not the case, maybe it's just that Europeans every once in a while need to protect their own interests and that is perceived as treason.
There is no reason to be so smug in explaining obvious things and assuming complete ignorance on my part.
Then it won't be so much fun.
You're almost there.
In addition to that, if you think the US government is more hostile towards its citizenry than the Chinese government is, well... Also, if you’re relying on infrastructure that the government controls for your security, then the intentions of the NSA aren’t really your biggest problem.
The part of the article before the paywall suggests former intelligence employees, not current ones.
In any case this is obviously fuzzy, but frankly this is not transparent either in the West.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2016/05/11/inside-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army
Makes the revelation that "some people working at Huawei have links to Chinese military" just so shocking. Trump's totally right we should all buy USA tech and not use Huawei for 5G. /s
When's the list for other countries being published?
When both A and B do a thing X, there are two potential logically sound conclusions: either that X is bad and both A and B are in the wrong, or that it's not and neither is. It is unsound to say that A doing X is a problem but B doing X is merely a rhetorical accusation that requires no response.
The idea actually is a valid concept in justice, but only within the realms you posted: If person A does something illegal and then tries to justify the behaviour X with "But everyone does this!", then this is not a valid argument, because either X is illegal or not.
Whataboutism as invented by the economist, though, is just rhetoric nonsense. The USSR was perfectly right in highlighting the human rights atrocities of the US in response to accusations of the US against them. That doesn't make the accusations go away, but it correctly exposes the bigotry.
"but the usa does it" is neither a justification, nor a validation, nor an exculpation. it's just finger pointing and throwing poo at each other in the hope that people, instead of condemning both, concedes the point, leveraging outrage fatigue.
there's a reason why it's considered a propaganda tool, after all.
Do you that that accusations of spying between politically rivalrous countries might possibly be untrue and instead used for leverage?
Anyway, I think it's important to look at this issue as a whole from also the viewpoint of the Chinese - to understand how the Chinese society works and why there is such strong emotional response when people start accusing China. Because I don't really have first-hand experience, I found these very interesting videos that I think are enlightening:
serpentza - How China stops Overseas Students Integrating
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uXreGimP-o
serpentza - China NEEDS an ENEMY to Survive!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg2fUGBQDMQ
The author who is from South-Africa has been living in China for some time, and how he describes his life there is quite illuminating. In short: China seems to have mastered how to create an "us vs them" culture and blatantly aggravates their citizens to move their focus away from their internal problems. Well, I know it's a little bit tangential, but I thought it was quite interesting.
Additionally, you can't just assume that emotional reactions to accusations leveled against China are all due to Chinese posters with an "us vs them" mentality. When I see accusations that are exaggerated, get the details wrong or are made up from whole cloth, I am prone to react similarly. Of course I feel the same about official party propaganda, but that doesn't tend to get posted to HN.
> 403 Forbidden: The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it.
They put me on rate limiter
Same for logged of chrome on android
But if I login then everything is fine.
I stopped using Twitter that very day
China will spy on you just as much as USA/Russia/UK/Israel/ad nauseum... if given the chance. So enjoy staring at your shiney tech and remember that any number of nation states are most likely staring back at you. Enjoy modern life.
When people's views are divided, internet readers are a million times too quick to assume that the other side is brigading, shilling, spying, astroturfing, promoting secret agendas, fifth-columning, foreign-agenting, or (this seems to be the latest favorite word) disingenuous—even when they have zero basis for thinking so. (Someone representing an opposing view is no basis for thinking so.) This is a cognitive bias. It leads people to imagine nefariousness and project it onto other users. That poisons the community—and this poison is actually the bigger problem by far. We've even seen individual users singled out for attack merely for a different point of view. In the limit case it even approaches mob behavior.
Therefore all HN users are expected to have the self-restraint to rein in this impulse, most of all on paranoia-prone topics like spies hiding things in technology, nations planting foreign agents, and all the rest of this. Yes, these are things; and internet commenters imagining them is also a thing.
Here are a few of the other explanations I've posted about this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20239719
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20199254
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19862158
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19404162
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19402447
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16632589
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532039
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage for no reason despite just recently appearing, or even being at the first position. An example from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. I really don't understand how you can deny this.
You've broken the site guidelines again with this. That's not cool. I'm not sure what to do besides repeat the explanation and links I just gave you.
> You can try to do the same with any other country, and you won't see this trend
Of course. That's the geopolitical battle of the moment. It was the same with Russia a year ago. All this shows is what controversy is hot right now.
> It's also very common for threads that are negative towards China to quickly disappear from the frontpage
Moderators routinely downweight hot controversies and political battles, as well as articles that repeat what has already been discussed recently. If we didn't, the front page would consist of nothing but that. Your mistake is in jumping to the conclusion that this has anything to do with our own political views or some secret bias about China. It does not. Our job is to protect HN from (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars. Why? Because those things kill intellectual curiosity, which is the point of this site. Everything we do as mods follows from that principle.
By the way, that last bit can be inverted to get a reliable test for moderator action on HN. If moderators do X, can you find a path from the principle of intellectual curiosity to X? If so, that's probably why we did it. If not, you can always ask us what the path is. We're happy to answer questions, but (again) as the guidelines say, it's better to send them to hn@ycombinator.com.
I would also argue that by allowing users to resort to US whataboutism then these comments break multiple rules by introducing flamewars and engaging in political battles.. which, in my opinion, result in you failing to prevent (a) mind-numbing repetition, and (b) earth-scorching flamewars.
I’m also very curious about the logic behind down-weighting this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336543. In my opinion, it’s very high quality journalism, with two journalists risking their lives to give unprecedented access to a region that’s been technologically cut off from the rest of the world. I also believe it’s the first time we saw what China did to the children of the families that had been sent to the camps.
It's unfortunately common for some users to question HN moderation as a way of challenging the mods to political or ideological duels. Our experience with that is that no matter how patiently one answers, every answer is met with a fresh flurry of litigious questions, because the purpose is not to learn but to fight. This is risky for us—it amounts to a DoS attack on the site, quickly exhausting our time and energy, stealing resources from other users and from work we might do to improve HN for everybody.
I'd be delighted to be wrong, but your comment seems to signal that you don't want to use HN as intended, which includes respecting the way it is currently moderated. So first I need a reason to believe that you actually do want that, and then I'll be happy to answer whatever you like.
I think it’s an unfair interpretation to believe that I don’t want to use HN as intended, I’m just tired of seeing every thread that’s critical of China head down the same path. You said:
> That is not at all an accurate description. This is a classic example of how people feel like the site is biased against their point of view even when it's the dominant one.
The US whataboutism is undeniable, you also acknowledged it yourself, while highlighting the same thing happened with Russian threads. I think it’s naive to believe that “all this shows is what controversy is hot right now”. Because it’s a common and effective tactic that occur on all social media, and in threads that aren’t related to China/Russia, everyone usually seem to be able to behave and stay on-topic.
As for mass flagging and quick downvotes, I can only make assumptions based on personal experience and careful observations (been using HN for over half a decade and tend to refresh the site every few minutes). You seem to blame/credit moderators for causing the threads to disappear, whereas I was under the impression it was often caused by mass flagging.. so I’m genuinely curious if flagging a thread has any effect on its position, or if it simply alert a moderator to take a closer look.
The Huawei “backdoors” everyone made a fuss about were neither worse nor better than the dozens of bugs and backdoors in every other brand that have been found over the years. Mostly typical of poor SDLC of companies that primarily do hardware not software.
Any large company is going to employ people who have served in various security services just by law of large numbers.
For stuff like Telecom you also actively need people experienced with gov security standards to help you comply with them!
Former experience with an agency can be super helpful with this. At least thats why several companies I’ve worked for (in FVEY countries) have hired from services - not so much for skills or connections but because they understand the compliance and certification processes.
Not sure if people realise there are probably 50 Word, Powerpoint and compliance jockeys for every TAO operative in those places.
I’m ok with the Huawei ban tbh but much of the press surrounding it seems bunk to me, frankly. I think I can recognise propaganda when I see it, at least when it relates to my field.
Is it so hard to believe that people not in agreement with you have actual reasons for that?
When people are saying that the US is a bad actor on the same level as China, yes, that should be extremely hard to believe for anyone with a reasonable knowledge of current events.
To explain the perspective and avoid the inevitable "you must be a shill for the CCP if you're so anti-America" accusations, I don't live in China, and choose not to, because I am very much against the actions of the CCP.
But I do live under the imperial shadow of America's decisions to usurp sovereignty and privacy around the world - I did not choose to be subject to this oppression.
I, like so many enlightened individuals who make up this community, am extremely opposed to America's usurpation of the technologies that held so much promise for peace. American hegemony over the tools of peace in order that it can maintain its power is one of the worst circumstances of the modern world.
I'd like to see ALL telecom companies swept clean of ALL repressive spooks who once served their nations intelligence agencies and can therefore never be trusted with the open communication lines of the world.
Intelligence agencies cannot, ever, be trusted by private citizens. The corruption of government begins with its secrets. That's the nature of the job, and its one of the reasons why there is a very strong motto prevalent in the spook industry: "you can never leave the company".