The Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America’s Assets | Hacker News Reader

The Expansion of the Clean Network to Safeguard America’s Assets

state.gov

120 pointsPatrolX77 comments

Restricting communication with China isn’t just a restriction on China, but on Americans. These laws prevent Americans from freely associating.

You see the same spin with immigration and trade restrictions. They are in fact a restriction of Americans’ freedom to trade and associate, but are always presented from the other angle (as a restriction on foreigners).

A lot of the investigative journalism that goes on these days often involves people just looking at the traces left out in the open on public websites. Think of how much of what we know of the regional suppression programs in Xinjiang comes from volunteers looking at government requests for contractors and the like. A world without a shared internet is a world where Human rights abuses can carry on unobserved.

When I (EU citizen) was on holliday in Cuba, I met a woman from US who had to do some special things to be able to visit that country as a tourist. She tried to make sure the US didn't know about it. "Freedom" is very relative indeed.

From a position external to both China and the US, it's really hard to see a meaningful difference between the vague propaganda and doublespeak in this announcement and the same kind of announcements from the CCP.

That's because there isn't any.

I don't think this is propaganda or doublespeak. It's an escalation of the trade war with China by threatining to ban PRC participation in the U.S. economy--basically what they're threatening to do to TikTok except across several areas of the economy.

A funny coincidence: The "Clean Network" was literally the exact same as "净网" campaigns in China which CCP unleash fierce crackdown on media and Internet to purge unwelcome content.

Or is it a name to troll CCP?

This is incredibly vague. Is this a proposal for some kind of standard or protocol? It says that "many of the world’s biggest telecommunications companies are Clean Telcos", so whatever it is it can't be that difficult to achieve.

Is someone familiar enough with this to provide a source that discusses what "Clean Carrier/Telco/Store/etc" entails technically?

> PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation.

It's hard to discern propaganda from the attempt to fight it nowadays, or maybe there never was a difference in the first place.

"clean" is a very interesting choice of word

"clean" because not connected to the "dirty" Chinese is pretty blatant.

This isn't about technology, it's about organizations and vendors. It's saying that PRC carriers may not connect directly to US telecommunications networks; that PRC apps cannot be available in app stores selling to US customers; that PRC smartphone manufacturers may not bypass the restriction on stores by selling phones to Americans with PRC apps pre-installed; that US cloud properties must be accessible to PRC companies; and that undersea cables aren't tapped by PRC intelligence agencies.

It's not about technology, it's about a business qualification for US telecoms and technology companies like Apple and Amazon. If they meet these standards, they're part of the "clean network" (which is just ugly obvious racism).

As a practical matter, this is dubious because there's hundreds of ways around these requirements bureaucratically. The value of this is the threat to China, that specific examples like TikTok can be chosen and banned; or that third parties like European businesses might move away from China to avoid jeopardizing U.S. business. This is just another front in the trade war.

I don’t see how the use of the word clean is racist. It is obviously playing to disgust sensitivity [interestingly, authoritarianism rises in the presence of infectious disease] but it isn’t obvious that ‘clean’ any more refers to ethnicities than it does to political, teleological or ideological world views.

What makes one "clean" or a member of the "clean network"? No contact with the Chinese. Subtle distinctions in what "Chinese" might refer to are polite rationalizations to excuse the plain reading, which is the level at which the insinuation works.

Ah, I see the gist of your point. I wonder if this Clean distinction allows connection with Hong Kong or other Chinese but not-exactly-PRC groups.

The information provided on the site is vague, but based on my reading I don't see why it would restrict connection to any entity other than the PRC and their allies. So Hong Kong might be tricky in the current geopolitical climate, but there are many US-aligned countries which are majority ethnically Chinese such as Taiwan and Singapore. I see no indication this would restrict connection to those countries.

This is very explicitly not racist in its goal, even if it also a bad idea for other reasons. This has nothing to do with Chinese people as a race/ethnicity and everything to do with the behavior of the PRC/CCP government and state run corporations.

I am not defending this policy, but I think calling it racist is absurd.

Hong Kong is over. After Beijing's power grab earlier this year Executive Order 13936 removed differential treatment for Hong Kong under a variety of US laws. The US has already blocked turning on a new cable to Hong Kong.

Your first paragraph seems accurate. I think this move represents a failure of the spiritual goals of the Internet to provide standardized interconnection between networks globally, so I don't approve of the move. That said, I think you are far too casually throwing out the term "racist" in your comments here and elsewhere in the thread.

There are blatant, obvious actions that the CCP has taken or sponsored which have negatively impacted the security and privacy of people who are not citizens of China and data sovereignty is not a foreign concept. That's not even counting the more subtle things that we don't hear about in the news. So I think assigning "racism" as a motivation is naive and looking for an easy criticism rather than trying to intellectually wrestle with the very real complication of having standardized globally interconnected communication networks while at the same time having geopolitical conflicts (and all of the things which stem from that).

Well, another goal of the internet was to have a network without central coordinators that can continue to function even if parts of it went offline, say in a nuclear attack. This has no problem facilitating the global internet splintering into many smaller networks. Just goes to show how amazing the design of the IP protocol really is.

> which is just ugly obvious racism

This is Chinese as in China, not Chinese as in the race/ethnicity.

If they meant to demonize all people of Chinese descent, I would agree, but that isn't the case. This isn't targeted at Singapore, Taiwan, or any other country that might have a significant ethnic Chinese population.

It's nationalism, plain and simple. Still not great, but it's not what you demonize it for being.

Also, how does this impact countries outside the US that have significant interactions with it like Canada or Mexico? Will their telco carriers have to remove all Huawei equipment before connecting to US telco networks to provide roaming services? Do cellphones coming in from those countries have to be scanned to ensure no blacklisted apps are installed?

I think that's what's implied in

> Momentum for the Clean Network program is growing. More than thirty countries and territories are now Clean Countries, and many of the world’s biggest telecommunications companies are Clean Telcos. All have committed to exclusively using trusted vendors in their Clean Networks.

Seems like the idea is to form a network that's "clean" of PRC influence.

soon there will no longer be the one internet. There will internet one for the USA and the "west", internet two for China and the "east" internet.

and maybe a third type of internet for some countries which connects two both Internets (but maybe only one at a time?)

so we'll have first internet countries (USA), second internet countries (China), and third internet countries (both)

Yeah read/saw that somewhere...

> we'll have first internet countries (USA), second internet countries (China), and third internet countries (both)

This does not seem to be limited to network connectivity. The same balkanization is occurring with trade, movement of people, and defence spending as well. I would also say that its not as discrete as “USA”, “China”, “other” and is probably better expressed as “US aligned” when you start looking at nations who are already members of groups like N Eyes, EEA, Belt & Road, etc.

Im particularly interested in India. Will they be successful enough to create their own sphere, fall into US influence, or defacto continue as a large unaligned “other.”

You're describing the Cold War-era First World (US-aligned countries), Second World (socialist countries), and Third World (unaligned countries).

I understand the parallels. I was trying to prod gp that it extends to dimensions beyond “internet” and they seem to be trending in the same direction.

I do disagree that the old First/Second/Third characterizations are directly applicable. It looks to be more multipolar. The interesting points to me are, roughly, EU federalism/integration/defense, how closely/how many N Eyes will cluster with the US, and which “BRICS” will be large enough to stand on their own or even pull small “others” in to their sphere of influence. We’re not just swapping PRC for USSR.

My guess is, roughly, sustainable alignments to the US, EU, and China. Sufficiently independent & influential states of India and Russia. Brazil & South Africa I dont really see them developing their own sphere nor being large enough to sustain independent major economic development along the lines of Hauwei, Airbus, TSMC, Qualcomm, Boeing, etc.

That’s already the case. You have at least China’s Internet, Russia’s Internet, France is discussing ways to do the same, Australia seems to want to do it too, Thailand did some experiments a few years ago, etc.

Yet, no one seems to care what is unloaded from the ship docks, literally a "Port" where 98% of the goods are manufactured in one country including the entire supply chain that spans behind those goods.

That's debatable.

On Intellectual Property Rights alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has this to stay about seizures, arrests, and convictions in 2019 alone:

US$1.5 billion 256 arrests and 197 convictions

https://www.cbp.gov/trade/priority-issues/ipr/statistics

Not talking about IP problems, just the sheer number of things around you that are made in China are imported into the country.

Right, yeah, pretty much everything is made in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Bangladesh.

And Indonesia, as an Australian I notice that quite a bit.

I dunno, they all seem to be fairly reasonable people, the one's I've met.

Hard.

It's unlikely my craftsman plumbers wrench is going to exfiltrate my personal data off my private home network.

And all the tools that make those goods and the IP behind them is owned by the US. Stuff like semiconductor equipment, CPU designs, and electronic design automation software, and China has to pay license fees every time it uses them to manufacture a product. China is desperately trying to achieve technology independence because it knows that it has few comparable replacements if the US decided to completely close access to its technology tomorrow. It's not impossible to move manufacturing out of China. After all, it's already been done once before when it moved out of the US. However, it's not proven that China can reach technological independence. Japan and South Korea were able to make the jump to high tech industries but they're still very tied to US technologies.

However, a better indicator of who has the technology lead than commercial applications in my opinion is if China can replicate US military technology, for example build an equivalent or better to the F35.

The US can't build the F35 either, considering all the cost overruns, delays, basic issues found late in the project.

> soon there will no longer be the one internet. There will internet one for the USA and the "west", internet two for China and the "east" internet.

Soon? How about years ago. The Great Firewall already accomplishes what you describe. You can't use Google in China, and you wouldn't want to use Baidu's censored search in the US.

As a US Citizen on the West Coast, my unadvertised research servers have been harassed by PRC IPs and others, without fail, for a decade+. I am not at all associated with the US Federal Government, and do not practice partisan politics.

All I know is, I have done nothing myself to PRC China, yet my basic linux and BSD setups are daily refusing all kinds of stupid and smart hack attacks via the Internet from that address range.

Just curious, why do you assume it's the "PRC China" that's attacking your boxes instead of just some random Chinese high schooler?

Just curious, why do you assume it's the "PRC China" that's attacking your boxes instead of just some botnets happened to have tons of Chinese IPs?

There are many old computers in China that have not security upgrades, so there may be a large botnet. Chinese IP does not mean that the attack come from China.

As a non US Citizen, not living on US soil, my unadvertised research servers have been harassed by, well, everyone, including US servers for years as well. C'est la vie.

eg. I set up a new domain a few days ago & within a short period of time, the first two IP's to run sniffers on it were US based (Arizona and Illinois, IIRC).

eg. A server I set up a few months back was getting hammered on an alternate SSH port, primarily by US servers. (Admittedly, there was a mis-configuration on my part which had the port responding to anyone but me in the first place)

Pot. Kettle. Black.

As time progresses, the ongoing war of of 'openness' vs 'sovereign rights' when it comes to the internet has only escalated, and will obviously continue.

Mr Trump's decision has clearly favoured the Chinese method of 'sovereign rights': countries and regional zones will be increasingly demanding dominance of their feifdom (such as GDPR vs Chinese wall vs Australian AAA "Assistance & Access Act" vs California's CCPA).

How should tech respond? It's either the web should be un-splittable, or infinitely splittable. We all know it's 'self healing'... but only to the limit that state level access allows it.

Some would say the easiest solution would be a de-escalation of the network centralisation that the web has: AWS, GC, Cloudflare, FB, Twitter. But, the (ironic) concept of "federation" that exists (Mastodon, NextCloud), only makes a single server cluster easier to be sliced off.

Either way, a single voice can be cut off by state level/mega corporate, whether it be a centralised system or federated, far too easily.

That even Mr Trump is getting tweets and FB posts 'moderated' is a sign that centralisation by corporations is definitely a problem.

Time to get a VPN if you want to communicate across the Great Firewall of America.

Curious about the downvotes. Do people believe that this curtailment of freedom can't happen in America? I know people already rushing to prepare for it.

Or perhaps they believe that it will happen, but that it's a good thing?

Or perhaps, as is increasingly common, they believe both simultaneously: "China's firewall restricts freedom; our copy of it promotes freedom."

> "China's firewall restricts freedom; our copy of it promotes freedom."

Sadly, I think there are a lot of people who would believe that.

Sort of the difference between a wall that keeps you in versus a wall that keeps unwelcome people out. But then again, some people believe that the us-mexico border wall is morally equivalent to the Berlin Wall, so who knows how that argument will go.

> Sort of the difference between a wall that keeps you in versus a wall that keeps unwelcome people out.

And how do you think the Chinese state describes the Chinese firewall?

I don't know, but it is clear that the Chinese firewall is about preventing Chinese people from accessing the wider internet, not about preventing non-chinese people from accessing the Chinese internet.

> the Chinese firewall is about preventing Chinese people from accessing the wider internet

It's not, really. Most of the "wider Internet" is accessible, only specific (mostly US or politically-oriented) properties are inaccessible. Very much like what is being planned in the US.

spot on

I hate the name, even the colonial imperialist associations with Cyber Monroe Doctrine sound more diplomatic than Clean Network. This literally sounds like an intellectual purge. Maybe because it is. This is a very purge-y purge name for a purge.

I guess we've officially thrown our hat into the ring for digital sovereignty and cyberpopulism. I wanted some decentralization but not like this.

I'm just upset that China gets Great Firewall and Russia gets Digital Iron Curtain and we get... Clean Network.

Is it too much to ask that we at least have better marketing for our authoritarianism?

Also, seems like a dated understanding. What happens when the Internet reaches comparable availability via satellite? No wonder they want to test shooting missiles in orbit.

With EARN-IT, the H1-B ban, Clean Network, etc., I fear we're setting back our scientific and intellectual advantage several generations. The lessons of the Crypto Wars feel distinctly appropriate.

I'm certainly starting to feel the wind blow a certain direction. Only the paranoid survive.

The name is very likely a play on China's "净网行动" (literally translate to: a campaign to cleanse the Internet).

Unfortunately there's no much English reference for it, but https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/%E6%89%AB%E9%BB%84%E6%89%93... is a Wiki page in Chinese.

The name is an obviously racist play on the word "clean", because what makes something clean is no contact with the "dirty" Chinese. The Trump administration is not as literate as you suggest.

"clean net 2014" mainly cleans up pornographic content.

No, it's a way to censor a lot of websites or push them to self-censor their content.

There are multiple waves of "Campaign to cleanse the Internet". The linked wiki page is for 2014 and the latest one is in 2020: http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2020-04/11/content_5501287.htm

I don't deny that "clean net" is pushing self-censorship.

I just want to point out that Pompeo’s goal of cleaning up a country can easily extend to ethnic groups, which seems to be a sign of fascism.

Satellite networks will always have lower data rates and latency than terrestrial networks from the extra complications of wirelessly sending signals thousands of kilometers into orbit and back. Even if you have global satellite access, the increased network demands from new applications like virtual reality, conferencing, and other uses we haven't thought of will naturally gravitate towards terrestrial networks. You'll have a fast terrestrial network that most people use in their everyday lives, and a slow satellite network used by people with special requirements. That's not all that different from how it works today with China's firewall, with most people content to live their daily lives inside and only a few putting in the effort to set up a VPN with lower network performance. You don't need to put up a 100% effective filter, just one that's annoying enough to get around that most people don't bother.

LEO networks will have much better latency and throughput, at least good enough for video conferencing.

Welcome to the decline of the American empire. The ruling class is vainly attempting to preserve what it has by lashing out, but it's not even strong enough to do so militarily so it does pathetic moves like this. 70-80 years ago (pre-nuclear China) they probably would have just invaded and tried to reestablish 1880s colonial rule. I'm glad that the preeminent imperialist of the world is losing steam.

Why aren’t there lines of effort for hardware manufacturing processes, firmware and logistical supply chains?

This is where the focus should be. The entire world has put all eggs in one nest. That's just asking for trouble.

There are, especially when you look at the DOD/IC side of things. A lot of effort is being put into trying to reduce the risk of a a nontrusted or malicious supply chain (which ranges from issues like counterfeit FPGAs to hardware shipped with nefarious firmware)

> Clean Carrier: To ensure untrusted People’s Republic of China (PRC) carriers are not connected with U.S. telecommunications networks. Such companies pose a danger to U.S. national security and should not provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States.

I hope this doesn't affect international roaming while in the PRC, which tunnels all your traffic through your home country. That's how I get around the firewall when I'm there.

China blocks and keeps out US companies like Google, so not really that surprised. If they can't use Google, why should we use TikTok? But on the other hand this does seem a bit concerning, the cool thing about the internet is it connects the world, someone in the US could be friends with someone in the Netherlands and even collaborate on projects and stuff using Github, etc. So if blocking off China is ok instead of building more secure systems, wonder if this is a step down the wrong path? First China, who's next?

But I've already found this stuff is strange, like a Android Phone manufactured in China can't even go to Google's website unless you ship the phone out of China or VPN etc yet Google makes Android...

I think it'd be cool to have fully automated factories, just pour in raw materials and new phones pop out. Could even have mini factories closer to where you are selling them too. I do think all the processors or other component being made overseas for critical systems could also be a weakness.

I’d like to see some evidence of 5G being actually cleanable. See for example https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/24/new-4g-5g-security-flaws/

As long as it did not contain equipment from specific foreign firm or countries, that's the standard. Brought to you from the proponent to outlaw encryption, what other evidence do you expect.

I am caught in a difficult position. On one hand, I think this is BS and its political, not about security. On the other hand, fuck the CCP (democracy, treatment of minorities, HK, Coronavirus, war with India, South China Seas BS, what's not to hate?).

"To remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores." What is trusted?

Anyone part of the republican party donor association.

For a moment I can't tell whether this is a state department's press release or a comment below Bill Gates' instagram post.

Is this another way to attract the public's attention? I mean, I am very curious about why there is nobody even cares about the coronavirus any more. All of them are focusing on some "ethereal" problems. And just let the city down, let the people die.

Why there is no further national-wide action? Trump is always asking for re-opening, asking the school to re-open, asking the community to re-open. Well, I understand that is good/essential for the economy. But the question is, how? Maybe you don't believe, there are around 5M infected people in the US, which means for every 100 people, there is one who is/was infected.

And the even more ridiculous thing is, this number is still rocketing, no sign to stop. Every day, I can see many homeless, they don't have to be homeless, but the country is still sick, they have no choice.

I really hope there could be one day that we can back to normal days. The sun, the flowers, the people.

Are Trump and Pompeo building a great firewall of censorship the same as China's "great" firewall?

Keep the internet open. Don't be like China.

Spyware from CHINA will not be tolerated. However if the apps are spyware from Russia (who have already attacked our electoral systems directly and successfully), hey take what you want!

Trump's building a Firewall

Here goes Fiber Curtain

I am puzzled. Was the Prism project clean or dirty?

If they called it "Dim Some Networks", do you think the US could make a billion people laugh at the same time?

The Internet has been the best version of Dim Sum for a hungry mind, so its a shame possesive cultures ruined it for themselves...

Appreciate the DV`s :)

Some jokes never get old [0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_finger_trap

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