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Comment by yifanlu | Hacker News Reader

Yeah it’s 2021 and Chinese manufactured are more reliable and higher quality than anything American made. As an anecdote I build PCBs for a hobby and I’ve purchased PCBs and chips from both cheap Chinese fabs and suppliers as well as Americans ones. The only issues I’ve ever had were with American ones (which were many times more expensive) and I’ve stopped using them completely.

I would be curious if librem will ever release data regarding failure rates of their American made phones versus non-American made ones. But considering how they’re branding this and the kind of person who will spend the premium to buy it, I doubt they will ever say anything.

Also after the Snowden revelations, I laugh at the idea that American made products are somehow more “secure”. Sure we (as in US intelligence community) think China puts back doors in things but from the Snowden revelations we KNOW that American companies like Cisco puts backdoor into things.

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It crushed me last year when we ordered extrusion/machine work samples (a lot of 10 pieces) from a major American brand and some from "Ricky" a Chinese machine shop connect one of the guys here heard of through doing other parts sourcing in China.

The Chinese ones were better machined, had no issues, and were 1/3 the price. I weep for American manufacturing.

Even assuming that all hardware is backdoored, it can still make sense to use hardware from your own country, since your own government probably doesn’t want to harm its own economic interests.

On the other hand, your own state has more of an incentive to control your behaviour.

As with everything else, think through the threat model.

I’m more worried about the other state understanding the topology of my state in higher resolution than my own state does. The ramifications are endless, and I believe that to be the more grave threat (aka undermine society at its cultural fabric while stealing/undermining the economy and crippling the military).

Sure, arrive at your own conclusions :)

Has it ever been proven that China backdoored circuits?

> Also after the Snowden revelations, I laugh at the idea that American made products are somehow more “secure”.

Be that may, but as a US person I’d rather have US intelligence snooping on me than a foreign hostile entity. There are no ifs and buts about it. For folks in other countries, I leave it to them if they are more comfortable with a democracy, with relatively good relations with most countries in the world, snooping on them or a communist regime, which has issues with each and every one of its neighbors.

Not good advice if you're American as your own government can always hurt you most.

China is not communist, nor do I trust the US more than them. Both countries are countries I have no respect for.

Which of the two countries has more invasions, coups and occupations in its history? Which one is still occupying several countries and has military bases in many others?

It’s the US the rest of us fear, with good reason.

The error here is the assumption that only foreign entities are hostile. A "foreign hostile entity" may have lots of information and malicious intent, but they lack legal jurisdiction and the ability to take open, direct action where I live. The most worrisome threat is that they manage to uncover a common interest with some domestic entity and share what they learned—and from that perspective domestic snooping just cuts out the middleman. I'd rather keep the entities doing the snooping and the ones with influence over me as widely separated as possible.

Is it your hobby/part time job to defend China and dump on the USA? Just curious, looking back through your comment history and all.

If you had actually looked back through my comment history you would have seen that I never defended China or claimed that the USA was worse. I am not a fan of governments in general but I will freely acknowledge that the US government is far from the worst example. My comment was purely about domestic snooping vs. foreign from the perspective of the one being spied upon—if one lives in China the roles will obviously be reversed, and in that case one should prefer a foreign entity like the USA gathering intel over the domestic Chinese equivalents. Either could wish you ill but the domestic power will almost always be the more immediate threat. (Not being spied upon at all would be ideal, of course.)

The foreign entity isn't interested in you. They're interested in you to get to your state.

Your state is only interested in you. If they snoop on you they're after you personally.

Foreign entities seek to use info on civilians for malicious targeting ops. This is an example of why the OPM hack[1] was so devastating.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Manageme...

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