It's pretty absurd to both sides something like this. Do you have evidence that the US government is doing this on computers it sells overseas, or is this just magical speculation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Systems#Firewall_backdoo...
"A document included in the trove of National Security Agency files released with Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) unit and other NSA employees intercept servers, routers and other network gear being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert firmware onto them before they are delivered. These Trojan horse systems were described by an NSA manager as being "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they pre-position access points into hard target networks around the world."
So call that educated magical speculation.
I don't even see why it's controversial to hold this opinion. Reading some comments, people seems to feel offended we could think that from the USA.
If anything, the USA are, with Russia and China, among the countries anybody in Europe like me would suspect the most about pulling things like this. The CIA and NSA have a terrible reputation, and the track record to support it.
We are talking about a country that went to war while lying about WMD against the UN vote, made money with south american cocaine while organizing coup after coup, elected Bush and Trump yet punished Chelsea Manning. A country that is still under the temporary 9/11 Patriot act, it used to mass spy on its entire population.
Of course I'm assuming the worse from them.
And yes, it's fair.
Actually, even if I were proven to be completely wrong in 10 years, it still would have been fair.
But I'm not even assuming that only from the US, but basically from any gov, including mine. Because history taught us that's what power does.
It's sane to be suspicious of people in power. Necessary for democracy, even.
Not the point.
The point of my comment is: I assume any gov to have such backdoor if they can.
That's a hand-wavy redirection that isn't relevant to the issue at hand, which is that:
There is no evidence of the US (and, in fact, many other large countries, with exceptions for e.g. Israel) installing backdoors and breaking into computers in order to steal intellectual property.
There is ample evidence of China doing exactly that, against a variety of targets (not just the US - they've taken things from Japan and the EU, among many others).
I wouldn't be surprised if every nation with a functioning Internet connection tries to put the hac on whatever they can.
But that's not the topic under discussions - the topic is stealing and commercializing IP, for which there is tons of evidence for China doing, and accusations of e.g. the Five-Eyes doing it are rampant speculation with absolutely no evidence included.
Yes, that includes your comment.
Which it is.
I find China is useful as a mirror to the US. If they are doing something problematic, it's highly likely the US gov is too but just hasn't disclosed it to the public.
You think the US is engaging in systematic genocide? I'm guessing not. If so, you should consider why you would say something so ridiculously out of step with reality.
Sure, China is worse, but it does make a useful mirror. Like Russia was a useful one during the cold war.
> Operation Rubicon (German: Operation Rubikon), until the late 1980s called Operation Thesaurus, was a secret operation by the West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), lasting from 1970 to 1993 and 2018, respectively, to gather communication intelligence of encrypted government communications of other countries.[1][2] This was accomplished through the sale of manipulated encryption technology (CX-52) from Swiss-based Crypto AG, which was secretly owned and influenced by the two services from 1970 onwards.[1] In a comprehensive CIA historical account of the operation leaked in early 2020, it was referred to as the "intelligence coup of the century" in a Washington Post article.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-p...
I'm a Brazilian, the NSA has been caught breaking Microsoft products on our largest companies for industrial spying too.