It's hard for my brain to accept that the US literally bans its citizens from selling equipment containing chips from Huawei. You can't even sell them for reverse-engineering or hobby purposes.
The debug messages even still said Cisco. It was ridiculous.
And for what it's worth, they were network switches/routers, not servers. Cisco didn't make 'servers' back in the day.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2674627/3com-huawei-joint-...
Huawei vs Nortel (Canada) is a far more interesting story.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco#1984%E2%80%931995:_Origi...
>On July 11, 1986, Bosack and Lougheed were forced to resign from Stanford and the university contemplated filing criminal complaints against Cisco and its founders for the theft of its software, hardware designs, and other intellectual properties.[15]
Presumably Stanford eventually figured out that it was a tech incubator.
> The way royalties work, a third goes to the school, a third goes to the department and a third goes to the inventor. I gave my third back to my department because essentially all of this stuff is born out of a great research environment.
Presumably most of the royalties came from Cisco. Cisco's founders would certainly have known that Stanford owned the hardware design and software, as well as any copyrights or patents, and that licensing would be required.
It sounds like Yeager's biggest complaint was that Cisco didn't give him (and Bechtolsheim) credit for their work.
This isn't just the US either. I would say the vast majority of countries have comprehensive import laws.
> Militarized encryption equipment, TEMPEST-approved electronics, custom cryptographic software, and even cryptographic consulting services still require an export license[9](pp. 6–7). Furthermore, encryption registration with the BIS is required for the export of "mass market encryption commodities, software and components with encryption exceeding 64 bits" (75 FR 36494). In addition, other items require a one-time review by, or notification to, BIS prior to export to most countries.[9] For instance, the BIS must be notified before open-source cryptographic software is made publicly available on the Internet, though no review is required.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
The US has existed in a state of national security paranoia for a long time.
e.g.congress from both parties have what feels to me like extreme conflicts of interest when dominating the stock market (handily beating out every hedge fund returns across many congress members). It's like sports players being able to bet on the outcome of their own game, when they are almost capable of guaranteeing a certain outcome.
2. I’m unaware of an instance where huawei was used to attack the US.
1. https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/30/huawei-china-business-r... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei#Espionage_...
https://aragonresearch.com/cyber-war-flashback-the-huawei-ha...
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/14/22834860/huawei-leaked-d...
At least according to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel#Accounting_restatements ), Nortel had some epic accounting issues long before the hacks (of both Nortel & Cisco) which your source claims. Cisco is still around.
Perhaps Nortel self-destructed, with no more help from Haiwei than Enron or Bernie Madoff needed, and it feels better to blame Dark Lord China for Bad_Thing happening?
Whatever other issues Nortel had, the theft of their IP, internal communications, and strategic plans certainly didn't help.