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Comment by throwaway4good | Hacker News Reader

The US campaign against Huawei and ZTE caused the 5G rollout in the west, including here in Europe, to be considerably delayed and much more expensive.

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I participated in technical due diligence for a purchase order of huawei tech back in 2011 (was lte back then). Their tech was good but there is no way in hell there isn’t some kind of trick how cheap they were compared to the europeans (there were no americans at that point since motorola was kaput). Like it was basically free. There needs to be some kind of regulation when techniques like that are being played whether it’s security or just economic concerns

Isn't it obvious why it's so much cheaper? Their pricing for market share and cutting costs wherever they can in terms of labour conditions.

I don't see how spending many billions on R&D to develop the most intricately hidden backdoors in human history (that no one has been able to offer proof for) and eating that cost to deploy them when it will all become worthless the moment the first one is detected, makes any sense at all.

I’ve been to their headquarters in Shenzhen it certainly didn’t look like much was being saved on r&d… I’d say much likely explanation is either aggressive government subsidy to price out competition with maybe some mix of wielding political blackmail later on (a la what US is doing with its chip restrictions rn)

I don't see what they could possibly gain, all it would take is for one genuine case of a backdoor to be confirmed and then all that investment would be nearly worthless.

People used to say same exact thing about russian gas

How does Russian gas relate to the fear of backdoors?

Reliance for critical infrastructure on a geopolitical enemy.

Historians often site “The Great Illusion” which was written in 1909 and predicted there would be no more major or prolonged wars due to the new global and interconnected economy. Clearly that was wrong and yet the same argument keeps being made with regard to China.

China has made it clear they consider “the West” as an enemy. We should not trust any infrastructure to them.

I still don't see a logical relation with my previous comment:

"I don't see what they could possibly gain, all it would take is for one genuine case of a backdoor to be confirmed and then all that investment would be nearly worthless."

And your previous comment: "People used to say same exact thing about russian gas"

I'm struggling to find any analogous situation to a single verified breech of trust destroying billions of investments in the gas sector of Russia.

One shipment of contaminated gas (?) is not going to have any major effects on the gas trade.

> I'm struggling to find any analogous situation to a single verified breech of trust destroying billions of investments in the gas sector of Russia.

Struggle no longer - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kremlin-says-gazprom...

This did not affect the total amount of gas purchased from Russia. Even looking at just EU-Russia trade volumes, there wasn't a huge drop right after this happened.

A commodity business with high transportation costs has different dynamics then from the electronics industry.

"western" tech is made in the same factories.

You mean the ones in the country of Taiwan?

How expensive do you think it would be allowing an entity infamous for intellectual property theft, to have unfettered access to the teleco networks of the countries that they themselves say are their greatest enemies?

Yes, imported Russian nat gas is way cheaper. Until it isn't.

First I don't really think your premise is correct and second we are capable of keeping our networks secure even if a cable or a base station is made by a Chinese company.

Why do you think the premise is incorrect?

I worked in tele for a couple of years; the reason Huawei and ZTE got ahead in 5G was that they invested heavily at time when Nokia and Ericsson were focused on cutting cost.

That was only half the premise, the other half was

> unfettered access to the teleco networks of the countries that they themselves say are their greatest enemies?

Regardless of how they got their tech, that premise is the reason for blocking them.

As for the "unfettered access" stuff; a telco, or at least the one I worked at, doesn't really work like that. We buy products and engineering services from our suppliers but we run our own network, and if we did outsource operations, those engineers would sit on premise and the whole thing would be under our control.

> the whole thing would be under our control.

Pans to black. “The whole thing was not under their control”. Cue “aways sunny in Philadelphia” theme

Your argument doesn’t make any sense from a risk containment standpoint.

This is not true at all. If anything they had to tighten their belts to compete with the price dumping Huawei and ZTE were engaging in.

> we are capable of keeping our networks secure even if a cable or a base station is made by a Chinese company.

Not if war breaks out. If that happens, maintenance and support channels will be weaponized and/or sanctioned.

These companies are famous for price dumping as well. This ban is a good thing

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