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Comment by okdood64 | Hacker News Reader

While I myself still wouldn't ever use DJI because of this reason, no can ever provide any concrete claim. Quite hilarious.

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What concrete claim are you looking for? Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US? Do you know the reason why it was banned? The same reason could broadly apply to every Chinese company. TikTok is the software counterpart that isn’t allowed on any government phone.

DJI does not produce infrastructure pieces so it hasn’t reached the same urgency to the US, so it’s still allowed.

at this point then NULL hypothesis should be that China is using consumer grades products to spy on its perceived enemies including the USA.

Since Snowden it's pretty clear that the USA is spying on even its citizen. I don't see how it would be surprising that China does something similar.

> Do you know the reason why it was banned?

For the infrastructure, for legit strategic reasons (without even considering they are abusing it, you generally don't want to rely on foreign infrastructure on your territory).

For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.

> For the smartphones, that's pure commercial war. Huawei was a big competitor.

Big competitor of what? There’s no popular Android phone OEM in the US. Sounds like you’re making stuff up.

To... Apple. First time I heard about a Huawei ban of smartphones was also the year where I heard that Huawei was about to sell more than Apple in the US, if I remember correctly.

Many people around me liked Huawei because they were seeing it as the Android brand that "is closest to Apple".

> Sounds like you’re making stuff up.

Don't get me wrong: I am not part of the US government and I was not part of the official decision. I'm just sharing my opinion :-).

Huawei was on a trajectory to become the biggest smartphone vendor in the world, when they were kneecapped in 2019, mostly by blocking their access to Google services (which cratered their sales outside of China).

https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/canalys-global-smartphone-m...

US vendors slept on 5G, and Huawei prepared end-to-end gear, from backend systems through antennas to handsets. This resulted in Huawei getting a lot more deployment in 5G, and triggered less than open retaliation. The handsets themselves were minor issue compared to possibility of China eating US' lunch on 5G.

Huawei was starting to be a serious player in 5G, and their handsets were eating Apple's lunch.

US understandably wants their spyware in the world's infra. The rest of the planet might not see it that black and white.

> Is it not enough that Huawei was banned by the US?

They are in an economic war and are competing about whose spyware people use. I dont see how given that you can take this as a sensible metric.

Not arguing against your main point though, your line of reasoning is just flawed. The US would have reason to behave like this even if Chinese spyware wasnt a threat.

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