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Comment by jojobas | Hacker News Reader

Assuming there isn't a hidden little core running a hidden little OS somewhere.

Yeah companies should be held guilty unless proven otherwise. Of course you can never actually prove anything, so they are all guilty by default. /s

You can't bootstrap nearly any embedded ARM SoC and run Linux without running some closed Chinese blob just to bring it up lol

And in reverse, you think Palentir has a transparent business model to trust with your data? I don't get why people find china more suspect than most of these billionaire led monopolies buying politicians and laws and spout paranoid gibberish about Christianity and anti Christ etc.

Both might be fundamentally evil or being, but they aren't different in danger based solely on how white they are.

Both can be bad at the same time

Right, but one is "white" and the other is "dark"

What about whataboutism?

And yes an American company in cahoots with the government having the ability to snoop on traffic and turn entire networks off, while bad, is nowhere near as bad as a Chinese one having the exact same capability.

The US company and the US government are 1000x more likely to leverage their position in an antagonistic way against US customers.

Their hypothetical does have weight, though. Damn near every desktop/laptop computer does have "a hidden little core running a hidden little OS" nowadays, after all.[0]

Obviously this particular one isn't in non-Intel equipment, but...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

Devices from companies under direct or implicit CCP control should indeed be considered suspect until proven otherwise. Not just them, but them much more than local ones.

Of course there is probably a hidden little os running on hidden core within the hidden hardware running the hidden os.

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