Huawei, Huawei. Huawei, Huawei. Feeling hot, hot, hot: US threatens to cut UK from intel sharing over Chinese tech giant Fallout over a leaked decision by the UK government to allow equipment from Chinese manufacturer Huawei into Britain's "non-core" 5G networks has continued into a second week. On Monday, deputy assistant secretary at the US State Department Robert Strayer told the press that as far as America was concerned there is no …
Nope.
There is a real reason why the US is doing this.
And in terms of 'inferior'.. tell me what is 5G these days? I mean 5G as in 5G 5GE etc...
Sort of like buying those wireless routers who claimed to be compliant to an IEEE spec, but the spec itself wasn't yet finalized. They used an earlier release that was almost approved but not yet approved.
Well, what we can say is that there might be a real reason why the US is doing this.
The Chinese government (along with many others) spend a lot of time and effort trying to hack into useful governments' and companies' computers to either get intel, IP or info on dissidents. And so it's not unreasonable to think that Huawei might be a risk in helping them to do this.
The UK government and intel services supposedly have a handle on this, as they set up that lab in Blighty to look at Huawei's code and hardware and see if ti was on the level or not. Though I've no idea how well that works.
So there's been talk of this as a national security worry for at least a decade - which predates Trumpy-wumpy and his "easily winnable" trade wars.
The Chinese government (along with many others) spend a lot of time and effort trying to hack into useful governments' and companies' computers to either get intel, IP or info on dissidents. And so it's not unreasonable to think that Huawei might be a risk in helping them to do this.
The last sentence of that is where it all comes off the rails. Huawei has offered access to its gear and the code, and has gone through several rounds of evaluation. Efforts, one notes, that US gear has as yet not been exposed to, and I for one would like to know why because unevaluated kit IS the risk, irrespective of origin. The Americans should not get a free pass here.
Rewinding a bit, it is also worth noting that the US government has infested the planet with offspring from its various agencies and even has a global intercept capability already in place called Echelon - so that is OK then? Who controls that? The UK is not even first recipient of the intel gathered at Menwith Hill, so I'd turn the tables on these idiots: if they don't want to share intel, that's fine. We'll just pull the plug at Menwith Hill and other places where we have this rather one sided agreement to "share".
Last but not least, a number of development have shown that US itself has cause to gear up intercept and spy activities on China, because China now has IP itself that *severely* threatens US control of the global economy and in a brutally ironic twist, the Americans will have no option but to try and obtain it through spying as licensing that IP would be politically unacceptable. That's why I absolutely do not trust the US arguments: too light on facts, too heavy on hidden agendas. Ditto for the whole Kaspersky charade - the one vendor who has throughout its entire existence consistently refused to whitelist government spyware. That cannot be a coincidence.
This also has other impacts. I am dealing with a number of people who have put a hard stop on any investment that has linkage with the US in physical location, company or funds - they will brook none of that in their projects. The arguments are financial, legal, political and indeed the protection of IP.
Don't trust the Chinese, don't trust the Americans. Trust facts.
"Don't trust the Chinese, don't trust the Americans. Trust facts."
Exactly. I was waiting for someone to say this. I would go further though and say "Don't trust anyone". Sometimes, I don't even trust yourself and will 'devil's advocate' my own judgements and rationale.
There is a real reason why the US is doing this.
Probably the same reason the US doesn't like Nordstream 2 (and is sanctioning German companies building it and also is strongly suggesting US gas as a substitute) and also wants all NATO members to up their defence spending (and, by the way, the US offers advantageous loans for defence procurement contracts).
Loads of governments object to Nordstream 2. As it's Germany's way of saying "I'm alright Jack!" to it's supposed allies, while setting up to bypass Ukraine and Eastern Europe for its gas supplies. This was how Germany still got gas ten years ago, when Russia cut off Ukraine's access to gas in Winter, in order to blackmail them into renewing the lease on the Crimean bases subsequently used to invade their country. The side-effects of this hit countries like Poland rather hard, because their gas also came via the Ukraine pipeline - the question being whether Russia would have acted the same way if it would have had to cut off Germany in order to get the upper hand in those negotiations.
Now the EU has since sorted out its energy market rather better, and there are interconnects in the gas network going both ways. But the Germans have still failed to explain how this isn't going to end up with Russia trying to bankrupt Ukraine, and sending all its gas via Germany now. To the short term advantage of German business perhaps, but probably to the long term strategic disadvantage of all of Europe.
Even the European Commission is somewhere between against and ambivalent to Nordstream 2.
Really? So we're "objecting" to a supplier deciding which route they're going to take to deliver a product to their customers?
Look at this rationally. The old pipeline delivered gas to Western Europe via Ukraine. Ukraine is now actively hostile to Russia, for obvious reasons. Therefore it's a risk for Russia to route their gas through a hostile country. Ergo, they're building a new pipeline which goes around the potential problem.
So, we (as the West) are objecting to Russia avoiding sending their gas through Ukraine, to the point of threatening sanctions against the companies involved. Pardon? This is a bit like objecting when a country reroutes its shipping to avoid a potential trouble spot - would it be rational to impose sanctions on a country/companies for doing that? What's the rationale here?
As for "Russia trying to bankrupt Ukraine" - yes well maybe they'd like to, but a country is under no obligations to sell anything to another. So are we saying that Russia should be forced to sell gas to Ukraine? And meanwhile saying to Iran that it's not allowed to sell its oil to anyone (of course we wouldn't be trying to bankrupt Iran...)? So is selling stuff good or bad then???
I honestly don't know how much of this is A) a genuine concern that Huawei's products are actual security/espionage risks and B) let's stick it to China as a part of the Trump Administration's efforts to get China to reform it's trade policies.
I can accept that the risk that there may be a backdoor in Huawei gear is a monumentally serious downside, and that it is hard to completely ignore that possibility in this post-Snowden age. However, when you consider the commercial motives for the U.S. to go after Huawei, then the whole thing turns into this important-yet-shabby exercise.
I agree with that - I'd be very surprised if the US thinks that it goes both ways. I would expect that the UK would be told that the US will still be getting everything as per the five eyes and UKUSA agreements, but won't be getting anything in return and woe betide the UK government if it even looks like thinking about doing the same.
Go right on ahead and review. Cut yourselves off, I dare you. I am sick and tired of all the sharing that you have going on anyway. Let's stop sharing, let's stop handing over every snippet of even the most insignificant stuff simply because Uncle Sam wants it.
The US wants to bully the world into obeying it ? I'm French : I'll do the contrary just out of spite.
Britain will soon be safely out of Europe, and away from all it's bad influences. The sooner it learns to behave its self, and knuckle down to doing as its told, by the best, and greatest country in the world. A country that has now been blessed by god, to have the greatest President that has ever lived. Then the better it will be for all the little Brits, maybe?
Britain soon be out of Europe??? Have you been watching the news at all? Brexit is tatters, and cancellation of article 50 is the only viable path. The only thing up for grabs still is how and when it happens.
With brexit costing us 1.3bn a week, it will be sooner rather than later.
Of course! Whilst the EU are standing firm, the US thinks an isolated Britain will crumble... And they're probably right.
We "take back control" (whatever the hell that is meant to mean... successive governments have always done what they want - it's just that they blame the EU fo their own cockups, and unbelievably, too many voters believed them) and hand it to the US ten-fold.
Think we aren't in control? Think we are already Americas bitch? You ain't seen nothin' yet!
Yes very, since Snowden provided proof of the american NSA doing exactly what they claim Huawei is supposedly doing. (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa-upgrade-factory-show-cisco-router-getting-implant/). So there is proof the Americans are, or at least were, doing it, yet they insist American hardware is safe for their allies, and not that of Huawei?
JP Morgan - whose interest is in Cisco as an investment without reference to what they actually produce - made that connection. Banning Huawei won't affect the US much because they never deployed much of it in the first place, but they expect it to do well for Cisco kit in EMEA and Asia-Pacific-ex-China markets.
Or complete manufacture & assembly of 'US' kit. With opportunities to exploit it all along the way.
But any sane operator does not outsource administration, ie managing the control plane of their network. Which should be done seperately to the data plane, and logged, monitored and generally a close eye kept on it. Which also extends to any vendor access, ie processes for monitoring any remote access, or conducted by vendor engineers.
Which sadly isn't always the case, so stuff gets leaked by the outsourcers. Which is the issue with the Huawei FUD. IMHO, it's a case of put up or shut up, so release a nice paper explaining exactly how China would exploit any well-designed and implemented 5G network.. Or the core DWDM, SLTs, or even NIDs. Without an operator noticing.
I guess one way to do it would be if you could sneakily add some form of 'superuser' NID or phone that could then try and snoop traffic, without that device or traffic being noticed. And if it's sensitive traffic, it should be encrypted anyway.
(And a cynical me might suggest that the ban on intelligence sharing would mean no intelligence because the US can't compromise Huawei kit like they can with their own vendors.)
If they blab this probable bollocks about Huawei how much trust should we give to anything else that they say ?
What have we had: hacking from North Korea, Putin meddling in USA elections, Kaspersky Labs spying for Russia, ... ? I offer no opinion on any of these, but I down rate what the USA claims.
Of course, they say nothing about: Cisco routers tampered by the NSA and don't ask questions about what Microsoft telemetry is really about.
Many years ago I remember reading a printed article (prior to WWW) about a Diplomatic Message system supplied by a US manufacturer to the Swiss Government. Some years after it had been in use it somehow crept out (a upset employee I think) that there was a back door straight into the CIA. So for years the US had been reading Swiss Diplomatic messages.
I have no reason to believe that the US has changed it's ways and so only want's to block Huawei in order to get it's own snooping kit into the worlds 5G systems. My view is that Trump's has jumped on the CIA 'security issues' and added protectionism to the equation.
> Many years ago I remember reading .. about a Diplomatic Message system supplied by a US manufacturer to the Swiss Government. Some years after it had been in use it somehow crept out (a upset employee I think) that there was a back door straight into the CIA. So for years the US had been reading Swiss Diplomatic messages.
It was Crypto AG Ciphering Machines and it was Pres. Regan who revealed such as evidence of Libyan and Iranian attacks on US interests. ref ref
