It's been one day since Blighty OK'd Huawei for parts of 5G – and US politicians haven't overreacted at all. Wait, what? Surveillance state commies? Yesterday it was decided that certain "high-risk" vendors, cough, cough, Huawei, will be permitted to contribute components towards the UK's 5G network in a limited way. The move provided great relief to Huawei, and caused some dismay in the US. Perhaps the strongest words came from junior Republican senator for Nebraska Ben …
"Congress should pass a bill calling for an all out United States effort to develop better technology at lower cost to defeat Huawei on 5G worldwide by simply outcompeting them and driving them out of markets,"
Maybe they could have a 5 year plan. call it the "great leap forward" or something
It's about time the good ol' boys (NOT) comprising that shambles they call a government administration across the pond learned to keep their noses out of another country's business. Trump will no doubt throw his toys out of the pram and wet his nappy (diaper to you Yankee folk) but the USA does NOT rule the world - especially with that pig-ignorant, chauvinistic, obstructive, lying orange apparition in the chair.
Simple answer: The USA, China and the EU.
The UK, at 5th in the pecking order IIRC, gets to wait at that table, not sit at it, so who the UK should suck up to depends on what political flavour you prefer:
rapacious no-quarter-given capitalism, a surveillance state disguised as communism, or technocrat-directed Europe.
Speaking personally, the more I look at those three, the less I like the first two.
It's pointless worrying about "pecking orders" since we are destined to relative decline as the developing world grows. Reducing dependence on other nations is a better policy, in particular avoiding singular dependence on any one nation or trade block.
We should avoid trade deals that involve political compromise - a trade deal should be purely about trade.The electorate decide what sort of country we will become, not foreign governments. Also trade agreements that give corporations the right to claim against governments must be avoided, the rights of ordinary people must come first.
Most trade deals aren't advantageous to the UK since we are a net importer of nearly everything. We should be mindful about what trade deals we commit to since they will determine in which industries we can be competitive.
If American laws didn't force us to pay even close to a living wage, as near-slave wages to compete with third-world Asian interests should be good enough; if we didn't ask our corporations to pay their way in society and instead gave them a completely free pass to use their money towards yet more lobbying; and if only we didn't pay attention to pay disparity and allow our wealthy to recreate the Gilded Age and stopped those bleeding-heart liberals who have the nerve to have a problem with "poverty" and "working-class poor"...
we'd be able to sell $1 items to the world and still have enough left to pad our golden parachutes"
FIFY
More like Not Even If; Newt is a very smart and savvy politician(*); he knows that simply isn't true as the US has few friends, and even those are distrustful. While the various camps want to place the blame for that solidly on the other camp; I am sure it is the oscillation that causes the distrust. The policies of the earnest are undone by the disingenuous and vice versa. You can only trust the US so far, where "so far" means less than 4 years.
(*) Sascha Cohen made many very smart people look like fools; and good on him. Newt was not one of those. If you watch the Ali-G interview you see Newt figure it out 15 seconds in, then he treads carefully to make sure he leaves no idiotic soundbite behind. Although I personally despise the ideas that Newt caters to, I gained a healthy respect for the mans BS detector.
This reminds me of Alice's Restaurant:
"Sergeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug."
He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."
"how about some actual analysis of whether and how much Huawei actually represents a surveillance threat"
Well, there was the one about the Pentagon denouncing the security concerns earlier this week, and the one last year about GCHQ denouncing the security concerns. I'm a little surprised that they're not linked, but they have at least been previously published (maybe it's assumed people have read them)
There seems to be a lot of FUD going around over this. People keep talking about Huawei "being involved" in building the UK's 5G network. Why? Just buy the damn kit and the install and manage it ourselves, we don't need the Chinese coming over here and installing it, let along running it. I install Dell computers in the NHS. Dell aren't runing the NHS, we just buy the kit from them. And the first thing I do with it is install a new BIOS, and the second thing I do is wipe the hard drive and replace the operating system and applications, so even if the kit was supplied full of spy-wear, it's gone before it's in use. That should be exactly the same with 5G kit - just but stuff from suppliers, whoever they are, and *we* build and use it as *we* see fit. I buy bread from Fletchers, that doesn't mean Fletcher's are running my life; Post Office Telephones bought Strowger switches, that didn't mean Strowger were running the UK telephone network, British Gas bought pipes from British Plastics, that didn't mean British Plastics were running the gas network.
Maybe you should read up on the "Intel Management Engine"
And lest we think AMD has put their poor consumers first, the "AMD Platform Security Processor" is another mandatory funbox.
If it's from Silicon Valley, it's probably violating your privacy and your rights under the GDPR, and there's nothing you can do about it (aside from recycling it). Ironically a lot of cheap Chinese kit is more resistant to this since it's usually secured so poorly that you can load open software on it instead of the factory bloatware.
It is a sad reflection on the current times that I believe things said by the USA White house occupants slightly less than the Chinese.
Back doors in Chinese Huawei equipment? Probably
Back doors in US routers (Cisco, Juniper etc)? Probably.
Loyalty used to be a two way street, not to be confused with grovelling to the current president. How on earth did we end up in this situation?
Back doors in US routers (Cisco, Juniper etc)?FTFY.ProbablyDefinitely.
Both Cisco and Juniper have had backdoors discovered in them in recent times, and the US intelligence agencies have a proven history of intercepting Cisco devices in transit (while inside the US postal/courier systems) between Cisco and the end customer and modifying them physically.
I'm genuinely puzzled what this is all about. Huawei has been in 4G networks in the UK for a long time, with no apparent or even bemoaned "loss of sovereignity".
There are many cries of China getting access to "data" but in almost all cases nowadays data transfer uses TLS so that's of little use. Other forms of data like location have been available in 4G already. So what's different with 5G? That there are potentially more devices (assuming someone finds an actual use case)?
"I'm genuinely puzzled what this is all about."
American protectionism. Reports from the Pentagon and GCHQ/MI5 state that there are no real security concerns (although GCHQ weren't exaclty complimentary about the standards of competancy exhibited by the source code). Go back far enough in his tweet stream, and you'll even find Trump saying it's about trade.
The suggestion has been made that Huawei or the Chinese intelligence services might have included some sort of remote kill switch or other mechanism that would allow them to sabotage networks. I'm inclined to be sceptical of this, since GCHQ are supposed to have been over Huawei's source code with a fine-tooth comb, but I guess you can never be entirely sure you haven't missed something. Personally, I still believe this has more to do with commercial self-interest on the part of the yanks than any security threat.
Trust no one Always assume that when you are on the net, you are being tracked, collated or spied upon. ...... Anonymous Coward
Sound advice, AC. And be prepared if you are doing anything tasty and testy to be one of those persons of interest one invariably never gets to hear about which cost a system an absolute fortune to own ...... as in have them play nice for the home team rather than starring as a supreme leading striker in the competition and opposition.
surely the first rule of espionage is to assume your own side is compromised. Once you start from that point, is it really such a big deal if you are ? Look at any operation of WW2 and you'll see how nothing was ever assumed to be "clean". You start with codenames and work your way up.
Not that I believe for a second the US has the UK or any other countries best interests at heart over this.
A ton of small minded anti US rhetoric in the comments. If you think the US is bad, just wait until the Chinese get their fingers into us. The Anglosphere is UK's future. Get a grip on reality. Chinese monolith cannot overtake the West long term because of its lack of political diversity.
I see. That would be the US that totally didn't slip spyware into Cisco boxes being shipped abroad.
Let's be clear about this:
1. The US has form for shipping spyware.
2. Huawei have been obliged to have their code audited by GCHQ with a secure site being set up specifically for this purpose.
3. The audit complained about code quality but didn't find any evidence of what the US is claiming.
4. This is a trade dispute dressed up as security issue by a particularly aggressive POTUS.
5. Our rhetoric towards the US is dependent on its actions towards the rest of the world. If you think this is currently anti-US you should reflect on why and on the extent of making good his successor will be faced with.
I do agree with you that people bitching about the Americans now will look back fondly at this period as the good old days.
However I disagree about China's global future. They have form at being Imperial overlords - they have honed and refined the concept of Empire over 2200 years. I don't see it being a problem for them to take over globally, eventually they will. The US and Britain are at the beginning of a long, slow, painful decline. I mean, BoJo as PM? That's a sign of how far down the crapper your country already is. Ditto the US.
I disagree with your disagreement ...
Whilst I admit the Chinese aren't a particularly pleasant regime. the same could be said of the US c. 2019. Bearing in mind it's appalling record on civil rights is still within living (and lynched) memories.
It's not China that has fought innumerable long distance conflicts since 1945.
And if we have complaints about China, we need to look back into history and see which countries were arrogant enough to prod the sleeping dragon. Oh, look, it's the UK and US.
You reap what you sow.
