US-based hard disk drive suppliers face further scrutiny over whether they've shipped proscribed HDDs to Huawei

US Commerce Committee Senator Roger Wicker is on a mission to find out if HDD makers stateside are shipping drives to Huawei, and has fired off questions to Seagate, Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) and Western Digital. This follows the initiation of a US Department of Commerce (DoC) investigation in March into the …

[Paul Hovnanian]

That letter ...

... doesn't look like any I've ever received from my Congressional reps. There's no request for campaign donations. And that's why any unsolicited stuff I get from my reps goes straight into the shredder unopened.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: That letter ...

The donations aren't required unless they are found to have illegally sold drives to Huawei or unless they want special permission to

[DiViDeD]

I were Wundrin ...

Does anyone know where Seagate and WD hard drives are manufactured these days? I heard it was somewhere in the Orient.

It's just that the last Toshiba drive I bought had the words 'MADE IN CHINA' emblazoned on the back.

[Muppet Boss]

Re: I were Wundrin ...

"Oh no, we don't sell hard drives to China but a large percentage of the hard drives from our China factories has to be written off and recycled as per local environmental and carbon offset regulations. We outsource their environmentally friendly recycling to our local partners."

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: I were Wundrin ...

That's pretty much been SOP for selling weapons to countries you have to officially dissaprove of

[Velv]

IP, Trademarks, Design Rights and International Laws haven't stopped the Chinese producing their own version of Western products up until now.

While they may have been purchasing HDDs and other components from US companies up to now, does the US think the Chinese won't just copy the products instead of purchasing, a trivial task given many of the US products are currently fabricated in China anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

A missed opportunity for thousands of 'NSA-tested and approved' hard drives to be shipped to an unsuspecting China?

[Shalghar]

What makes you believe that China would not suspect anything, were the trade war regulations suddenly lifted, especially for devices or components with considerable probability of future internet connection ?

On topic, lets grab another round of popcorn and look at the betting pool how long it takes chinese facilities to actually inverse the status quo and ship backdoored and/or poor quality/self destructing stuff to the US corporations and other oh so "clever" outsource fetishists while sweeping up the world market with higher quality (in comparision to the "market optimised" china made US products) stuff.