
I wonder what kit they'll be "guided" to spend on...
Germany is determined to remove any systems from its telecoms networks that might pose a security threat, regardless of cost, in a remarkable reversal of the country's stance from just a few years ago. In an interview with newspaper Handelsblatt, Germany's Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser chided the country's …
Quite so. The EU should be dependent upon the US, not China. At least all of Germany's computing equipment runs American software, so no chance of the Chinese snooping on all of them via backdoors in that.
Chinese kitchenware is OK though. As long as it doesn't have WiFi.
Germany should turn the 5G off and pause the trains for a few years (promoting active travel as an alternative). Eventually, everything will have been purified of the commie threat. Prices can double or triple to pay for it.
Any Germans not happy about that should be encouraged to wave a flag, sing a patriotic song, embrace nationalism as a unified people and oppose communism. Then they will feel fine.
"Chinese kitchenware is OK though. As long as it doesn't have WiFi."
Agreed, but I thought Huawei's main product line was 5G antennas, which is about as close to kitchenware you can get in the 5G stack.
Yet we must rip out and replace this metal.
At least some other counties policies have been worded with more understanding of the risks, such antenna end ok , core/backhaul/backend/control not ok.
Maybe you can confirm if microwave ovens would be allowed (in the kitchen) ? Asking for a friend
I'm sure the SAGE committee could brush all that minor climate stuff to one side and devote a few weeks to the pressing issue of national security that you raise. I suspect they would point out that a Microwave could be weaponised to pop open the door and blast radiation at its user. The ex-wife of the uncle of the CEO of one of China's biggest microwave manufacturing plants is a paid up member of the CCP. What more evidence do you need, that commie microwaves could undermine Western civilisation?
I suspect some of my downvoters haven't even checked for reds under their beds this week.
Ericsson has several offices for R&D in Beijing. Some of the early 5G prototypes I worked with were from the Beijing office, not from Sweden or other offices in the EU.
Nokia also has R&D offices in China. I don't know if Nokia does any 5G development there or not.
This is true of many US and EU companies. Most of them have multiple offices in China and do a lot of development work there. It's cheaper. And sometimes required if you want to sell into the Chinese market.
Though that has started to change due to the political climate. I wouldn't be willing to go to Beijing again on a business trip now. Fortunately I'm retired so it's not a concern anymore.
"Germany is determined to remove any systems from its telecoms networks that might pose a security threat"
They might as well just shut everything down, then. This discrimination against one company that has no worse security than the others is basically just toadying to the USA. I thought Germany had got over that.
They did find that one backdoor in Huawei kit. That one only the Americans had the key to because it came from copy/pasting some Cisco firmware that contained said backdoor.
Funny how the media phrased those articles to justify a conclusion of buy Cisco to avoid backdoors...
@chololennon
We all know that lapdog number one in Europe is Britain, proudly.
It's called the special relationship that Brits boast about and rely on for good reasons or not.
But I would add that Americans don't have the same view about the Germans or the French as many Brits have and assume are shared with other countries.
.....except that it isn't................they are all DOING THE SAME THINGS:
- Five Eyes (so five of them)
- Chinese (so six of them)
- Russians (so seven of them)
- Iranians (so eight of them)
....and then there's an unknown number of anonymous bad guys, so perhaps a hundred of them....
....and that's before you start looking at hardware and software manufacturers (Cisco, Juniper, Intel, Nokia, Eriksson...)
How much misdirection can El Reg cram into a single article?
China has taken their mask off - and those of us who knew what was going on kindof breathed a sigh of relief. We knew cold War 2 started long ago. We've read Unrestricted Warfare. We didn't start that war - we were letting China into the WTO about the same time this book came out. Many of us were screaming at our governments that the Chinese are using our rules against us and we've let it happen. There was never a more powerful example of this than Huawei. Forget the $75B number mentioned that China pumped into H to get them to destroy the competition - it was more like $200B.
I have been in the same room as their executive when in front of a customer (I was working for Ericsson) they got right up in my face and screamed "were the future, you're the past, you're done, f&*k off" it was frighteningly brazen. We had no idea how to fight it. It was 2016, Ericsson was months away from death. We did however have 75 managed services contracts globally at the time that kept us alive. Infrastructure contracts Huawei and ZTE were wiping the floor with us. Nokia was in even worse shape, having absorbed A-Lu.
There was no hint of competition. It was plainly putting the competition to the sword. They just about won, and had they won, China would have been in control of the central nervous system of every country. Think the O2 4G outage of 2018, except this time, available on call, should you displease the CCP. There is no exaggeration to this - it was exactly what we were facing. We avoided disaster with seconds to spare.
In Germanys case - why be nice any more - they were prepared to suck Chinese frankfurter to keep trade deals going but not even those are worth much now, and those that are worth saving China has taken hostage. They will never allow German money lo leave.
I wouldn't trust Huawei if it was 3 days dead though. But the idea of the CCP spending another $200B in a quest for world domination is over. It turned out to be a big swing and a massive miss.