There's no Huawei Chinese chipmakers can fill Nvidia's shoes... anytime soon Chinese chipmakers face an uphill battle filling the void left by the Biden administration's latest round of export restrictions, announced this week. With the sale of most US-made AI accelerators and GPUs — including those developed by Nvidia and Intel for the Chinese market — soon to be restricted in the Middle Kingdom, …
I'm wondering if this could backfire. Hurting China like this must make invasion of Taiwan - if only to get their hands on advanced foundry technologies - a more tempting proposition.
Peace in that region is fragile and carefully balanced. Pushing China into a corner could tip that and Western tech companies are dangerously exposed to any instability involving Taiwan.
Invading Taiwan is very unlikely to result in a working advanced foundry.
There are no economic gains for China invading when the consequences are thought-through, it would only be done due to political reasons and the worry is as Xi gets older he wants to be remembered for something great and forced reunification might fit that bill. However, the progress (or lack of) that Russia has demonstrated in taking Ukraine might make the generals think carefully. Yes, I am sure China has the military might to "win" but at what cost?
What Ukraine has demonstrated is that relying on US protections is worthless. Yes, Taiwan could resist for some time a Chinese invasion, but it would be destroyed in the process. Like Afghanistan 20 years ago, or Israel now. Is it really what Taiwanese want : being sacrificed for a corrupt senile man's ego ?
But even that prospect is actually bad for the US: their entire economy depends on TSMC, so if China really wants Taiwan all they have to do is destroy TSMC factories: the damage will be much larger to the US than China.
Ukraine didn't have a defence treaty with the US or anywhere else. All they had was the Budapest memorandum, which is reproduced below:-
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the Principles of the CSCE Final Act, to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm their commitment to seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine, as a non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used.
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America reaffirm, in the case of Ukraine, their commitment not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, except in the case of an attack on themselves, their territories or dependent territories, their armed forces, or their allies, by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapon state.
Ukraine, The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and The United States of America will consult in the event a situation arises which raises a question concerning these commitments.
As you'll have to agree, the assistance given to Ukraine is far in excess of what is required by the letter of the agreement, and the US has provided far more to a country that they have no obligation to than is required by treaty.
It also highlight just how ineffective Russian weaponry actually is; the paltry amount of weaponry provided has so far killed or wounded 250% of the initial Russian invasion force, and growing. The Russians are basically raiding scrapyards to send worse tanks than they've already lost into battle against continually better weaponry on the Ukrainian side and are making no battlefield progress. The Russian position is military, economically, demographically and politically idiotic.
If the TSMC factories were destroyed then Global Foundries and Samsung would literally be throwing parties. While their would no doubt be serious effects on the US economy TSMC is not the only chip provider in the world, and I would suggest that the systematic trade blockade that would go in on China in response would do damage that would make the damage to the US economy look like a drop in the ocean.
As Russia has shown something being idiotic doesn't mean that people won't do it, but the Chinese leaders are generally considered to be more competent than Russian ones. Time will tell.
Is it really what Taiwanese want : being sacrificed for a corrupt senile man's ego ?
Are we talking Xi or Biden here?
Whatever, it really comes down to economic-MAD: that the invader will suffer more than they might gain, no matter how quickly or powerfully they perform the first strike.
> Invading Taiwan is very unlikely to result in a working advanced foundry.
Agreed, most foundries would be destroyed in response to an invasion, but given the high dependence of "the west" on Taiwan foundries it could partially level the playing in terms of technology available to the military. Overall it would definitely be a lose-lose scenario. Hopefully China will not let their political pride cause them to act irrationally and focus on internal or diplomatic remedies rather than military options.
Hopefully China will not let their political pride cause them to act irrationally and focus on internal or diplomatic remedies rather than military options.
I wholeheartedly agree, diplomacy is a far better option. Sadly when I look around the world, from east to west, north to south, I see stupid flowing at levels I never imagined possible 10 years ago.
The issue though is the CCP under Xi has moved to be more authoritarian and unwilling to consider other opinions. Had the CCP kept to an open democratic path then it would have been easier to see Taiwan and China willingly reunite under mutually beneficial terms, however, the example of how Hong Kong's freedoms were crushed for any criticism of central policy makes that look unlikely any time soon.
Why bother? Jobs on the mainland are more plentiful, more secure and pay better. Its been reported that China's been actively recruiting key personnel. Its not that they're going to copy processes so much as offer an opportunity to become part of the key team that builds up an industry (big difference in career terms) and, as a handy side effect, it starves would be competition of skilled labor.
Remember, lack of skilled personnel has been one factor citing the slow rollout of new US fabs. (The US is also trying to poach from Tiawan.)
The problem with hubris is that it prevents you seeing the big picture.
Yep, the factories would be destroyed rather than allowed to fall in CCP hands. Not forgetting that they have a massive bit of water to cross and you'd see them coming. Sadly, we see that the only hope for China just died of a "heart attack", was it a CCP heart attack on a genuine one, no one will ever know (coughitwasXicough).
China can't get their hands on TSMC's technology with an invasion. TSMC depends on ASML EUV scanners, which require constant monitoring and support by ASML to remain functional which would no longer be provided. Even if they managed to take over Taiwan without firing a shot and had the full cooperation of TSMC's personnel (neither of which would happen) they would be unable to use TSMC's fabs.
That's why TSMC is building fabs in other places like Arizona. Those are leading edge so they would be one node out of date, and they'd have a lot less capacity, but it would keep the company going and I imagine as their best customer (responsible for 25% of TSMC's worldwide revenue) Apple would have dibs on much of their remaining production.
Taking Taiwan out would hit so many supply chains that TSMC would be the least of the knock on effects. China would cripple the world economy - causing a massive hit to their own as a lot of components that come from China and go into other things would no longer be needed if other components coming from Taiwan aren't available. Along with the inevitable boycotts etc. China's economy might take a worse hit than the rest of the world since they depend so much on exports and being the world's factory. Domestic consumption couldn't come close to making it up, especially if China's unemployment skyrockets due to their exports cratering.
It would be very difficult to protect fabs in an invasion.
The production lines run with positive air pressure to ensure that air from the office space does not reach the production line. A single broken window could damage a single machine that costs 10s of millions of US$.
If somebody decided to go scorched earth they would just need to change the air pressure on the production lines.
There is a single supplier of EUV lithographic machines that are required to create the wafers. The supplier is ASML in the Netherlands. How would the CCP order spare parts or replacement machines from ASML BTW a single EUV lithographic machine costs $200 million USD.
TMC is believed to have between between 30 and 35 ASML machines. Replacing them would cost $6 billion USD and it would be very unlikely that ASML would take any orders.
TMC owns 5% of ASML. The CCP would have to ensure that they gained control of this small holding to avoid additional problems.
If, according to you, "a good old cold war technology race" is the best way for mankind to progress, then let's do more: cut pharma, cut biotech, cut nanotech, cut robotech, cut github, etc...
Surely, the "smart people" will develop much better alternatives than slow free countries in all these domains...
You know, like the USSR did, before the fall of the Berlin wall...
<reaching for huge popcorn bucket>
You know, like the USSR did, before the fall of the Berlin wall...
Soviets are somewhat primitive people. They ruled through use of violence and their "advancements" were driven by saving face rather than progress and mostly by captive population of Ukrainians.
I think situation with China is vastly different.
You may not agree with their version of communism, but they are certainly not primitive.
> Soviets are somewhat primitive people. They ruled through use of violence
As opposed to China one assumes (Taiping, Nian, Boxers, Xinhai, Great Leap Forward, Cultural revolution, Tiananmen, etc...).
Also look up "Chinese execution vans" and the link to organ harvesting practices.
China is also entirely driven by saving face - if you look at their recent bridge collapses they physically censored it from other bridges using big yellow corrugated panels. And if any memorials turn up for the dead they are usually similarly censored, so I don't think their motivations are as different as you state.
Chinese vendors only have two options. De-Americanisation and self sufficiency.
No one questions either of the two is possible or even happening. The second one (just as with the EU) was declared years before Trump started messing with global supply chains. It was simply declared using different terms (self sufficiency).
The first point is a result of radical weaponisation of technology and most analysts agree that de-Americanisation is currently underway outside China to some degree. Back in 2019 it was estimated that re-design and production could take between 3 and 5 years. That makes the first visible signs likely to start appearing around now.
Huawei itself has already de-Americanised over 13,000 components, pumping millions into its Chinese suppliers and requiring them to increase quality in the process.
It has also invested across the chip design and
manufacturing tool chain.
Each wave of US sanctions has cut chunks out of the revenues of US companies. They (and the associations that represent them) are not happy.
The recent 'boom' in earnings from some of them is simply the fruit of 'non-demand' items. Basically stockpiling efforts from Chinese companies.
Revenues across the entire US semiconductor industry will be impacted severely. Those revenues are required for future R&D. They have been impacted since 2019.
Now, it is Chinese companies that are seeing massive rises in investment and revenues through real demand (as opposed to non-demand orders) combined with government subsidies.
Huawei's Ascend line was more than AI inference from the outset.
It was a full stack solution across both hardware and software. Ascend processors scale down to earbuds and IoT. Paired with MindSpore and CANN it was always going to have legs and HiSilicon was going to guide it along the roadmap.
It is worth noting that, ever since the sanctions began, HiSilicon embarked on a recruitment program for top talent (paying industry leading salaries to attract talent from all over the globe).
It has not changed tack. The last hurdle of fabrication remains but China has now been forced to accelerate development in that area.
It would be foolish to speak of time frames with any degree of precision but that is what some did. In 2019 many industry watchers claimed it could take decades for China to catch up.
That is a bit crazy when we realise that we could very probably be on the cusp of a move beyond silicon and absolutely no one knows what China is cooking.
With that in mind all we can do is look at the bigger picture.
In the smartphone sector, Huawei has claimed that 'sanctions' are the new 'normal'. They have said that they are moving back to a two flagship per year release cycle (plus folding and flip). What does that indicate?
Qualcomm has stated that it will see no further material revenue from Huawei. What does that indicate?
We know that de-Americanisation is well underway across the supply chain.
We know that Huawei's biggest ever software project (MetaERP) was completed in record time with yet more revenue impact for an American company (Oracle in this case).
We know that it is moving forward with self developed alternatives to wireless device interconnection (NearLink).
We know that both HarmonyOS and EulerOS are moving in tandem to lay the foundations for self reliance in the OS space. HarmonyOS NEXT has already been announced (totally Android free). There are rumours of a desktop flavour of HarmonyOS for 2024.
These are just tiny pieces of a bigger puzzle but Huawei does appear to be reservedly optimistic.
Canon just broadsided ASML with its imprint system.
Could a Chinese effort deliver an equally groundbreaking solution to the fabrication issue?
And where do we think RISC-V chiplet solutions will be just 5 years from now?
Pangu?
What are the chances of Huawei or Chinese interests actually leapfrogging current technologies in the near term?
With US interests haemorrhaging revenues in the near term through the loss of major Chinese sales volumes, how will they fund R&D going forward. After all, it isn't really sanctions that matter here, but convincing sovereign nations to impose export restrictions. Taiwan and South Korea have already managed to get permanent exemptions. ASML is far from happy with the current geopolitical situation.
My gut feeling is that the fab problem is closer to being resolved than many believe.
No need to be confused.
Huawei has no issues doing business with US companies. In the short term at least it makes good sense.
Good business sense for everyone.
The irony is that on the business side, in a global supply chain, everybody wants to do business with everyone else.
The problem is politics and the shortsightedness of those in power.
They will go down in history as accelerating China's march to self sufficiency and imposing enormous self harm on its semiconductor industry.
Every single US Huawei supplier has applied for a licence to do business with the company.
They know the dire outlook that being denied business options with Huawei/China will bring.
Huawei stopped fighting against sanctions long ago.
Now it is simply working to overcome them.
> Huawei has no issues doing business with US companies. In the short term at least it makes good sense.
Oh you mean Huawei has no issue sucking up the knowledge and the IPR like other Chinese companies have done with GM, Audi, VW, Citroen in the Automotive industry? Or like Samsung and Apple who are now leaving China? I see. Good point.
> Huawei stopped fighting against sanctions long ago.
So what is this last Monday article about: Tell me Huawei: Chinese giant wants to know what made EU label it high security risk? I'm more and more confused.
This article is about US technology sanctions.
Nothing to do with the EU.
As for IP, you seem to be barking up the wrong tree.
Are you implying that Huawei is somehow able to suck up technology from others and implement it before others do (no mean feat). In that case you have some explaining to do.
Huawei is consistently one of the top patent filers worldwide (actually within the US too).
It is a major SEP holder for 5G and has largely been a few steps ahead of of both Ericsson and Nokia in ICT.
It has over 23 R&D centres worldwide.
It is also one of the world's top investors in R&D.
As for cars, it has partnered with major Chinese manufacturers for the advanced technology aspects of automotive solutions.
BMW, Audi, GM can have no complaints with Huawei. In fact the rumours of VW's interest in HarmonyOS never seem to go away.
Mercedes just had to deny a similar rumours.
You say 'like other Chinese manufacturers' but Huawei has been deploying its technologies on automotive solutions for a few years now. GM and VW have nothing in the same league as Huawei.
Cars will become basically smart batteries/computers on wheels and the smart part will basically run off mobile data centers with massive compute capability and very hi-tech ICT needs.
Of the manufacturers you mentioned, which ones can meet those demands?
Also, automotive chipsets don't require cutting edge process nodes.
To be totally honest only a tiny fraction of the world's chip production is on bleeding edge nodes and for all the silly talk of military usage, that mostly uses technology from 10 or 15 years ago.
Huawei is also successfully bringing major infrastructure into the digital realm. Ports, rail, mining, aviation, smart manufacturing...
How are they able to suck all that knowledge up and deploy it before others?
Huawei Admits Copying Code From Cisco in Router Software
Huawei admits to a little copying
The China-based router maker says a few lines of Cisco source code inadvertently got into its products. But the copying wasn't as pervasive as Cisco claims in a lawsuit, the company says. [...]
Cisco's lawsuit alleges that Huawei copied up to 1.5 million lines of software code. In its latest court filing, Huawei said an employee inadvertently used about 2 percent of the 1.5 million lines of code inside Huawei's VRP line of routers.
Yes. That case is dragged out on a regular basis.
Way back from 2003 (the infringement is of course prior to that).
But what happened on July 28, 2004?
Do you have that bookmarked?
Remind me of the scale of the infringement and the information Huawei provided in court.
Allow me to preempt your next move which will probably be about Tappy.
More importantly (and worryingly) you seem to believe these cases in some way take away from what I said.
You haven't challenged that in the slightest.
Want more?
US accuses Huawei of stealing technology from six companies
> US officials detail how a Huawei employee was discovered, during a trade show in 2004 in Chicago, going to a rival company’s booth in the middle of the night and taking photographs of the circuitry inside a networking device. This individual wore a badge listing his employer as “Weihua”, according to the charge."
Well not if it's only accusations and behind a pay wall.
If you search Google for accusations you will find a few. If the US is doing the accusing I would prefer to see the result of the cases.
Get Googling!
Either way your generalisation will not actually change what I said because I stated facts.
Sorry, I assumed Huawei had a subscription to FT.
Huawei’s Yearslong Rise Is Littered With Accusations of Theft and Dubious Ethics It's also behind paywall but I got you the wayback link.
> "Chinese giant says it respects intellectual property rights, but competitors and some of its own former employees allege company goes to great lengths to steal trade secrets"
[... more juicy detail...]
One company that did come forward was Chicago-based Motorola—and its accusations enveloped Huawei founder Mr. Ren. After two decades of investing in China, Motorola in July 2010 accused Huawei in a lawsuit of stealing Motorola’s technology for the SC300, a compact base station that connects devices in a wireless network, that could be mounted in enclosed buildings and rural areas.
Seven years earlier, a relative of Huawei’s founder who was then working in Motorola, Pan Shaowei, flew with two colleagues to Beijing. The mission, Motorola said, was for Mr. Pan to secretly show Huawei the SC300’s specifications.
Huawei told an Illinois federal court that Mr. Pan briefed Mr. Ren, unsolicited, on his team’s product development, customer response, and plans to leave Motorola. It denied that Mr. Pan and his team were developing products for Huawei. Mr. Pan didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Email fragments recovered from Mr. Pan’s laptop and included in Motorola’s complaint show Mr. Pan wrote to Mr. Ren after the meeting, “Attached please find those document [sic] about SC300 specification you asked.” Huawei later made a similarly small device, weighing half the SC300, which it marketed to rural communities in developing markets."
[...]
Yes. I remember the article.
A beautiful collection of yet more accusations and heavily skewed in the reporting too but then again it's the Wall Street Journal.
I'll accept that though as you'll find equally skewed articles on the other side.
It's enough to write a documentary or film about for sure but in spite of all the bluster there is not much at all by way of actual proof.
Time and time again the line is 'so and so declined to comment', 'so and so alleges this or that'. Yet in spite of the US's best efforts (including re-opening some of those previously settled civil cases) there is really little to grab.
Nothing even?
The article spells out that Huawei does not stand alone in being accused and that everyone wants access to what everyone else has, yet when the subject of secure rooms pops up, and Huawei says it's to prevent spying not engage in it, it just completely fails to mention that EVERY company with sufficient resources has the exact same rooms in their installations.
It drags out the Tappy case and mentions the nearly $5m settlement but completely fails to reveal why it was awarded.
Idem Cisco. No actual balance in the reporting.
The list goes on.
Let me be clear. I am in no doubt that Huawei walked the fine line of what may or may not be ethical back in the day.
I can assure you it has the equipment of rivals in its labs. Is it being reverse engineered? I have no doubt l!
Do you think Nokia does not have Ericsson and Huawei gear in their installations? Are they not doing the same?
Wolf culture? Of course. Both externally and internally. No different to early Apple (to give one example) pushing employees for results.
In the early days it was dog-eat-dog in the ICT industry. Competition was intense.
Books have been written about Huawei's corporate culture.
Is the tone often war-like or pushing for 'glory'! You bet. If you can't understand that cultural angle though, I suggest you read up on that.
Does money talk? Once again, yes! But it talks even more in the US. Was there any mention of that in the piece? Not a jot.
Enticing employees from rival companies? Of course. If someone from a rival is laying off staff, you can bet competitors will be waiting to pick out top talent. Why do you think Apple is in San Diego? How many Qualcomm staff that have just been given marching orders will end up at Apple or even Huawei (provided they are not US citizens. LOL).
This is how things work. Most of Nokia's image research scientists are working for Huawei.
I am definitely not going to unpick all the allegations because every case is different and none of them have actually supported the main claim against Huawei anyway.
If you actually dig down into each accusation and wipe off the WSJ perspective, you will very likely find a little bit of everything (disgruntled former employees/competitors, mistakes, rogue employees, external companies etc.) and no doubt, among all the stories, some will even have a solid base, but with such a massive company operating in 170 countries, that is to be expected.
With so much supposed disregard for other people's ideas or IP, it does make you wonder how things like Polar coding were not only not misappropriated but developed with the full support of the man behind the idea.
What's going on with that?
Why the blazes would Huawei not just rip the man off and be done with it. He was hardly in a position to fight Huawei.
So, when you are done reading that WSJ piece it should be clear to anyone (neutral) that it set out its stall to present a picture that was tuned solely to the aggrieved. There was very little balance on show. But you knew that anyway.
What was/is happening while all of that is going on?
Why has Huawei consistently spent billions each year on R&D and brought new ideas and technologies to market before others?
Are you seriously suggesting that it was all stolen?
Please get serious for a moment.
The wolf culture is still there. The accusations will not stop and it is very, very likely that the vast majority of them will originate in the US.
Times have changed though (for everyone) and there is more of a modern day vibe to everything as demonstrated by Huawei's recent patent cross licencing deals with Ericsson, Samsung and various patent pools etc. Huawei is also making strides in making its own IP available for licencing.
I can't remember the date of the video but it wasn't that long ago when Huawei revealed as an example that is was involved in less IP related legal disputes than Apple (and by a huge margin).
That will never end. Disputes are the name of the game.
However, most importantly in this discussion. Did you actually prove your point here? The answer to that is 'no' and even if each and every one of those accusations (collected over decades) were true, what percentage of Huawei's output and achievements would it actually represent?
That is a hugely important question and the answer will astound you.
Just how important was Tappy to Huawei? It makes for scandalous reading but what actually happened there? Was reality far more mundane than the actual accusation?
Thanks for your answer posted around 8am Beijing time. What about using Huawei gear to spy on US military and other official departments (this is not a WSJ article).
" Around 2014, Viaero started mounting high-definition surveillance cameras on its towers to live-stream weather and traffic, a public service it shared with local news organizations. With dozens of cameras posted up and down I-25, the cameras provided a 24-7 bird’s eye view of traffic and incoming weather, even providing advance warning of tornadoes. But they were also inadvertently capturing the movement of US military equipment and personnel, giving Beijing — or anyone for that matter — the ability to track the pattern of activity between a series of closely guarded military facilities. The intelligence community determined the publicly posted live-streams were being viewed and likely captured from China, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Two sources briefed on the investigation at the time said officials believed that it was possible for Beijing’s intelligence service to “task” the cameras — hack into the network and control where they pointed. At least some of the cameras in question were running on Huawei networks."
LOL!
No, you're right. It isn't WSJ.
But amazingly you managed to dredge even deeper into the barrel.
CNN!
And an exclusive, no less!
And the result? Yet more 'accusations'. From anonymous sources or sources that can't speak 'on the record' etc. The same old story.
All they could muster was a 'Huawei equipment could...'
At least they did balance things out a little with a Huawei statement:
"All of our products imported to the US have been tested and certified by the FCC before being deployed there,” Huawei said in its statement to CNN. “Our equipment only operates on the spectrum allocated by the FCC for commercial use. This means it cannot access any spectrum allocated to the DOD.”
The non-story finally fully deflated right there but the slur had already been set in the mind of the reader. Mission accomplished?
Look. The US spent millions shooting down a stray Chinese origin balloon. Luckily it did not have a Huawei logo on it, eh? Top officials came out with the usual hysteria and a few months ago it was officially revealed (and basically ignored by US press) that there was no risk on the device. It was what the Chinese said it was.
More of the same.
But let's reflect for a moment.
The US spent millions shooting that thing down and recovering it from the ocean, but when faced with a few (fully compliant and authorised) cell towers on US soil and near US bases, they couldn't get an order ('national security!,' national security!) and just take them down and actually, you know, inspect them?
Can you see how absurd what you are saying is?
It is time you start reading through the millions of documents that Snowden leaked. You'll probably find some stuff that is closer to reality.
As an aside, most US command communications ran over Huawei gear in Afghanistan. I have yet to see a single complaint about that.
Ah! Don't forget to take note of the time zone.
One has to admire the time and pain you take to defend Huawei all day long. Shame that in the process you need to throw discredit on the sources that one exhibits as responses to your demands for proofs.
Here's an another one for you to dismiss as "baseless".
Chinese spy duo charged in Huawei case as US condemns ‘egregious’ interference. This is from The Guardian. Which you will probably dismiss as a horrible neocon MAGA mouthpiece. LOL.
"The Chinese intelligence officers Guochun He and Zheng Wang attempted to orchestrate a scheme to steal the prosecution strategy memo, witness lists, and other confidential evidence from the US attorney’s office for the eastern district of New York, the indictment said. The charging papers against He and Wang referred only to an unnamed telecommunications company based in China, but the entity in question is understood to be Huawei, according to a source familiar with the matter. According to the indictment unsealed in Brooklyn, the Chinese agents paid about $61,000 worth of bitcoin in bribes to a US government official whom they believed had been recruited to work for the Chinese government but in fact worked as a double agent for the FBI."
But of course, you can claim that there are no ling between the Chinese intelligence services and Huawei. That will convince everybody, for sure.
Again and again. A complete and utter failure to provide evidence.
As for media outlets, I am a daily reader of the Guardian UK and increasingly worried about it's choices over the last few years. The same can be said of the BBC.
It's not me who has discredited those US outlets. It was them themselves. They are what they are and subject to political influence from their owners and heavily skewed in much of what they do.
That isn't a problem for me. Things are equally skewed on the other side with Chinese media.
What we, the readers, have to do, is drink from as many sources as possible and try to form a balanced opinion on subjects for which much is often missing (deliberately, accidentally or otherwise).
Our time is limited but it is now on us, the readers, to try and pick out the question marks that crop up.
No one will be as innocent as they claim. Not even Huawei (or Apple or whoever).
But what you are doing is discrediting without proof and providing the same accusations over and over.
They will be rebuffed until firm evidence is put on the table. That should be standard practice.
What you are also doing, and I pointed this out earlier, is wilfully ignoring the innovation through research that a huge company like Huawei has brought to industry.
You (I'm assuming it was you, anyway), took a very broad stab at the company on it sucking IP up, ignoring all my factual evidence based points.
> "A complete and utter failure to provide evidence.
Not sure how you say "evidence" in Chinese, but having Huawei admitting to copying Cisco software and documentation, having Huawei employees found with stolen AT&T documents and plans or T-Mobile robots, having Chinese spies convicted of embezzlement to protect Huawei, having weather webcams used to spy on US service personal, and all the other things I listed are called "evidence" on this side of the Great Wall.
Yet another backdoor event leveraging Lawful Interception: Huawei accused of stealing trade secrets, spying in Pakistan
> - Business Efficiency Solutions said it partnered with Huawei on Pakistani policing project
> - BES created data collection, other software for Pakistan's police
>- Huawei used software as 'backdoor' to spy on Pakistanis, says complaint"
BES also accused the Chinese tech giant in the Wednesday complaint of using its technology to create a "backdoor" that allowed it to collect sensitive data "important to Pakistan's national security."
Let me know if you need more evidence.
That is an open case I believe.
It was reported here on The Register in a balanced manner:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/13/huawei_accused_of_trade_secret/
AFAIK, the case is still open.
If it isn't open, do you know how things ended?
It's already 6am in Beijing... I don't want to be idle in a few hours when you get to work. So here's another juicy one for you:
Documents link Huawei to China’s surveillance programs
Excerpt:
> "A review by The Washington Post of more than 100 Huawei PowerPoint presentations, many marked “confidential,” suggests that the company has had a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged. These marketing presentations, posted to a public-facing Huawei website before the company removed them late last year, show Huawei pitching how its technologies can help government authorities identify individuals by voice, monitor political individuals of interest, manage ideological reeducation and labor schedules for prisoners, and help retailers track shoppers using facial recognition."
Another site that requires registration but if that is the story I think it is, it is a non-story.
All modern facial recognition technologies can distinguish ethnicity. In some cases it is listed as a tent-pole feature.
It goes much deeper than that too. Huawei uses it all over the place. Not too long ago it was reported that it can be used in farming for things like pig face recognition.
Please post Huawei's official response to the allegations, because I imagine that is all they are, right?
They deny of course. Like you always do:
> “Huawei has no knowledge of the projects mentioned in the Washington Post report,” the company said in a statement, after The Post shared some of the slides with Huawei representatives to seek comment. “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards.”
This is the following paragraph. And no, no registration is required. At least from here. Not sure in China. By now, you should be able to use wayback to find the original.
Source: When a Huawei Bid turned into a Hunt for a Corporate Mole
>>> "The US indictment accuses Huawei of explicitly incentivizing theft. “Employees were directed to post confidential information obtained from other companies on an internal Huawei website, or, in the case of especially sensitive information, to send an encrypted email to a special huawei.com email mailbox,” the indictment states. “A ‘competition management group’ was tasked with reviewing the submissions and awarding monthly bonuses to the employees who provided the most valuable stolen information. Biannual awards were made available to the top ‘Huawei Regional Divisions’ that provided the most valuable information.”
>>> "Huawei has also consistently faced accusations that its equipment is used for spying. The company vehemently denies this, but there’s countervailing evidence. In 2012, as Bloomberg News reported, Australian officials informed their American counterparts of a sophisticated intrusion involving Huawei’s gear. Hackers from China’s spy services were copying large volumes of data from Australia’s telecommunications systems and sending it to China, according to the Australians. The incident was considered especially damning because the code used in the hack was delivered through Huawei software updates, suggesting that either the company had approved the operation or its technical staff had been infiltrated by intelligence operatives. "
Again. No evidence. No comment from most of those involved save for the usual anonymous sources, and of course, Bloomberg had to pop up.
Tenders are rife with claims of foul play with battles for influence and persuasion. Nothing new was presented here.
CNN Exclusive: FBI investigation determined Chinese-made Huawei equipment could disrupt US nuclear arsenal communications
is that somewhat similar to CNN's claims that CIA pretended that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction ?
What I don't understand : why is an Anonymous reader hell-bent on trying to prove that Huawei/China are bad/stupid people ? And doing this by quoting US propaganda ! How stupid do you think people are : are you from Langley ?
"US officials detail how a Huawei employee was discovered, during a trade show in 2004 in Chicago, going to a rival company’s booth in the middle of the night and taking photographs of the circuitry inside a networking device. "
They should have waited until a similar show was being held in New York where one could visit the exhibit hall in the middle of the night and just take whatever they wanted. Been there and the items missing weren't even close to something you could slip inside a coat pocket. The Jacob Javits Center is a horrible place to exhibit.
"Cisco's lawsuit alleges that Huawei copied up to 1.5 million lines of software code. In its latest court filing, Huawei said an employee inadvertently used about 2 percent of the 1.5 million lines of code inside Huawei's VRP line of routers."
Given a couple of hardware products that have been designed to do the same thing, I'd be very amazed if a greater amount of code wasn't identical. I think it would come down to where the people writing the software learned to code.
Did you read the articles? What about same bug?
> "Cisco sued Huawei in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Jan. 23, alleging that Huawei violated at least five Cisco patents and copied Cisco's Internetwork Operating System (IOS) source code, using it in the operating system for its Quidway routers and switches. Huawei's system contains text strings, file names and bugs identical to Cisco's source code, Cisco is claiming."
What about same typos in the verbatim documentation?
> The copying was so extensive that Huawei inadvertently copied bugs in Cisco’s software, according to the lawsuit. “Huawei couldn’t release its routers for shipment until it fixed a substantial number of the common Cisco bugs contained in the Huawei routers” for fear of giving away the plagiarism, said former Huawei human resources manager Chad Reynolds in a court filing. Cisco declined to comment. Cisco General Counsel Mark Chandler flew to Shenzhen to confront Mr. Ren with evidence of Huawei’s theft, which included typos from Cisco’s manuals that also appeared in Huawei’s, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Huawei has no issues doing business with US companies.
Huawei is not a company in the western sense. It's an equivalent of government department.
Any company dealing with Chinese "company" is de facto dealing with Chinese government and all that it entails.
Weird. I only ever press return at the end of a paragraph.
Obviously, the word wrap is precisely why I don't press return at the end of every line.
Chrome. 118.5.0.993.80
MagicOS. 7.1.0.260
Microsoft SwiftKey. 9.10.23.20
Recently but only sometimes, the insertion point will vanish from the posting frame making text navigation a real pain but without any unnecessary hitting of the return key.
I am not well up on how to train an AI, but does it have that much of an impact if your not using cutting edge tech is from companies like NVIDIA or Intel?
So even if the Chinese companies have to use home grown kit which is only half as fast as what the US companies can offer, would it not just take longer to train them up their AI but they will still get their in the end?
And can it not be scaled up by throwing more GPUs at the issue to compensate for each individual ones not being as fast?
This looks to me like a policy that is set to backfire spectacularly.
China seems to have a huge proportion of the world's top AI researchers. The is a lot still to be achieved in AI efficiency, so if they have limited access to silicon then over the next few years China's expertise in AI efficiency is set to explode.
At the same time, high powered silicon chips are one of the few things China is currently dependent on the rest of the world to produce. You can be sure that under this policy the CCP will be diverting massive resources to fill that gap. In 5 years they will have caught up. In 10 years this will be yet another area where the west is unable to complete with Chinese manufacturing and we will be begging them to give us access to some of their accelerators so that we can create SotA language models that don't have a fundamental communist outlook.
Thanks for joining El Reg community.
We already have a large number of pro-Chinese "commentards", here. Would you like to clarify your preferred domains of interest? Is it just Huawei phones. Or do you really plan to expand into nuclear bombs, bullet trains, hyper-sonic missiles, space stations, and Kriegsmarine topics?
You seem to be a big fan of Huawei, have you seen their new “AI” which if you look very closely at the top bar you will just see is Unreal Engine Metahumans and a Thai woman. Incredible!!! https://www.reddit.com/r/ADVChina/comments/xse2dg/im_sorry_i_just_cant_help_myself_with_this/
That is definitely wacky, somewhat embarrassing, cringeworthy and I hope not representative of Thai women.
All the woman I've known from the country have been great, humble and very respectful.
It's from 2022 (the technology was unveiled in 2021) but the 'digital employees' are actually being used in the financial sector and Huawei claims the market for applications of digital people avatars (and avatars of pets) will be worth over $500 billion by 2030.
I have seen the original Huawei presentation which was impressive if the short conversation was free running. The problem is the answers in conversation seemed 'scripted' and she understood the Chinese Huawei presenter's non perfect English without a hiccup.
Obviously this is still WiP and AFAIK only being used in finance/insurance marketing at the moment. Everything needs to start somewhere but maybe Sarah shouldn't have been given a few digital beers before having that conversation
Agreed, I don't think this is representative at all. I am under the same impression that they are very nice people and that is not my qualm with this.
I am sceptical of the claimed "AI" capabilities of Sara, as to me this seems like a Thai lady in a booth pretending to be this avatar with some motion capture software - which is clearly not a Huawei invention as in this video https://youtu.be/z2jokenN20U?si=BTbg78B0MpEuzSOA&t=228 you can see the top bar states it is running "MetaHumans (64-bit Development PCD3D_SMS)". I also feel Huawei could've shelled out a little more for the box as it seemed laggy when lots of movement was happening and that's certainly not putting their best foot forward. Sara seems to be a really mixed bag - more recently I've seen what appears to be Motion Captured/Prerecorded examples of Sara AI who can interestingly now only speak Mandarin and English (which makes sense, what with Huawei being a Chinese company) - I just don't understand why it wasn't this way in this example which is part of the reason I have my doubts.
This scripted "AI" (i.e. Pre-generated talking video) seems like a theme recently - what with AI Confucius (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXiKIH_668U and https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BKPZvDYqRJg) both from state media, which is just a photo manipulation app with a TTS voice behind it (which has been used in the west for months now)
Anyhow, if this industry is going to be as big as you estimate it looks like Epic Games with their MetaHumans are going to make a killing.
As you may or may not know, Huawei is their own fab. The international press has been pumping a lot of nonsense for some time. Huawei is a massive producer of Flash memory for their own SSD devices. They also produce their own circuit boards. Huawei also fabs their own 7nm which appears to be about a year ahead of SMIC in development.
At Huawei Connect 2023, Huawei released the Atlas 9000 platform which like the H100 is a platform. H100 is not a card, it's basically an entire server. Atlas 9000 is a platform which scales from tiny to super-computer in size. Because of Huawei's supply chain, they can deliver have entire massive-scale AI supercomputers in transit in less time than it takes to negotiate a sale with NVidia.
I'm only relaying my own research because NVidia has extremely long lead times on delivery. And I would rather buy something which can be shipped this month rather than waiting two years.
It's a little funny, it wasn't until the US changed their message from "Chinese stuff isn't any good, you'll buy American because it's better" to "You can't use Chinese because it's a security threat" that I took Chinese tech seriously. It was actually the US campaign against China that made me realize that as long as I take the security aspect seriously, Chinese tech is good enough to replace American tech.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
