Biden Commerce Pick Sees 'No Reason' To Lift Huawei Curbs (bloomberg.com) 99
President Joe Biden's nominee for Commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, said she knows of "no reason" why Huawei and other Chinese companies shouldn't remain on a restricted trade list. From a report: Raimondo, in written questions from Senate Republicans, was asked about the company, as well as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co. and others. They are on a list that requires U.S. firms to obtain government licenses if they want to sell American tech and intellectual property to the companies. "I understand that parties are placed on the Entity List and the Military End User List generally because they pose a risk to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests," said Raimondo, the Democratic governor of Rhode Island. "I currently have no reason to believe that entities on those lists should not be there. If confirmed, I look forward to a briefing on these entities and others of concern."
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What we suddenly love and trust China?
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> Because TRUMP used China trade war to enrich his empire.
If by 'empire' you mean the United States of America and it's citizens, then we may have found some common ground.
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China has concentration camps where women are raped, sterilized, tortured, and organs are harvested. With that in mind, I don't care what things you have to say in defense of being more open towards China.
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To be fair, the academics that came up with the theory that they must be harvesting organs didn't even visit the country, they just did this as a paper analysis and concluded that this must be the only possible explanation given the supply/demand numbers they had to work with. I don't find that to be a terribly convincing argument, and notably, no one other than Falun Gong affiliated publications have really run with this angle. To date, there is no evidence for this one way or the other. I'm sure things ar
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Why did she express her opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Doh!
"I look forward to a briefing on these entities and others of concern"
Wouldn't it express wisdom, not to mention common sense, to simply respond that you will be able to express your position on it after having been briefed on it?
It is frickin' tragic that "I don't know (yet)" is not an accepted answer in the political realm. Such an answer reflects the kind of unprejudiced, evidence-based thinking the world sorely needs in leadership.
Disappointing.
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This is just an about-face for the public persona of the Democrat Party, not an about-face on how its always voted. It was Nixon that went to China.
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At least that gives a reasonable explanation for why someone not interested in a stupid-ass trade war would want to keep the Huawei ban in place - they don't know enough to take any action one way or another yet.
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At least that gives a reasonable explanation for why someone not interested in a stupid-ass trade war would want to keep the Huawei ban in place - they don't know enough to take any action one way or another yet.
Because both parties wanted to suppress China, just with different approaches.
Biden had already called China "the most serious competitor" https://www.msn.com/en-xl/news... [msn.com]
Do you think he would ease up any pressure on China, regardless of right or wrong, legal or not?
Biden may not want to continue the trade war, he probably won't start such a trade war in the first place, but given that the US is already in the middle of one thanks to Trump, Biden might just choose to do nothing so the trade war will just c
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So Huawei will just transfer knowledge to a new unsanctioned subsidiary then and do business freely as they should be able to do.
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Seriously, no one thought Huawe posed a threat to national security and everybody decried the action. Now Biden is keeping the ban in place, everything is fine??
Same policies, different names.
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If I was in her shoes I would wait to see if there's anything of substance in classified intelligence briefings before lifting the ban.
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Yes I think she shouldn't express (Score:3)
but if she insisted on expressing an opinion based on the sweep of publicly available info on the case, that info would have led to a conclusion of doubting the validity of the security-concern listing.
Most reports and technical forum discussions that I've read about the specifics of security threats from Huawei give a strong impression that this was political trade-ware / xenophobia based policy rather than valid security concerns. Th
Re: Yes I think she shouldn't express (Score:2)
What about the hardware? That's when the UK changed tack.
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Most reports and technical forum discussions that I've read about the specifics of security threats from Huawei give a strong impression that this was political trade-ware / xenophobia based policy rather than valid security concerns.
I'm afraid you'll have to take this with a pinch of salt:
Maybe two years ago I read, and downloaded, though unfortunately onto a different machine, a report detailing the significant concerns the HCSEC had with Huawei's software development processes, or at least the end result of them - essentially multiple versions of the same (security) modules, many dated, unpatched, insecure, etc. Unfortunately a quick search has failed to pull up the document containing the exact details.
However, last year's HCSEC ann
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Those are fears that Huawei doesn't develop its code in a secure way, so the resulting code is vulnerable to malware/intrusion etc.
From my readings I'd say it was more like "There is evidence..." but that's a minor niggle.
Fair enough. Now what about Windows, Linux, web browsers, everyday wi-fi routers from multiple companies, communication infrastructure providers like cisco etc... Those have all had careless design/implementation histories and many security vulnerabilities.
Oh, absolutely. I'm pretty sure there's a fairly common maxim that any non-trivial code contains bugs. I wonder perhaps if, in this instance, it's a question of scope. If your WAN / MAN gateways, your routers, your firewalls and your desktop OS's are all provided by different companies the barrier might be somewhat higher. While an attacker might be able to exfiltrate some data they can't easily get everything. Recent
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"I currently have no reason to believe that entities on those lists should not be there. If confirmed, I look forward to a briefing on these entities and others of concern."
Except people decried the decision and thought Trump was acting like a madman for doing it. Now that Biden wants to continue the policies, everything is fine.
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After reading what she said, it translates amazingly well to "I don't know yet. I look forward to learning more."
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To be placed on such a list, legitimately, requires solid evidence against the company. The correct onus is not "we need a reason to take them off the list" but rather "there needs to be a good reason why they were put on the list and why they should remain there." The briefing would help determine if there was a good re
Well, you did have (Score:2)
obviously every single specific policy put in place by that regime needs careful review, and probably needs to be unf*cked.
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That was 30,000+ (30,573). The WaPo kept counting until his last day in office. The problem with his alleged "policies" was that he never did anything but for himself, and his minions were off doing their own thing because he couldn't understand what they were doing. So every "policy" needs to be sifted to figure out whether it was a grifter family enrichment scheme or a bigot's wet dream.
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No, she didn't express support for Trump's policies. All she did was say that those on the list were probably there for a good reason. Sure Orange Man might have put them on the list because China Flu Bad, but she's not in a position to question the list until more information was given.
Maybe Trump put the companies on the list out of pettiness. Maybe it just appeared that way and there were legitimate reasons.
Hard to tell until one gets fully briefed on the matter, and we all know how Trump gave Biden's tr
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No jackass this does not take time nor scrutiny. It was debated at the time this was done and decried as xenophobic and a trade war.
They can easily over turn it but they are with the decision.
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Why do you think there is only one briefing ever and that nothing ever changes?
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It's bipartisan [cnbc.com].
"Pelosi says working with China’s Huawei is like ‘choosing autocracy over democracy’"
No one likes human rights abusers.
Yeah then I guess you'd agree with the following: (Score:2)
Do these kind of blanket group punishment techniques really make sense? Or are they just basically racism perhaps?
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What is the best way to end human rights abuses in China? Is trying to destroy Chinese companies, starting a trade war that puts people out of work, the best way to go about it? I think not.
20 years ago there was almost no LGBT representation in China. Now it's open and accepted, with a push for people to list their partners as partners rather than "roommate" or some other euphemism on the census. This has been driven by increasing quality of life allowing people to be more independent (i.e. not forced to m
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What is the best way to end human rights abuses in China? Is trying to destroy Chinese companies, starting a trade war that puts people out of work, the best way to go about it? I think not.
It's the best way that China has left on the table.
This is also a dangerous game for the US. China has been waiting to see what happens post-Trump, and if things don't improve then the real trade war starts. That won't be good for anyone, and is too blunt an instrument to have any positive effect on the Chinese government, so don't pretend it's some moral imperative or for their own good.
It's not for their own good, and it's not a moral consideration, it's a logistic one. Funding China is funding authoritarianism. We send them our money and they use it to oppress people. We have to stop doing that, or the results will be unfortunate. Otherwise, when the trade war becomes a shooting war, we will have funded our own demise.
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China's trade with the US is 0.64 trillion of that.
Just some perspective on what the US can "do to" China in terms of trade restriction. BTW the vast majority of value of trade between the two countries is China exporting to US (e.g. iPhones, chips for machines and cars etc) so a change of US policy would require the US to find alternative sources for a shitload of stuff.
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a change of US policy would require the US to find alternative sources for a shitload of stuff.
It would require finding more expensive sources, which means more expensive devices. It's not like there's no down side. But that does incentivize making better equipment, because people get pissed off if they pay a lot and it turns out they got crap.
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20 years ago there were not ethnic concentration camps in China. Today there are.
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Well, that's because she was speaking diplomacy, in which words are just moves in a game. Do you really think she hasn't been thoroughly briefed by the transition team on what the Biden Administration wants to do with Huawei? The departmental briefing is just a formality after which *she* will tell *them* what the policy is.
That's why they were so hot and bothered about Trump delaying the transition. The Biden transition team had its own experts who'd served in previous administrations who have all the
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It is frickin' tragic that "I don't know (yet)" is not an accepted answer in the political realm. Such an answer reflects the kind of unprejudiced, evidence-based thinking the world sorely needs in leadership.
Disappointing.
Why is this disappointing? Unless there is a security reason to hide one's thinking, it's refreshing that a cabinet nominee expresses true feelings and thinking.
In fact, it's pitiful when grown adults explicitly lie and say things like "I don't recall" or other non-answers. That is common when Senate confirmation is not certain. For these cabinet confirmations, the confirmations are certain to pass, so there's no need to lie with non-answers.
Not unexpected, look back in 10-20 years (Score:5, Interesting)
It was widely commented within China that they should not expect much from Biden, almost as soon as Biden won the election.
The special thing about Trump was that he was actually honest and upfront about putting America interest first, without any attempt to sugar coat it in any moral high ground, and also doing it without any long term strategy. It was expected Biden would do just the same America interest first things, although in a more sugar-coated way with more flowery moral high ground rhetoric. China already laid out how the US could work together with them if the US so wishes, leaving nothing to imagination or guessing. If not, well, they are prepared. Indeed very well prepared thanks to Trump.
Will Huawei be hurt in the coming years, most likely. Will they survive in 10 years? Hard to say. But unlike Samsung in SK, Huawei's demise will not be devastating to China, other companies will rise up to take its place. Furthermore, if Huawei actually demised, their employees might very well go out and start 10 more companies that was run like Huawei and come back even stronger in 10-20 years. The divesting of the Honor brand may be a hint of how Huawei may end up being split into multiple companies.
HOWEVER, what Americans should be careful is how this will play out in the next 10-20 years, and by that I didn't mean Huawei itself, but how China has been doing since the last 2 years and will continue to do. Such as,
1, the double circulation. Basically China is aiming to drive GDP growth internally and along with any country who are willing to cooperate through the BRI, and more recently the RCEP and BIT with EU. By 2030, we might very well see that the US only succeeded in isolating itself.
2, US Dollar, and the US debt that China holds. Have you ever thought of why other countries hold USD as foreign reserves? The simple answer is to buy strategic supplies, such as oil, in times of need. So if one finds out that one cannot buy what was needed even using USD on hand, then what's the point? Trump just shown the Chinese that the US can make them unable to buy chips they needed no matter how much USD they have in reserve. So why should China continue to hold US govt bonds? They might as well us those hundreds of millions of dollars to make more currency swap deals with countries they trade with (which they had been doing in the past decade), or invest directly in the companies making what they needed, or even barter with goods directly (don't forget China is now the world's largest manufacturer). How would the US like it if China started to unload their US bonds in the next decade or two?
3, With the flip-flopping of the US policy every 4 or 8 years, can the US even maintain a sensible policy to deal with China?
The coming decades would be very interesting indeed.
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> their employees might very well go out and start 10 more companies that was run like Huawei and come back even stronger in 10-20 years.
And as long as those companies are outside China, ideally in the US, then that sounds great :).
Why would they? Especially now the US restricted the terms of entry visa for Chinese? Even Chinese students think twice about going to the US to study, lest they get their visa cancelled in the last minute, or even worse, halfway through.
Politically, Tiktok just illustrated how dangerous it is for any Chinese to start a company in the US. Without any due process or recourse, just by mandate from the US President, you may have to choose between selling your company for pennies or have your company shutdow
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Posting anon due to hitting a bit too close to home work wise in dealing with ericsson/huawei/nokia.
Will Huawei be hurt in the coming years, most likely. Will they survive in 10 years? Hard to say. But unlike Samsung in SK, Huawei's demise will not be devastating to China, other companies will rise up to take its place. Furthermore, if Huawei actually demised, their employees might very well go out and start 10 more companies that was run like Huawei and come back even stronger in 10-20 years. The divesting of the Honor brand may be a hint of how Huawei may end up being split into multiple companies.
More likely what will happen is what has already happened, the Huawei staff become the new Ericsson staff in any country where Huawei was banned ( frequently bringing their business culture with them to boot) .
Any person with relatives in china is a potential target for chinese coercion. If only hardware was being supplied this would be less of a concern but there is an elephant in the room.
Which is in many p
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It doesn't matter who is in charge, there is clearly broad bipartisan support for doing everything possible to cripple Chinese tech companies.
There seem to be concerns about Chinese companies using their advantages (huge government support/subsidies, access to industrial espionage, ignoring a lot of foreign patents/copyrights/etc) to make their products better than western companies as well as concerns about Chinese tech companies using western technology as part of products for the Chinese military (not go
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China has been racing to build up domestic chip production, and to replace financial institutions that the US used to enforce US laws overseas. The main effect of Trump's trade war with them has been to weaken US influence and accelerate the replacement of US manufacturing.
This is the last chance saloon for the US in this war, if things don't change the Chinese will start to retaliate hard which means pain for big US companies. Maybe a squeeze on Apple since they are heavily reliant on manufacturing in that
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China is not Americas friend. In many ways China is actively hostile to America. China is also a valuable trading partner to the US... but not a trustworthy one (industrial espionage, poison baby formula, etc).
Re: Why is everyone just going along with this ins (Score:2)
You know, he's actually right. ... well, basically your comment.
He may have gone a bit insane a from it.
But look at you: You're the batshit insane ones.
This whole thing *is* actually insane. And you just shrug and go
You're nuts. Casually completely batshit nuts.
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Racist! (Score:1, Interesting)
Mob: Racist!
Biden: We don't trust Huawei
Mob: We love you!
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Meanwhile you sound just like the garden-variety paid China shills that seem to permeate this place and the Internet in general, attempting to whitewash expansionist and aggressive policies and actions of the Chinese Government. Wonder why that is???
Re: Racist! (Score:1)
Always an explanation.
Always some highground-ish demeaning tone.
Never accountable.
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Always some highground-ish
You know there's a word for that?
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Huawei isn't state run.
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No different than US companies. You can't operate in a market without following government rules.
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As Snowden has proven the US government already extensively collects metadata at the network backbones themselves.
The idea that Western governments don't do extensive data collection is near sighted.
Huawei is a private company which is a network equipment manufacturer. They supply network equipment. If it collects user data or not is set by the customer which is the telco. In China the telcos are government owned. In the US the telcos aren't government owned but they are subject to data collection directive
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If it collects user data or not is set by the customer which is the telco
If that were the case it wouldn't be such a big deal. The impression I get, and most of us aren't privy to top secret government intelligence so this is a best guess, is that Chinese Technology companies such as Huawei have been collecting data on foreign owned equipment on behalf of the Chinese government. That is the very definition of espionage.
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If something like that actually happened you would have seen reports of it already.
Their equipment is used in the backend and the network traffic would be detected by a firewall or packet sniffer.
Most of the reports were about possible (not actual) backdoors in their equipment. One report was about a management console on the telnet port which wouldn't be visible outside the telco's internal network. Something other similar equipment also has had. They patched it out of the code once the clients complained.
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If something like that actually happened you would have seen reports of it already.
I have some experience dealing with classified government information and I'm not so sure about that.
Their equipment is used in the backend and the network traffic would be detected by a firewall or packet sniffer.
Would it? If I inject payload into existing packets destined for any Chinese/Russian or non US web server which I also intercept (because I make all the network equipment there too) then scrape it out again on a friendly router, how would you know?
Huawei has made their code available for inspection by 3rd parties in the interests of dismissing any reports like these.
Just speculating here, but one option would be to use a parallel chipset, one clean, one with the malware.
The point here is that China has capability and intent
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There you go again saying they're CCP controlled. They aren't any more than any other company operating in China.
Even if they did what you're talking about it would be detected by simply inspecting the destination and volume of data transmitted. If there was a persistent high volume of information sent to specific destinations it would be detected eventually. These are telcos. A lot of them have plenty of people who are experts in network security. At least as good as you can get a security analyst to be. B
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There you go again saying they're CCP controlled. They aren't any more than any other company operating in China.
And? Just because they're all compromised doesn't make Huawei any less compromised.
They basically attacked the two Chinese companies which were the top competitors against Apple.
Oh well, sucks to be them. The CCP is tyranny so I'm happy for anything they have have control over die in a ditch.
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Trump: We don't trust Huawei
Mob: Racist!
If you have a quote for that, it would be kind of cool. I just searched for the opinion of some top democrats, and they have largely agreed with Trump on this issue.
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I searched for that briefly and the only thing I found was an accusation of racism from Huawei themselves.
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Really?
LA Times: https://www.latimes.com/projec... [latimes.com]
"The war against Huawei" and they even go as far as claiming there is "not even a smoking gun" on which the administration bases its decisions
The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
"imperial rules of engagement"
Marxist blog (first page of Google still): https://rdln.wordpress.com/201... [wordpress.com]
"Racism, imperialism"
Le Monde, CNBC, Axios, the Diplomat... there are plenty of places where you can find condemnations of Trump on the Huawei and other China issues w
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The first two don't mention racism at all. The third is a Wordpress site.
Re: Racist! (Score:2)
Then stop hallucinating!
Nobody said "We love you!"!
Roll our own? (Score:2)
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I already said in this thread. There is no actual strategy.
OK, fine, you PUNISH the Evil Empire(s) which are now so accustomed to punishment that they get kicks from setting propaganda pieces to the Imperial March and using Star War Empire spoofs:
Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Exhibit B: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
SO F*CKING WHAT? Does anyone think they give a f*ck? More importantly, when putting "sanctions" on them we damage our companies too. Did anyone think of
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To have a homegrown solution is to make it easier for people to go into this kind of work whether it be IT or machining precision parts and all the other stuff in between. Look at K-12 these days, I don't see the kinds of vocational classes I remember back in the days. It's been said you gotta have more education than a high school diploma, and we see so many going into crushing debt (student debt was unheard of before 1980).
Many say just don't buy from China, yeah I put that in the good-luck-with-that dep
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Well, maybe prove they are a threat first. (Score:2)
Cause everybody could see that no proof was ever given and it was just random nationalist ego posturing, and the entire world now thinks you will do it to their companies on another crazy whim.
Does he know, If you're gonna act like that, the entire damn world will block US companies and businesses for "national security" (read: "business interests") reasons too?
Or is he really that Trumpid, to not realize that or not care?
PROTIP: Back it up, or nobody will ever take you seriouly again!
China is an enemy society (Score:2)
Not just a society with an enemy government.
It fills concentration camps with minorities. It suppresses democratic movements in Hong Kong. It traffics organs from executed prisoners.
Why are you shilling for Beijing?
could be there actuality is a security risk. (Score:2)
Deal (Score:1)
If the sanctions continue, Huawei is very likely to fall by the wayside in the coming years.
US Military and Huawei (Score:2)