The reason America is scared of Huawei: internet-connected everything

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612874/the-real-reason-america-is-scared-of-huawei-internet-connected-everything/

by rbanffy • 7 years ago

59 80 7 years ago

technologyreview.com

skilled• 7 years ago

Outline:

https://outline.com/VMWqxS

aritmo• 7 years ago

The spying fears look like an excuse to put the Chinese company at a disadvantage.

xb100• 7 years ago

In this case I don't think so. A a European, I equally distrust American and Chinese communications equipment.

I don't trust my Huawei modem, but with IMSI catchers, the whole discussion is academic anyway.

gruez2• 7 years ago

but with IMSI catchers, the whole discussion is academic anyway.

that's like saying you don't bother with security because someone could force you to unlock your devices at gunpoint anyways. IMSI catchers only reveal your location and any unencrypted traffic, plus you need to be physically close to your target. compare this to a backdoored phone which has access to everything you do on it and can be accessed from the other side of the world.

throwaway8879• 7 years ago

I think it's okay to want to do that. Yes, I don't want anybody spying on me, but as someone who's neither from the US nor China, I'd much rather choose to have the NSA/etc have access to my data than the Chinese.

hopler• 7 years ago

It depends if you are American or Chinese, really. Local authorities are more dangerous than remote authorities

AnanasAttack• 7 years ago

I'd much rather ...

How can you be sure that the NSA is any better than the chinese?

luckylion4• 7 years ago

Why though? We don't know what the Chinese will do, but we're somewhat informed what the US will.

Sure: the Chinese might be much worse. But they might also not be. So far, I haven't heard of intensive drone usage by the Chinese to bomb weddings half way around the world.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC2• 7 years ago

In particular so when application-layer encryption is a thing, and trusting the network is a bad idea anyway, as demonstrated, among others, by the NSA abuses published by Snowden.

kerkeslager4• 7 years ago

As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me. Add in the fact that Huawei products are cheaper, and I'll be buying Huawei products for the forseeable future.

Privacy IS something I'd be willing to pay for, but that's not an option. If the US government and corporations wanted me to trust them, they shouldn't have spied on our communications at every turn and then attempted to silence every whistleblower. The US calling out Huawei on security concerns is obviously the pot calling the kettle black, and I don't think many people internationally will be persuaded.

Any government could make a serious play for privacy by making some privacy laws with civil and criminal penalties for violation, and protections and rewards for whistleblowers. But as things are currently, lack of privacy comes standard with communication devices from any country, and Americans calling Huawei out for it is just inane posturing.

ksec• 7 years ago

I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote ( OK, might not be working so well but you do have the power )

Which ever nations spying on another nations which you don't have a choice. And that is not just social security, but also national security and business security. The implication is much wider.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC2• 7 years ago

I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote

No, I don't, and those who do are obviously incompetent at it.

kerkeslager4• 7 years ago

I don't like the government spying on me, I've voted in every election since I was able to vote, worked on some campaigns, and it's done shit all for me. I'm not saying don't vote, but you'll excuse me taking other measures to protect myself from bad actors (which includes the US government).

The fact is, most US citizens are more likely to be shot by a cop than affect in any way negatively by the Chinese government.

owens994• 7 years ago

Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are probably not important enough to be their target. Unless they could exploit you in order to exploit someone more powerful they care about, like a corporate or political leader. This is more to protect our leaders, which in turn keeps you more protected.

thefounder7• 7 years ago

Elections are important and every vote counts.

romanovcode• 7 years ago

You are completely missing the point of government surveillance.

Yes, indeed, as an individual nobody cares about you. However you are a part of general census and by spying on you and everyone around you they can predict what you are thinking, what you are craving, what political stance you hold, what are the risks of you being involved in some future problems for them etc. You can go wider and wider to a city, to a state and finally to a country. Then, for example China can really see what american citizens are thinking in general and this is valuable information.

Also, second reason why you are completely missing the point. Let's say you are one of those "I don't care if they spy on me, let them record me on my toilet." - Now your kids are involved in some political activity and you did not pay your taxes for one month 7 years ago. Government wants to suppress your kids political activity and just tell them either they stop or their father (you) go to jail. At least this is how it works in totalitarian countries.

ShorsHammer• 7 years ago

you are probably not important enough to be their target.

So why are they hoovering it all up? Every last piece of digital dust they can get.

You're not important until you stumble across evidence of a Five Eye nation committing war crimes or try to whistleblow on the IC breaking laws or run for political office trying to limit military budgets or just about anything that goes against the narrative of faceless people in faceless buildings who can and do maintain their power using the tools they have available. When was the last time the Intelligence Community said the world was getting safer and they needed less funding?

Has a single person been prosecuted for the blatant crimes revealed by Edward Snowden? How about MKUltra, did even one person go to trial for the deranged human experiments conducted on American citizens by the American Government?

Everyday people need protection from these lawless organisations more than ever to be able to shine a light on injustices without fear. Society won't advance without it, the Western World world will start spinning it's wheels like authoritarian China and friends where everyone keeps their heads down in passive obedience and liberties go backwards.

kerkeslager4• 7 years ago

This is more to protect our leaders, which in turn keeps you more protected.

Nonsense. The leaders on the US are not on my side, why should I be on theirs?

Killing people in foreign wars is done in the name of protecting me, but I didn't ask for that, and I don't believe it protects me. In fact, it's painfully obvious to me that if you kill people in foreign countries, it incentivizes their families to come here and kill Americans. US leaders aren't protecting us.

The fact is, I'm more likely to be shot by an American cop than I am to be affected by China. If I'm going to prioritize personal security, it's going to be against the threats most likely to cause me harm.

amelius• 7 years ago

As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government.

A foreign country can release sensitive information strategically, for example, as a kind of psychological warfare, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoralization_(warfare)

noir_lord• 7 years ago

That or just straight up blackmail you.

Our politicians are grim enough without some dude rocking from the Chinese Ministry of State Security and extorting them into doing something worse than the thing they'd already do anyway*

* if that is possible sometimes.

mtgx• 7 years ago

As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government.

Considering the low-quality of security in Chinese products, you are much more susceptible to be spied upon by the Chinese...and the American spy agencies, and Russia spy agencies, and criminal groups, and so on.

DyslexicAtheist• 7 years ago

... you are much more susceptible to be spied upon ...

or indeed by your own employer:

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-moderators-complain...

if we would really be worried about security (and not politics / foreign policy war mongering) we'd be speaking about threat models.. And here the China Supply Chain Threat doesn't hold up. Backdoor hardware implants are only tangentially interesting since the vulnerabilities that stem from shoddy engineering (hello crappy ASN.1 parsers and a thousand other flaws: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093301841205456896.html) are much cheaper to harness than some hypothetical purpose-made backdoor that costs millions to implement and keep covered-up. (Occam's razor)

masonic• 7 years ago

  The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me

... but are perfectly willing to provide it to everywhere else, maximizing your exposure.

nabla92• 7 years ago

China is unable to use Huawei in western countries for mass surveillance without getting instantly caught. That's not the worry here.

What they theoretically could do is to use them to assist in targeted surveillance of small number people, or cause major mobile infrastructure collapse during major conflict.

kingosticks2• 7 years ago

How would they be instantly caught?

lostapathy• 7 years ago

The issue isn’t China having “your” information or mine, its them having the aggregate of everyone’s information. Or being able to turn off all the pipes.

s_y_n_t_a_x• 7 years ago

So you'd be fine with being blackmailed with whatever your browsing history is like?

The Chinese government can do MORE because they can do things that would be illegal in America.

That's not to say our government doesn't skirt the law, but it definitely is harder and there can be consequences.

iforgotpassword2• 7 years ago

Chinas ultimate business plan: spy on all the Americans and then blackmail them. :-D

kerkeslager4• 7 years ago

So you'd be fine with being blackmailed with whatever your browsing history is like?

No. But it's much more likely that US bad actors will blackmail me than that Chinese ones will.

thefounder7• 7 years ago

It seems America is scared by mini-vans from Canada and sedans from Germany as well and pretty much anything that creates an economic gain for anyone other than America.

Huawei could pose a security threat but we already know by now that this is all about the economy and maintaining America's indisputed supremacy at all costs. After China, EU will be the next buggy man.

bracobama• 7 years ago

You know how a tyrant acts when he is losing control of his empire? He starts getting really insecure and conspiratorial. America's unipolar moment has passed and it's about time they acknowledge it instead of continuing to drown themselves in hubris.

Shivetya• 7 years ago

Don't assume this is anything new, and don't forget that many foreign nations have tariffs on imports as well. Plus another method used by past administrations was in using patent law to put up barriers to market.

The Chicken Tax has been around for decades but manufacturers do work around it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

skh2• 7 years ago

This is one positive aspect of Trump’s presidency. He has definitively shown Korea, Japan, and Europe that the Pax Americana can not be relied upon as much as it once was. Those countries will have to start leading more and have a stronger voice. They may not like the accompanying expense and tough choices this entails but I welcome it.

laumars2• 7 years ago

After China, EU will be the next buggy man.

I can see that happening too with the amount of anti-EU rhetoric happening at the moment. I mean I'm not going to defend every piece of legislation the EU has passed but some of the comments levied against the EU from their US counterparts have been down right hypocritical.

sonnyblarney• 7 years ago

Enough with the conspiratorial stuff here on HN.

European auto makers have massive sales in the US as do Chinese manufacturers of all sorts of things.

Given the proclivity of China to use their IT skills for all sorts of shenanigans, noted in the news daily, it's beyond reasonable for Western nations to be concerned about having a government backed entity 'in between' all of the most important information in the country.

This is an issue that has to be worked out.

thefounder7• 7 years ago

You don't understand. There are no "western nations" anymore. It's America First and everyone for themselves. Strong competitors are now a national security issue regardless if we are talking about Mercedes, Huawei or french cheese. Say good-bye to fair competition(if there was ever a such thing).

There is nothing conspirational. It's the new foreign policy.

China appers in the news b/c it's still the clumsy underdog. U.S has done the hacking and all the spy stuff for decades.

peter_retief2• 7 years ago

Lots of comments of how innocent China is being hard done by, really have a look at what China has done to exploit developing nations and censorship of their own people. People dont appreciate their freedoms until they get taken away

ionised• 7 years ago

Lots of comments of how innocent China is being hard done by, really have a look at what China has done to exploit developing nations

Those is glass houses...

peter_retief2• 7 years ago

Not being American or Chinese I guess I can throw stones

cletus• 7 years ago

As much as you can (rightly) criticize the US, particularly the current administration, the US still has the rule of law to a degree far larger than almost all of the rest of the world. While there are failures (eg holding anyone accountable for the subprime mortgage fiasco) there are also positives (eg it seems the US is the only developed nation that goes after the banks that enable tax evasion; see all the actions and settlements with Swiss banks as examples). The US has a largely independent judiciary that isn't afraid to say no to the administration (eg all the injunctions against the travel ban from Muslim countries).

It's also true that the US government spies on its own citizens to a degree that's debated in the post-Snowden era. So I certainly believe all phone call (and probably email) metadata is spied upon (and no doubt a sampling of the content for each). And NSLs and pen registers are obviously a thing. I certainly don't believe the tinfoil hats who think that a significant portion of Internet traffic of the tech giants is eavesdropped upon however just based on how much data that is.

Contrast this to China. Questionable rule of law. Chinese companies and their leaders are certainly complicit with the Chinese government and intelligence agencies. There have been recent stories about how the Muslim population is spied upon and/or put in "re-education" camps (this has also happened with other groups like Falun Gong). China continues a policy of erasing Tibet. Xi Jinping is largely installed himself as a Putinesque dictator (eg term limits for the presidency were recently abolished).

Given a choice between the US spying on me and China, it wouldn't even be close. The US "wins" hands down. At least I have some faith that there are limits to what the US can and will do and that the government can be held accountable to some degree (at least a far larger degree than in China).

China has aggressively pursued an agenda to further its national interest that includes the arguable exploitation of developing nations (through loans for capital programs), intellectual property theft from the developed world (through forced "partnerships" as well as repatriating Chinese nationals and outright hacking eg Google).

As largely tech people here we all know something about security. To me it's obvious that ceding control of your network (with all the potential harm that could do) to a foreign government is a national security issue.

Huawei (and others eg ZTE) have been caught here as bad actors and not actors I personally would trust if I had anything worth protecting.

China plays favourites with its own companies. It has clearly decided that it doesn't want a foreign company to control a local market, any local market, which is why you have the likes of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent instead of Google, Amazon and Facebook. And no it's not because foreign companies don't understand the Chinese market. It's because the Chinese government wills it.

Access to China's 1B citizens has been dangled as a carrot to the developed world for years. It should be clear that the game is rigged.

So, if China has decided not to relinquish control of domestic markets to foreign companies, why shouldn't the US respond in kind?

jgome• 7 years ago

As much as you can (rightly) criticize the US, particularly the current administration, the US still has the rule of law to a degree far larger than almost all of the rest of the world

And, conveniently, there are ad-hoc courts (FISA) for when you have to "legalize" massive surveillance.

see all the actions and settlements with Swiss banks as examples

Meanwhile, banks at home apparently have no problem with this... As long as it benefits american corporations, of course.

Contrast this to China. Questionable rule of law. Chinese companies and their leaders are certainly complicit with the Chinese government and intelligence agencies

Oh, I'm sure the NSA didn't have their support...:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/prism-...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-in...

There have been recent stories about how the Muslim population is spied upon and/or put in "re-education" camps

Meanwhile in your country, 2% of your population is imprisoned (more than any other country in the world), and illegal immigrants are being detained FOR YEARS. Talk about "re-education camps"

Xi Jinping is largely installed himself as a Putinesque dictator (eg term limits for the presidency were recently abolished).

The Clintons have been in power for how many years? What about the Bush family, Bolton and friends?

Also, have you ever questioned the amount of power US corporations have? Apparently not...

Given a choice between the US spying on me and China, it wouldn't even be close. The US "wins" hands down.

I'm sure the US "wins" too, they can spy on you freely, and are said to be able to collect practically all your phone calls and 10% of all internet traffic (i.e., all data, excluding videos and other irrelevant stuff).

China has aggressively pursued an agenda to further its national interest that includes the arguable exploitation of developing nations

They are literally copying what the US and Western powers have taught them. At least they don't bomb random countries thousands of miles away from their homeland under the argument of "freeing" them and "defending democracy", unlike US & EU neocolonial powers.

As largely tech people here we all know something about security. To me it's obvious that ceding control of your network

And that includes trusting your own govt., right? People who "know something about security" should know that you simply can't do anything against governments... Much less against the most powerful govt. on this planet.

Huawei (and others eg ZTE) have been caught here as bad actors and not actors I personally would trust if I had anything worth protecting.

Unlike those "accidental" backdoors in Cisco equipment, which your ISP probably trusts 100%?

China plays favourites with its own companies

Exactly what the US govt. does when it talks about "national interests". Or, do you think your government is there to defend YOUR interests?

It has clearly decided that it doesn't want a foreign company to control a local market, any local market, which is why you have the likes of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent instead of Google, Amazon and Facebook. And no it's not because foreign companies don't understand the Chinese market. It's because the Chinese government wills it

And they are right to do so. Why would they let a government that is known to play dirty control of their population? Obama, the democrat, a Nobel peace prize, bombarded 8 countries, even more than Bush Jr., yet people still believe he was a "good leader" and "better than Bush". It doesn't take much intelligence to notice the brainwashing...

Access to China's 1B citizens has been dangled as a carrot to the developed world for years.

The US has been doing that for decades. And anyone who dares disobey gets a coup d'etat or destroyed.

It should be clear that the game is rigged.

Indeed... It is rigged by the US (govt and corporations), against anyone who wants to compete fairly.

So, if China has decided not to relinquish control of domestic markets to foreign companies, why shouldn't the US respond in kind?

Yeah, the US should mind its own business, leave China AND the rest of the world alone, and not play world police, stop cheating, stop imposing its ideology, and so on.

Seriously, go read some history books.

nrb• 7 years ago

Spying stuff aside, I feel the bigger reason we should think long and hard about this is the same reason we don't source parts for our weapons program from foreign countries: mobile networks are now critical infrastructure and any form of sabotage would be devastating to our national security.

Sourcing foreign components alone massively increases risk surface area, never mind a full-scale nationwide implementation of an astoundingly complex tech.

The reason America is scared of Huawei: internet-connected everything

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