Trump Moves to Ban Foreign Telecom Gear, Targeting Huawei and China

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/business/huawei-ban-trump.html

by jbegley • 7 years ago

137 108 7 years ago

samirm2• 7 years ago

This in addition to all the "security" advisories to other countries seems like a move to curb their economic growth more than anything.

mschuster913• 7 years ago

For once in 2 years though the current US admin is right IMHO. China is not an ally, Russia is not an ally. Best case they're semi-neutral, worst case they're the next enemy.

China especially has been playing the ultra-long game by slowly getting more and more countries under their dependence, buying up assets left and right and where that didn't help resorting to industrial espionage.

The problem that the telco operators have is that there is (thanks to Chinese dumping, did I mention they are playing a long game) next to no viable competition in either the US or the expanded NATO space - Europe has Ericsson and Nokia which are expensive and the US has Cisco which is expensive and crops up with at least one real backdoor a month.

wobblegong• 7 years ago

Are hardware vulnerabilities so difficult to find and insidious that no amount of auditing and investigation by the US govt will ever be sufficient?

AcerbicZero• 7 years ago

I agree, to a point. I'm not entirely opposed to Trump (or entirely in favor) but it seems if we're going to be stuck playing economic realpolitik with a country as nationalized as China this is a perfectly reasonable step. The US and its allies have not been particularly good stewards with the power they've held over the world for the last ~70+ years, but I shudder to think of what a Chinese controlled network backbone would do to things.

You can argue the West doesn't behave as well as it should on the world stage, but Western ideology seems to be the best hope we have for an eventual egalitarian future, although the human cost will still be high. The further we get from authoritarianism, be it left or right, the better, in my opinion.

solotronics• 7 years ago

Are you talking specifically about 5G?

samirm2• 7 years ago

So? You say that like it's a problem. China being the number 1 economy is inevitable and I, for one, am looking forward to it.

gramstrong• 7 years ago

I don't doubt it, but at least some security is a side effect of that.

dx87• 7 years ago

Not really. Look at articles posted on this site whenever a device made in China is "accidentally" sending user information back to some server in China; people keep asking why the government isn't doing anything to warn citizens or companies about bad actors in the hardware department. When the government does warn us not to use hardware from a specific vendor, people here say it's just a GOP plot to hurt China's economy under the guise of security.

petschge3• 7 years ago

The fear mongering against Huawei becomes really interesting when you look at all the "sorry, we forgot about that unintentional access possibility" incidents in Cisco gear that might either be back doors or lousy QA leading to security problems.

mythrwy• 7 years ago

All that shows is gee, it really can and really does happen.

Which is a stronger argument, not weaker for suspicious treatment of Huawei by Western governments.

mey• 7 years ago

Watching from afar, the amount of huge holes in Cisco are staggering. I don't really understand IT's love of Cisco, other than that's all they've certed in/invested in/never get fired for IBM mentality. For people in the networking space, what makes you use cisco for firewalls/core routing at this point?

laurentdc• 7 years ago

* abundance of people with Cisco knowledge and certifications, everyone has fiddled with a Cisco CLI at some point in their career

* devices on the gray market are very cheap, low barrier to entry for setting up a lab or a SMB infrastructure

* the lower end stuff is pretty much set and forget (e.g. we still have 1700 series devices from year 2003 routing calls without a hiccup)

* "nobody ever got fired for buying Cisco" company mentality

bane• 7 years ago

Cisco is the Oracle of networking gear.

Alupis3• 7 years ago

I don't really see the fear mongering or problem here.

This executive order would forbid the government from purchasing and installing Telecom/Networking equipment that would be considered to have a higher than acceptable risk.

Given that China isn't exactly the most friendly nation to the US, and given Huawei is by nature, an extension of the Chinese Government, it's not unreasonable to assume China might at some point in the future (or already is) use Huawei to conduct electronic espionage against other nations.

Just like it wouldn't be unreasonable for China to forbid purchase and use of Cisco equipment within the Chinese government.

(We should also not forget or excuse Chinese IP theft which has enabled Huawei to produce competitive products in the first place...)

petschge3• 7 years ago

The government deciding to not purchase that equipment for their own use in sensitive networks is one thing. (And this was already in place before this executive order.)

Banning corporations from doing that in their own commercial networks is another thing (and that is what happens now).

And pressuring other countries (either via ambassadors or other venues) and threatening with sanctions when they come to their own conclusions is yet another thing again.

chrisco2553• 7 years ago

Maybe that's our fault for outsourcing all of our semiconductor production to China. We got cheap electronics out of the deal, but we've lost a lot of expertise in manufacturing as a result.

ISV_Damocles3• 7 years ago

(We should also not forget or excuse Chinese IP theft which has enabled Huawei to produce competitive products in the first place...)

I certainly can, because it would be hypocritical to be against Microsoft using IP rights as a bludgeon on Linux, Qualcomm on Apple, Oracle on Google, and then be upset with Huawei on anything but stealing trade secrets.

Patents have not helped the common man for at least a hundred years as companies have paid for dubious patents to bludgeon smaller competitors with. Copyrights have strangled the arts since Steamboat Willie and have prevented the public from deciding what stories they want to share.

Trademarks and Trade Secrets, however, seem mostly fine, as knowing the real origin of a product is a greater good for the public than letting copycats grift them, and being clever doing something should be rewarded but once it can be replicated, the competition heats up and again helps the general public with better quality goods and services.

e40• 7 years ago

Software is now sufficiently complicated that it isn't really possible to know the motives of the people creating it. When the people are controlled by governments like China, fear of those motives is reasonable.

Note also that I don't trust the motives of Cisco, either, except to try to maximize their bottom line. (I'm not really worried about rouge employees at Cisco.) I think in service of said bottom line, Cisco and other companies will do almost anything. I'm not say all will do anything, just that some will, and when some will, there is a threat from them, too. Just like Cisco not giving a crap about security when it conflicts with them making more money.

tssva• 7 years ago

Based upon my 24 years of experience using Cisco gear I would strongly lean towards lousy QA.

cljs-js-eval• 7 years ago

Given what China is willing to do in Xinjiang, can it really be called fear mongering? Someone willing to turn an entire state into a surveillance camp is definitely ok with using a hardware company to spy. In what world would they have scruples about spying with Huawei but not in restricting the freedoms of an entire ethnic group? For what it's worth, I'm aware that could partially apply to the US as well.

myrandomcomment• 7 years ago

The difference is it our "company" that screwed up. If it is Cisco there is a reasonable belief that they just screwed it up. If it is a China company the assumption has to be it was for the government. That does not have to be the truth, but it is just the way it is.

The reality is that both just liked screwed up.

EamonnMR• 7 years ago

What is this gonna mean for my OnePlus

gbear605• 7 years ago

Nothing, unless your cellphone is part of the infrastructure of a telecom company.

robertAngst2• 7 years ago

Can anyone stop him?

I don't want him to do this. I don't want these tariffs.

Does this mean the Republican Party is compliant in this nonsense?

chrisco2553• 7 years ago

Why should they stop him? Do you trust China? I don't.

swebs• 7 years ago

I, on the other hand, am glad these tariffs are happening. They've been a long time coming.

gscott• 7 years ago

I agree. We can't control China's behavior but the tariffs do a good job of controlling our own behavior since they punish us more then China. So if you are single sourcing everything in China you will be punished more then those who have more sources. Challenge is the next President will back right off and we will be where we were before.

pickle-wizard• 7 years ago

I really only have one problem with these tariffs. That Trump didn't get our allies to also raise their tariffs against China.

chrischen2• 7 years ago

We don't really source much except cheap labor from China. On the surface it seems like the Chinese make the bulk of the profit off something like an iPhone but really they make very little. In fact China knows this, which is why they've been tariffing iPhones even if they are "exported" from China back to China.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-makes-8-46-from-an-iphone...

robertAngst2• 7 years ago

Wow that is crazy, I don't usually meet people who like higher taxes.

Are you sure you aren't misunderstanding the situation?

hedora• 7 years ago

Yes, they are compliant. Congress could easily block this, but the senate won’t.

Trump is betting that low interest rates will prop up the US economy through the next election cycle. China is betting they won’t. The GOP is betting they can get Trump to “own” any economic fall out from the trade war.

(Edit: and you can stop him by voting)

taiwanboy• 7 years ago

Please don’t. Trump is one of the few people standing up to China, and China is threatening to invade my country, Taiwan. China is building up its naval forces and artificial islands nearby. Xi jing Ping has said unification is ultimate goal and force is an option. US intelligence said recently Beijing is preparing to invade Taiwan.

Because of China, Taiwan is barred from attending WHO.

criddell2• 7 years ago

I think this is something most Americans probably support.

jeffdavis• 7 years ago

I am, for the most part, a free-trade advocate.

But I have been having more and more doubts when it comes to China. Free trade has not made China a more free place. It looks like they are just using their economic power to hurt freedom everywhere.

tomp• 7 years ago

Also, there are many limits to free trade. E.g. constant WTO lawsuits regarding one country subsidizing their own corporations. You could easily claim that all Chinese corporations are state-sponsored...

__d• 7 years ago

I think there are two different philosophies at work here.

In one, international trading has built a web of mutual dependencies between countries. When your economic well-being depends on another country, you're less likely to go to war with them. The more inter-dependencies exist, the less likely armed conflict becomes.

Countries outside the trading bloc are then suspect: they have nothing to lose in attacking. Attempts to bring outsiders into the bloc via trade agreements, development, loans, etc, are all really part of a defensive security strategy.

This is nothing new: rulers have been marrying their children to those of their enemies for the same reasons since forever.

The other point of view, which seems dominant within the current US administration, looks at the inter-dependencies of international trade purely as a liability.

When the US relies on China to provide it with lots of manufactured goods, that is seen mostly (or solely) as a risk for the US, not as a stabilizing link in a web of mutual dependency.

Which is not to say that China (for example) won't try to leverage those dependencies to improve its position, nor to say that the US shouldn't encourage more widespread dependencies so that there's resilience in the system to bad acting on the part of any single player.

The point being that detaching from the web of mutual dependency makes you both weaker (in that you can only rely on yourself), and more threatening (since you no longer have anything to lose by attacking).

The US, by virtue of its size, can probably most afford to be isolated, but it's not clear to me that it's a good long-term strategy.

cletus• 7 years ago

This just goes to prove that even a racist clock is right twice a day [1] because it's clear that:

- China has engaged in state-sponsored corporate and military espionage; and

- Chinese companies are not separate from the state.

The only reasonable conclusion here is that Huawei gear on key networking infrastructure represents a security threat and really that's all there is to it. I find it odd that it's taken Trump, who otherwise is a disaster on pretty much every front, to actually say what is otherwise obvious.

[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-racist-clock-4...

bvdba• 7 years ago

I don't believe this is the consequence of Trump being racist.

deertick1• 7 years ago

I don't believe trump is racist.

bogomipz• 7 years ago

"Foreign Telecom Gear" really only ever seems to mean Huawei and China in these proclamations.

The fact is the majority of Telecom gear is foreign-made with regards to the US. To wit:

Alcatel-Lucent - France

Nokia - Finland

Siemens - Germany

Samsung - Korea

Fujitsu and NEC - Japan

If the US were to truly enforce a domestic US-only vendor selection it would be limited to Cienna, Cisco, Qualcomm and Motorola. And to my knowledge none of those four companies are making 5G switching gear.

HillaryBriss• 7 years ago

isn't all this stuff actually manufactured in China?

culot• 7 years ago

Depends on the component or product probably. Some is, some isn't.

nickpsecurity2• 7 years ago

It could get worse if you consider many companies have R&D centers in countries that like IP spying. That includes Russia and China. For China, true more often if hardware development is involved.

So, Trump gonna require all potentially-subversive, foreign, R&D centers to be shut down with it all imported to America? Then require them to be US citizens born here with low risk of foreign influence? And then paid well with stable lifestyle with lower odds of bribery or blackmail?

I think he has no idea what it takes to reduce foreign risk. Besides, the so-called APT's are doing a number on our Fortune 500 companies with techniques like spear fishing with PDF-looking executables. I mean, how much will blocking Chinese equipment even help such companies? ;)

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

A little off topic: I think multiple countries should join together to co-sponsor security evaluation labs to check Cisco, Huawei, and all telecom companies. These labs should get access to hardware design, software, etc. This can be done in a way that mostly protects individual company’s intellectual property.

I suspect that the top telecom tech companies would go along with this idea, to get vetted, if it would help increase their business. Right now there are two European and one Chinese company who can ship 5G gear. I would like all 5G, and older gear also, to be vetted by international security labs.

soared• 7 years ago

This /cannot/ be done in a way that mostly protects individual company’s intellectual property /from spilling into other countries hands/

Fixed.

quotz3• 7 years ago

Yeah, the problem is that unlike the EU and US companies, Huawei is just the institutional arm of a communist dictatorship regime masked as a company.

cup• 7 years ago

And CIA seeded companies aren't?

theNJR• 7 years ago

Sort of like UN weapons inspects?

dylan604• 7 years ago

I like that. If we are using vocabulary like Cyber Warfare, Cyber Attacks, and even now seeing actual bombs blowing up buildings as a retaliation of a cyber attack, then why not. Who would be the Scott Ritter of the cyber world? Although, the only people that I'd trust to understand the equipment are the exact people I wouldn't trust with my equipment! ;-)

dajohnson89• 7 years ago

good idea but it sounds like a highly expensive affair

igravious• 7 years ago

That's a very good idea. We do it for sensitive stuff like nukes, maybe we should start regarding vital telecoms and networking stuff the same way.

elamje• 7 years ago

Is there major legitimacy to the state sponsored back doors in Huawei, or has the company just become some sort of pawn in the trade war?

burtonator• 7 years ago

I'm really looking forward to a time with the United States, Russia, and China all agree to get along and decide to screw all the poor people equally instead of just trying to screw poor people in their own country.

stunt• 7 years ago

This huge international campaign including pushing other countries..! It is not about security. It is more about money. Huge influence from powerful capitalists and investors because their market and long term interests are at risk.

Trump Moves to Ban Foreign Telecom Gear, Targeting Huawei and China

Related Stories