Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/08/730898429/huawei-accused-of-technology-theft

by tooltalk • 7 years ago

314 180 7 years ago

npr.org

mymindstorm• 7 years ago

Huawei Accused Of Technology Theft

In other news, water is wet.

prateeekm• 7 years ago

debatable

outside1234• 7 years ago

You are right water being wet is debatable

m3kw9• 7 years ago

Anything ever existed is debatable.

manfredo2• 7 years ago

Good point. Water is not wet in its frozen state. One could easily make the argument that the majority of water in the universe is not wet.

dang4• 7 years ago

Please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

chlee3• 7 years ago

Wall Street Journal has recently published an article [1] detailing some of the most high profile technology thefts and espionage related to Huawei.

According to the article, here's a list of thefts and espionage attributed to Huawei, employees of Huawei, or people related to Huawei.

1. Stealing tech at tradeshows:

On a summer evening in 2004, as the Supercomm tech conference in Chicago wound down, a middle-aged Chinese visitor began wending his way through the nearly abandoned booths, popping open million-dollar networking equipment to photograph the circuit boards inside, according to people who were there.

A security guard stopped him and confiscated memory sticks with the photos, a notebook with diagrams and data belonging to AT&T Corp. , and a list of six companies including Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. and Nortel Networks Corp.

2. Secure rooms impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping built in Huawei’s U.S. offices :

Alarm bells included the discovery around 2012 of secure rooms impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping built in Huawei’s U.S. offices, akin to facilities in intelligence stations around the world, American security officials say.

3. Former staff admits stealing :

“They spent all their resources stealing technology,” said Robert Read, a former contract engineer from 2002 to 2003 in Huawei’s Sweden office. “You’d steal a motherboard and bring it back and they’d reverse-engineer it.”

4. Stealing tech from Cisco :

Eighteen months before the Supercomm imbroglio erupted, Cisco accused Huawei in January 2003 of copying its software and manuals—the first time Huawei had to fight a major international allegation of its theft.

“They have made verbatim copies of whole portions of Cisco’s user manuals,” Cisco said in its lawsuit. Cisco manuals accompany its routers, and its software is visible during the router’s operation; both are easily copied, Cisco said.

The copying was so extensive that Huawei inadvertently copied bugs in Cisco’s software, according to the lawsuit.

5. Stealing tech from Motorola :

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.

5. 5G related tech theft:

Mr. Barker had never heard of “user specific tilt,” which could multiply the number of signals from an antenna and tilt them to provide greater accuracy in communicating with mobile phones.

Mr. Barker had, however, heard of a conceptually identical technology, ”per user tilt." He coined it seven years earlier, according to a Quintel lawsuit alleging misappropriation of trade secrets by Huawei. Quintel said it had shared the technology with Huawei in September 2009 after Huawei proposed a business partnership.

The partnership never came through. Huawei filed papers to secure a patent for the concept a month after their first meeting, using a document still emblazoned with Quintel’s name and the words “commercial in confidence.”

6. Camera theft :

Rui Oliveira, a 45-year-old Portuguese multimedia producer, told the Journal he flew to Huawei’s Plano offices in May 2014 to meet Huawei executives, who were interested in his patents for a camera attachment to smartphones.

In a conference room, surrounded by a dozen empty chairs, Mr. Oliveira recalls, two Huawei executives listened as he shared data on his product which he hoped to license manufacturing to Huawei. He recommended pricing it at $99.95.

“We’ll talk later,” he says Huawei told him.

Three years later, a friend in Portugal asked him why Huawei was selling “his camera.”

“Huawei? That’s impossible! What?” he remembers saying.

7. Stealing songs :

Paul Cheever, a bespectacled preschool teacher who records music as The Cheebacabra, said his life has become overrun with paperwork and costs since he sued Huawei in California last year for taking his song “A Casual Encounter” and pre-loading it on Huawei smartphones and tablets for free distribution to its customers.

Mr. Cheever said in his court filing that he discovered the alleged theft after noticing user comments on YouTube that associated Huawei devices with his song.

8. Stealing Tappy, the mobile phone testing robot, from T-Mobile :

In the U.S., Huawei engineer Xiong Xinfu had endured a nine-month fusillade of demands from Huawei’s China-based engineers for information on how to replicate a robot called Tappy developed by T-Mobile to mimic an ultra-fast human finger and test a smartphone’s responsiveness. In May 2013, Mr. Xiong eventually stole part of Tappy at Huawei’s behest, U.S. prosecutors say.

9. Stealing Solid State Drive technology from Silicon Valley :

In October last year, Yiren “Ronnie” Huang, a longtime Silicon Valley engineer and co-founder of San Jose’s CNEX Labs Inc., accused Huawei in a lawsuit of stealing his firm’s solid-state disk storage technology, used for managing data generated by artificial intelligence. CNEX said at a hearing in April that Huawei deputy chairman Eric Xu issued a directive that led to a Huawei engineer in June 2016 posing as a customer to steal CNEX secrets; Huawei denied wrongdoing. The suit is ongoing.

10. finally, forcing employees to be dishonest :

Jesse Hong, a software architect at Huawei’s California unit, said in a lawsuit that his bosses ordered him in November 2017 to use fake company names to register himself for an industry conference organized by Facebook Inc. The social-media giant had invited other companies to a Telecom Infra Project meeting, a collaboration on network design, but excluded Huawei. The suit was confidentially settled in April.

Mr. Hong said he refused to carry out the directive, leading his supervisor to unleash a stream of abuse and a threat: “If you don’t agree on this, then you quit right now.”

After Mr. Hong declined, Huawei fired him. The company says it acted in good faith.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is-litte...

etaioinshrdlu• 7 years ago

Can you reformat your post so it's easier to visually see the number of distinct instances of theft?

chlee3• 7 years ago

updated the formatting. Hope it makes the text easier to read.

rayiner2• 7 years ago

Someone at one of Cisco’s competitors once told me that Huawei copied their routers down to the English silk screened assembly instructions on the PCBs.

Friend of mine also does contracting work for them. They never pay their bills on time apparently.

mises2• 7 years ago

I know a guy who used to work for TI who talked about the Chinese knocking off chips, right down to purposely-introduced defects added specifically to detect such counterfeiting. Problem was, knowing that it happened didn't do much good. Ended up moving production of some stuff to the Philippines because there was literally no recourse.

tptacek• 7 years ago

Grain of salt on the latter concern, because lots of big American companies are also infamous for not paying contractors on time. One of our best (huge) clients at my last company got more than a year into arrears with us, and friends at other companies have much more lurid stories than that.

Youcandothis3• 7 years ago

Most of this is not stealing, but instead copying and spying.

scarejunba4• 7 years ago

Curious pattern here where knowledge of secrets is considered stealing or not stealing depending on the subject.

I wonder if it's just different people reading or if the community itself views it differently.

After all, "it's not stealing if you have your copy" does mean parent is right.

elorant2• 7 years ago

Try telling that to Cisco

mfatica2• 7 years ago

I'm not stealing your TV, I'm just borrowing and keeping it!

buchanan• 7 years ago

More provoking, perhaps Huawei is aware of this and using it as intimidation, "we can copy you exactly faster than you can innovate, so better work with us..".

maxioatic• 7 years ago

I got to #4 and wondered if this was propaganda. Seems too ridiculous

andor• 7 years ago

I googled the 2003 Cisco vs. Huawei case as your post wasn't clear about the outcome. The WSJ article claims that Huawei admitted copying some software. I found this blog post:

https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

It's a Cisco reaction to the following statement by Huawei's chief US representative:

"Huawei provided our source code of our products to Cisco for review and the results were that there was not any infringement found and in the end Cisco withdrew the case ... the source code of the issues was actually from a 3rd party partner that was already available and open on the internet."

The blog post goes on to say that this is not a permissible statement and Huawei are misstating facts. Finally it provides some evidence for the copying, such as similar whitespace and comments in the source code. It also mentions the name of the "routine": STRCMP :-D. They should have run this post by an engineer before publishing...

Decide for yourself, but in my opinion there is quite limited value in a specific strcmp and likely they both copied it from the same free-software codebase.

JamesBarney• 7 years ago

Does it seem more believable that when Cisco and Huawei had a dispute about what code was duplicated they picked an absurdly unqualified engineer or Cisco, one the world's largest router providers, has a highly optimized and specialized strcmp built out for their routers? The second seems way more believable to me than the first.

intended2• 7 years ago

that’s an impressive laundry list of blatant transgressions that make even Uber look good in comparison.

ape4• 7 years ago

Would like to see Nortel given their assets.

walrus013• 7 years ago

The shambling corpse of the Nortel DWDM/optical transport/carrier transport product line was acquired by Ciena.

swang2• 7 years ago

wasn't samsung's foldable tech stolen as well? makes sense considering how fast huawei was able to get it.

bazooka_penguin• 7 years ago

Iirc there were reports that a Samsung manufacturing partner stole their oled tech in China. There wasnt any follow up stories on for whom it was stolen. Although I have a feeling if the Xiaomi folding oled screens were really stolen Samsung would accuse them and stir up a storm. That Xiaomi phone got mainstream press coverage in the west, it wasnt just some small thing made only for China and importable via aliexpress

djsumdog• 7 years ago

I dunno. The Huawei foldable looked considerably different as far as the tech, and it fold the other direction. I think it's going to have even worse issues than the Samsung if it ever actually gets released.

tooltalk5• 7 years ago

It was the foldable display OLED, not the folding mechanism that was stolen IIRC. Also note it was widely speculated that Huawei's display supplier, BOE, was behind the theft.

eBombzor• 7 years ago

Seems almost too fast? Reports of the leak were published in November last year [1]. It doesn't say when the leaks took place so unless they were leaked at least year before would it even be possible to construct a foldable phone in that short of a time frame (Feb when Mate X was showcased)?

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/30/tech/samsung-china-tech-theft...

threeseed2• 7 years ago

I posted this a while back about why Samsung rushed the release of their foldable phone:

a) Samsung spent a ton of money and research in building foldable OLED screens.

b) This technology is allegedly stolen by a supplier and sold to BOE Display: https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Samsung-supplier-....

c) Huawei uses the foldable BOE Display technology in its Mate X smartphone and is on track to be the first to release it.

d) Samsung panics as it learns that the technology it built might be released by a competitor earlier than them and consumers might think of them as less of an innovator. May sound silly but the Chinese companies have been getting a lot of traction recently e.g. P30 Pro.

e) In addition Samsung goes into lock down as it fears there might be more leaks to other companies.

f) Combination of d) and e) means that there is less real world testing of the device than for other phones. And hence how we got to this point.

solarkraft2• 7 years ago

I remember reading this post. What has changed since then is the on-track-ness of everyone =)

solarkraft2• 7 years ago

Different tech. Huawei's folding displays were made by BOE.

seanmcdirmid3• 7 years ago

They were made by BOE who stole stole/copied the tech from Samsung.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Samsung-supplier-...

jxramos• 7 years ago

Do these companies ever actually innovate and build social/intellectual capital beyond reverse engineering skills or are they gaming to pollute the waters so much that they risk sacrificing the golden goose to whom they steal ideas? This all sort of reminds me of the quip communism or socialism only works until those in charge spend all the money of those who are productive. If IP and the R&D expenses never become profitable and companies go under what then?

barry-cotter• 7 years ago

Do these companies ever actually innovate and build social/intellectual capital beyond reverse engineering skills

Yes. See the industrial history of the US, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and everywhere else that ignored patents and trade secrets for more details. Cisco would be highly profitable if it could only sell to the US market and if you’re the market leader your stuff is just better for years to minimum, a year. People want the best, they want quality, so they pay a premium for it. That’s why brands exist, otherwise people would have to do their own quality control for each individual thing they bought.

pravda2• 7 years ago

Well, in the USA, American industry got its start by stealing British technology.

At this point, China copying foreign technology is just the path of least resistance.

Eventually, China will be doing the innovating.

spectramax2• 7 years ago

I really despise this kind of reasoning. You’re literally comparing 200 year old history and justifying modern IP theft, and projecting forward.

yarg5• 7 years ago

The assumption there that the capacity for creativity in China comparable to that in the west.

I wonder firstly about the extent to which creativity can exist to a societally significant extent under an increasingly authoritarian government.

I also wonder about the extent to which the Chinese creative class was purged in the cultural revolution, and what impact that may have had on the societal capacity for creativity.

Without deeper investigation, I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that modern China has (or does not have) a capacity for creativity that will allow them to outpace a genuinely liberal and freely educated society.

cherioo2• 7 years ago

Yes. One of which is the innovation they had done recently in 5G, where China scored 34% of essential patent [1]. Except, we all know what US decides to do when another superpower is threatening it.

Technology are always developed this way: learn (sometimes not so nicely), catch up, and then innovate. An random country can't innovate itself to a 5G/technology super power immediately.

What I never get from this accusations is, why aren't these company suing to ban Huawei sales if the copying is so blatant. Have they not heard of the patent system? Is Cisco/Nortel suddenly a small company that cannot afford to sue and/or have a vast arsenel of patents?

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/02/china-dusts-the-u-s-finla...

tooltalk5• 7 years ago

why aren't these company suing to ban Huawei sales if the copying is so blatant. ...

First, Huawei's sales in the US already is quite limited to have any impact. Second, you can't win any sales or import injunction on 5G SEP violation.

walrus013• 7 years ago

It's well known in the telecom/internet infrastructure business that Huawei:

a) bugged the hell out of Nortel's ottawa area offices, both physically, by rootkit, and by getting their own people hired to physically smuggle out documents and design data

b) Copied the entire DWDM / optical transport product line

c) Released a nearly identical product a few years later, and sold it at a ridiculously low price, effectively killing Nortel.

Many years later the vacant ex-Nortel office buildings came up for lease. One of the candidate tenants for that large of an office space were parts of the Canadian federal government, ministry of defence, etc. Every serious tenant passed on the space because it's so riddled with bugs.

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/the-my...

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/dnd-may-abandon-1b-move-to-for...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/department-of-...

aswanson• 7 years ago

But, I mean, other than that, what do you have on them?

deroisas2y3• 7 years ago

Funny, because the articles OP posted suggest they don’t even have that.

intended2• 7 years ago

The article by the wsj seems to be more than sufficient.

m463• 7 years ago

Interesting - in silicon valley Huawei has a building just a short distance from both Intel and Nvidia's main headquarters.

xyzzy_plugh2• 7 years ago

They had an office next to Apple and Amazon and Seagate in Cupertino as well.

kyriakos2• 7 years ago

This could just mean they want to reinforce their brand by being next to the big guys. Doesn't mean they are spying even if that is a possibility.

upofadown• 7 years ago

None of the provided links as much as mentions Huawei or provides anything but uncertainty that there were any bugging devices found at the Nortel offices.

walrus013• 7 years ago

You would have to be familiar with the technical details of DWDM platform system architecture, photonics, etc in order to grok a full explanation. The Huawei product released was identical. It was identical down to the ASICs on the individual linecards and other things that would have been impossible to reverse engineer in a "Clean room" environment. I know I'm not providing a citation here, but among the community of ISPs and backbone carriers that actually have a need for this sort of equipment, it's a known fact as solidly as "water is wet".

https://www.afr.com/technology/web/security/how-chinese-hack...

https://business.financialpost.com/technology/nortel-hacked-...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...

mabbo2• 7 years ago

There were some stories where Huawei's source code included the Nortel copyright at the top. Just 100% blatant.

codedokode7• 7 years ago

Released a nearly identical product a few years later, and sold it at a ridiculously low price,

If it violates the patents, then why did the company not sue Huawei and get a compensation? If it doesn't violate the patents then what's the problem?

AFascistWorld2• 7 years ago

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12462/matebook-x-pro-2018-hua... https://www.anandtech.com/show/12848/honors-thinandlight-mag... https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/8/31/17803516/h... https://consumer.huawei.com/cn/support/accessories/ai-speake...

The company just can't quit copying.

You can get a whiff of the company culture from this guy. https://m.weibo.cn/u/3626485974?uid=3626485974&luicode=10000...

everybodyknows• 7 years ago

If it doesn't violate the patents then what's the problem?

Theft of trade secrets is a crime.

dnomad• 7 years ago

What a bunch of pure bullshit.

1. None of those links provide anything like evidence or support of your accusations.

2. It's absolutely remarkable that Huawei had somehow committed all these crimes and yet nobody has ever managed to prove anything significant in a court of law.

All we get are wild accusations and law suits that get thrown out.

Here's the really remarkable aspect here: the US government doesn't need to actually force propaganda on its citizens. If there's one thing we can learn very clearly from this entire ridiculous episode it is that American citizens and the American media will happily propagandize themselves. They will eagerly believe the most far fetched claims without a shred of proof, despite all actual evidence to the contrary, and they will spread those claims to each other in a kind of extremely intense decentralized disinformation machine. There's nothing else like this in the planet. You would think after Iraq Americans would learn even the tiniest bit of skepticism... But no.

I won't even bother pointing out any more how HN has devolved into a 24/7 racist anti-China Two Minute Hate system. At this point it's beyond clear that the community has abandoned any kind integrity. I don't think there's anything to be done which is why I'I've left and had to go through the embarrassing exercise if unrecommending the site to people I've previously recommended it to. People will say this is just a phase but I doubt it. When a community abandons any kind of Truth standard and just embraces bullshit I don't think it recovers.

scoot_7182• 7 years ago

Nice comment history.

frequentnapper• 7 years ago

good riddance.

fc3737453• 7 years ago

So what happened? Were listening devices found at the Nortel Campus or not?

The Department of National Defence keeps changing its story on that issue.

But after the Citizen article was published, Julie Di Mambro, spokeswoman for then Conservative Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, noted in a statement that, “security officials have assured us that they have not discovered any bugs or listening devices.”

The first article seems to heavily imply that there is no definite conclusion to this matter.

jhanschoo2• 7 years ago

Note that it is possible that for political or national security reasons they decided not to provide a public statement for the matter. I've seen a news story reporting similarly about espionage victims unwilling to go public on the matter due to lack of benefit on it, though I don't think I can find it now.

igravious• 7 years ago

It's well known in the telecom/internet infrastructure business that Huawei:
a) bugged the hell out of Nortel's ottawa area offices, both physically, by rootkit, and by getting their own people hired to physically smuggle out documents and design data

The links you provide do not mention Huawei.

b) Copied the entire DWDM / optical transport product line
c) Released a nearly identical product a few years later, and sold it at a ridiculously low price, effectively killing Nortel.

Why is this two bullet points? It's the same issue, no? The links you provide are not related to this issue. Could you provide proof or evidence of some kind to back up your claims?

Many years later the vacant ex-Nortel office buildings came up for lease. One of the candidate tenants for that large of an office space were parts of the Canadian federal government, ministry of defence, etc. Every serious tenant passed on the space because it's so riddled with bugs.

bugged the hell out, riddled with bugs

« But after the Citizen article was published, Julie Di Mambro, spokeswoman for then Conservative Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, noted in a statement that, “security officials have assured us that they have not discovered any bugs or listening devices.” »

« Again, a DND official dismissed concerns that listening devices could be hidden in the sprawling complex, noting that none had ever been found. »

« Five days later in another statement to the Citizen – and contrary to what Norman had said earlier – the DND was once again claiming that no bugs, surveillance equipment or listening devices had ever been found. »

---

So to sum up … You have made two (though you made it look like three) claims of criminal activity by a specific Chinese company. You provide three links giving the appearance of supporting your claims. After following the links I discover that the links only address your first claim and direct quoutes from government officials counter the narrative of suspicions in the article. Not only that, the company your are making the claims against is not mentioned in any of the articles. When I Google huawei DWDM / optical transport product line to try to find proof or evidence for your second claim the only allegation I find is your post on HN. Your first claim makes three separate allegations: (1) bugged the hell out of Nortel's ottawa area offices, both physically, (2) by rootkit, (3) and by getting their own people hired to physically smuggle out documents and design data. The article only talks about the suspicion of "legacy bit and pieces" meaning (1) but no mention of rootkits (2) and nothing about planting moles (3).

Come to think of it you're really only making one claim – that Huawei engaged in industrial espionage against Nortel to such a degree that they put Nortel out of business. And nothing in the links you provide substantiate that claim.

Where is your proof or evidence that Huawei directly put Nortel out of business by engaging in industrial espionage?

Whatarethese• 7 years ago

I'd be throwing my phone in the trash right about now. I would venture to guess all Huawei data is going to China.

jessaustin2• 7 years ago

Why would I care about someone in China knowing about my doctor's appointment or recent sports browsing? Why would anyone in China care to know about it?

shrewduser• 7 years ago

I certainly would if I were to employ you.

Youcandothis3• 7 years ago

Do you really own a Huawei phone? I think anyone that do trust them to the same degree now as when they bought it.

_ph_2• 7 years ago

I assume, you have no Facebook or Google account?

Just to name some companies whose business principle is built on aquiring as much data about you as possible. With Facebook we even have documented and publicly admitted cases where they shared the data with third parties.

jarfil• 7 years ago

It's kind of funny to speak of "stealing tech" when it's the foreign companies themselves who give Chinese manufacturers all that's needed to set up production lines to make the tech. Like, what did you expect, that they wouldn't run third shifts or sell the stuff to whoever paid them for it?

wybiral2• 7 years ago

Like, what did you expect, that they wouldn't run third shifts or sell the stuff to whoever paid them for it?

Yes. Because of those pesky things called "laws" and "trade agreements". It's still theft even if it wasn't always difficult to do.

axaxs3• 7 years ago

I mean, you have a point, but it's inevitable. If a person pays you to do something, then you find out they are selling your work for an order of magnitude more than you're making, it's human nature to at least question this, at best mimic it, laws be damned.

axaxs3• 7 years ago

Exactly. I have a hard time feeling sympathy for any company that outsourced everything to a foreign nation, then get ripped off by said nation. Were the few points in stock price worth it?

yborg• 7 years ago

Yes, very much so to the generations of Western executives who have made these decisions over the last 25 years.

swang2• 7 years ago

i think what happened in samsung's case was an employee stole the blueprints and sold them to china.

tooltalk5• 7 years ago

That's been going for some time. This case was unique in that the Korean authority caught some rogue Samsung suppliers smuggling Samsung's high-tech OLED manufacturing machinaries their factories in South Korea to China.

tooltalk5• 7 years ago

Yes, in most cases, foreign companies are REQUIRED to either transfer their tech or have a domestic partnership as a pre-condition to do business in China (ie, access to domestic market in China). There are a few notable exception to this rule -- Tesla is one recent exception. Samsung also has been able to set up multi-billion USD DRAM factories in China without any tech transfer in spite of the Chinese gov't ambitious plan to develop their own domestic high-tech manufacturing sector.

Samsung doesn't have any OLED manufacturing in China and never agreed to such terms before. In this particular case, we aren't just talking about Chinese companies poaching Samsung's former/retired engineers or shamelessly copying their IP. The Korean authorities in a sting operation stopped a bunch of Samsung suppliers from smuggling Samsung's advanced OLED manufacturing machineries to some unnamed Chinese company (wink wink you know who) in China at the port of departure in South Korea.

bstar77• 7 years ago

I'm curious of the political implications of this situation. You have one side (the anti Huawei side) that is aided by a very unpopular US president and US government institutions that are highly mistrusted. You also have the narrative that companies like Google and nations like Canada have been coerced into supporting this "assault" on Chinese interests.

It also doesn't help that there is a "trade war" in effect where many people believe collateral damage is going to happen, just or not... that it's simply a reality of a (proxy) war. Finally, you have the Huawei customers/supporters (from all over the world) that feel strongly these accusations are fabricated and entirely self serving to the US.

How do we navigate this mess and get to the core facts in an age where expert opinions and fact checking is undervalued? And, as it relates to China, where is the line between xenophobia and justified concern?

rgbrenner• 7 years ago

There's bipartisan support in the US Congress for confronting Huawei and China. It's one of the few things Democrats and Republicans agree on.

Also it's very unlikely Canada and other countries are being forced on Huawei or Chinese trade. EU and other western countries have the same concerns on both issues. It isn't like China and Huawei's behavior has been confined to US borders.

threeseed2• 7 years ago

Intelligence agencies from other governments e.g. Australia are also wary of Huawei equipment.

This isn't about Trump or his trade war.

mabbo2• 7 years ago

The US didn't chose Canada as an ally in this fight arbitrarily. One of the top other comments on this thread will tell you all you need to know about why Canadians are 100% down with going after Huawei: they killed off Nortel via IP theft.

I watched as friends' parents lost their jobs, as one of the leading telecom companies in the world was undercut by a competitor who has stolen their source code, IP, products, everything.

Trump doesn't like Huawei? Well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

xyzzy_plugh2• 7 years ago

FWIW the Obama administration issued the original warning of distrust for Huawei, so none of this should really come as a surprise.

proy24• 7 years ago

Unrelated but in their Bangalore office, they had sleeping bunks and showers in office premises and managers were routinely setting impossible deadlines and employees encouraged to work all day and night and sleep/shower in office if needed.

gloflo2• 7 years ago

Sounds like the typical working conditions of an Apple Inc satellite. Also unrelated.

rexarex• 7 years ago

Cisco was a rip off of The Stanford Blue Box. AFAIK the deans of the biz school and CS school founded Cisco with tech created by Stanford and were almost sued. Stanford decided that it wasn’t worth the potential bad press to be sueing faculty.

paulryanrogers• 7 years ago

"Someone else does it too" isn't a very strong argument.

We may be approaching a world where all critical infrastructure must be open hardware and software, or face a Balkenizd patchwork of suppliers local to each market.

(Not a Cisco or Huawei fan myself.)

jhabdas• 7 years ago

According to the interview with NPR the product was sent to the US and returned via mail, presumably a US carrier.

scoot_7182• 7 years ago

Again?

Causality1• 7 years ago

I think most people who follow the smartphone space will recall when Samsung accused Huawei of stealing their foldable screen technology and sure enough a few months later Huawei is demonstrating folding phone prototypes. I know the row with the US government is more about security threats, but I like to think of Huawei's implosion as the consequences of refusing to respect the rest of the world.

fc3737453• 7 years ago

Seems like a lot of accusations against the Chinese and their tech is being force fed down our throats lately. Not surprising, since we are currently within a trade war and any opportunity to drive out Chinese competition would be taken - especially since Huawei would have been a huge competitor in the smartphone market (I heard their camera quality is currently the best).

I"m skeptical, as some of these accusations are not that far-fetched. What I'm more concerned of, is whether or not this is driven by some higher entity so that mass-hatred for the Chinese and their tech is accumulated, which would mean state driven media.

Despite all of these accusations of being one step behind, Huawei seems to be on the forefront of a lot of things - especially in the field of 5G, so it would seem possible that the US would pull some propaganda antics to make us reconsider Huawei and Chinese Tech

Its tough trying to read and discern for yourself anything on the web nowadays - as for this matter, I'm putting my thoughts on Huawei and Chinese tech on hold since I think both cases are true - That there are some concerns with tech theft against the chinese, but its also being extremely exaggerated.

rayiner2• 7 years ago

If you look at the reports, it’s been out there for a long time. It’s not some new thing. I heard the anecdote I recounted below (about copying routers down to the silk screening) more than a decade ago. If you’ve worked in telecom/networking, this is common knowledge.

briandear• 7 years ago

There is no evidence of “mass hatred.” There is plenty of evidence that steals IP. If there is some evidence that Huawei doesn’t steal IP, then let’s hear it. Corporate espionage is a real thing, suggesting that Huawei never engages in it is ridiculous. Suggesting this is propaganda has no basis in fact, considering that they do steal IP, they do engage in corporate espionage and they are affiliated closely with the Chinese MSS — an agency that makes the Stasi look like Boy Scouts.

dang4• 7 years ago

Would you please stop posting political, ideological, and nationalistic flamewar comments to HN? We've cut you a ton of slack about this over the years, but you're repeatedly violating the spirit of this site as well as its guidelines. This comment is bad even by the low standards of this thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

geofft2• 7 years ago

The passive voice here is fascinating. Huawei did something! What did they do? They got accused.

Who is accusing them? AKHAN Semiconductor (and the FBI), a small company in Illinois whose primary product is these diamond-coated screens. Past their founder, the second person on their about page is their "Vice President of Government Affairs;" the third person listed on their about page is their "Global Security and Intelligence Advisor," a former senior CIA officer who joined the company in May.

If the roles were reversed - a small display-tech company in China that recently got a senior Party member and intelligence officer to join made accusations about America with the help of the Chinese national police organization, and Xinhua was reporting on it - I think we would be very skeptical!

SpicyLemonZest• 7 years ago

We would be very skeptical because the Chinese government is very untrustworthy. If the BBC reported that a British tech company found out Samsung was spying on it, I doubt anyone (except maybe Samsung and the South Korean government) would dismiss the accusation out of hand.

codycraven2• 7 years ago

I had a friend at Huawei about a year ago tell me how they had lawyers come in and prep them on the exact procedures they should follow in the event of an FBI raid. This was well before I heard anything in the news about China, Huawei, etc tensions.

Knowing this, I personally give quite a bit of weight to any accusation against the company. I have a hard time justifying in my mind that a company operating legitimately in the US would prep their employees on how to respond during an FBI raid.

z2• 7 years ago

Of course Adam Khan is is "willing to talk" per the article. They were dealt a second hand given recent events and their brush with Huawei, and will play it for all it's worth, starting with their interview in February. These guys, after 5 years of failing to find a single willing phone maker, are trying to pivot into US military sales. Anti-Huawei publicity is certainly good for them.

For comparison, Corning got Gorilla Glass onto multiple companies' phones within a year of announcement in 2008. I've said before that Corning is a juggernaut in glass with a longstanding reputation, but I still don't see how those partners could agree to just buy the glass without multiple rounds of testing, and even trying to break samples, given a major selling point is durability. Huawei can't have been the only phone maker to have received AKHAN glass for testing, and it would be interesting to know what the other companies did to it before turning them down.

dangero• 7 years ago

I also feel there is something suspicious here. This thread is bombarded with one group people asking for citations of claims and another group of people refusing to provide anything but hearsay in response. Can we just see some facts in here?

chlee3• 7 years ago

Well, according to the US Department of Justice, China is behind 90% of espionage and industrial theft cases that it has handled over the past 7 years [1]

To use a less biased source [2], SCMP (which is a HK newspaper now owned by Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba) mentioned:

John Demers, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s national security division, said that by stealing trade secrets through computer intrusions and the co-opting of company insiders, China had “turned the tradecraft of its intelligence services against American companies”.

Between 2011 and 2018, Demers said, more than 90 per cent of his department’s cases alleging “economic espionage on behalf of a state” involved China. Among such cases are the recent prosecutions of Chinese national Xu Yanjun, suspected of trying to steal trade secrets from US and European aerospace companies, and 10 other Chinese intelligence agents suspected of similar offences.

“The playbook is simple,” Demers said. “Rob, replicate and replace.”

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/china-involved-90-percent-economic-...

[2] https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2177727/fb...

echaozh• 7 years ago

If you try to treat every Chinese scientist and engineer as a spy, and prioritize the handling of cases related to China, 70% is not surprising. 100% is possible.

If 70% of robbery cases handled are by black people, is it because the black robs more, or is it because the DoJ is racist?

If 70% of espionage case handled are related to China, it must be China's bad. Huh.

stordoff• 7 years ago

To be honest, it's getting to the point where even if most of the accusations are true (and I'm quite willing to believe they are), they don't _feel_ true. When (seemingly) everytime you open Hacker News there is a new accusation against Huawei, it starts to not feel plausible.

fungi• 7 years ago

The near daily feed is reminiscent of the propaganda campaign in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.

abbe_k• 7 years ago

I'm starting to think it is getting kind of absurd how it is always mentioned that Huawei is way ahead on 5G. This is a message Huawei is of course also pushing very hard to put out there. I'm working in the industry and I haven't seen anything that supports that claim. It is hard to say who is in the lead but I don't think the difference between the top companies is that big.

mark_l_watson• 7 years ago

I agree that the all out media blitz is ‘interesting.’

I read that out of 35 close European and Asian allies of the USA who have been pressured to not do business with Huawei, only 3 of them are cooperating with us. I am all for having secure infrastructure but the flip side is that we seem to be conditioning our allies to not cooperate with us. Long term, this is not good.

cherioo2• 7 years ago

What I had hoped to see discussed about these IP thief story is, what is our IP protection system doing. The patent and copyright system that has been the bane of every IP court case, are those system simplify disfunctional is the one use case that they're suppose to address?

Are huge corporation like Nortel/Samsung/Cisco suddenly too small to defend for themselves, in the US and EU, where I would assumed to be the biggest market? Is the Samsung that got sued for rounded-corner phone not thought of to patent their technique to put oled onto curved glass? (which sounds extremely patent worthy)

edit: grammar

jhanschoo2• 7 years ago

These IP policies only work nationally, and internationally among friendly countries that respect IP treaties (Hint: China isn't one of them).

Next, these countries still get to export goods containing the stolen technology back to countries where the IP was stolen (perhaps via third-party distributors), since there is typically no provision barring that.

wangii• 7 years ago

surprised? I don't think so, after all Huawei had admitted in video: 'We lie, we cheat, we steal!', and Chinese applauded! shame on them!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OifY3sqrmXQ

sschueller• 7 years ago

"Good artists copy great artists steal" [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

Huawei Accused of Technology Theft

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