Britain knows it’s selling out its national security to Huawei

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/boris-johnson-britain-knows-its-selling-out-its-national-security-to-huawei/

by VieEnCode • 6 years ago

209 172 6 years ago

Scarbutt• 6 years ago

Good for Britain for standing on its own and not letting itself being used as another puppet in the economic war between U.S. and China.

Covzire• 6 years ago

Something tells me you don't do business is China. There is no material difference between Huawei and the Chinese Government.

yorwba• 6 years ago

Do you have any interesting stories to share about your experience doing business with Huawei and/or the Chinese government? It's always refreshing to hear from someone with first-hand knowledge.

(Comment edited to (hopefully) clarify tone.)

kmlx2• 6 years ago

There is no material difference between Huawei and the Chinese Government.

this is false.

nbevans• 6 years ago

There is also no material difference between say Cisco and the American government. Or Siemens and the German government. Where does it end? The UK is, as of today, currently an independent nation and - on paper at least - nobody is its friend.

The Huawei furore is akin to saying "public WiFi is not secure so why are you using it?".

Zenst• 6 years ago

Whatever provider of 5G hardware the UK picked - it was always going to be open to foreign power abuse.

What they have done is take all three offerings and limit what percentage of the market they can have - effectively having the country 5G networks provided by a three supplies all having an equal amount of kit in the field.

They are also taking the approach of presuming it is potential bad-actor and proactively planning around that.

So a bit like putting an IDS/Firewall in place before you realise you need one, you could say.

Is it ideal - nope, but the lack of local offering make that impossible anyhow. So plan for the worst and hope for the best, is not a bad plan of action in this instance.

SlowRobotAhead3• 6 years ago

Sounds entirely reasonable as you put it there. Does seem unlikely a British supplier is going to just magically deliver a 5G product that competes with Intel, Broadcom, Hauwei. All the talk that “this should just be open and free” just aren’t being realistic for the telecom industry.

skrebbel2• 6 years ago

Whatever provider of 5G hardware the UK picked - it was always going to be open to foreign power abuse.

Wait, you think the Swedish secret service is going to coerce Ericsson into installing backdoors that let them spy in the UK?

I mean, sure, possible, but a bit further fetched than China doing exactly that, no?

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

https://www.zdnet.com/article/fortinet-removes-ssh-and-datab...

Fortinet is American.

carlmr2• 6 years ago

Maybe the Swedes backdoored the Beam VM and are laughing now. Since everybody in Telecom uses it.

Brave-Steak• 6 years ago

Even if the Swedes did do it, I'd prefer them far more than the authoritarian CCP.

aldoushuxley0013• 6 years ago

Yup, and as a Canadian the worst part about this is it gives the government here an easy out to sell out our own national security, because we're just followng Britain's lead after all. They already broke up the Five Eyes.

microcolonel4• 6 years ago

In my experience, our Canadian government sells us out to China even more readily than the UK government has; but at least we're not Australia, which is (no joke) basically on the edge of becoming a dependent territory of the PRC. To me, as a dual citizen, it is mystifying that the U.S. is allowing this to happen; if the PRC compromises half of the commonwealth, that seems like a serious threat to the United States, and to human rights as a concept and reality.

aldoushuxley0013• 6 years ago

I agree, but I had hope the Liberals would be under such intense pressure to ban Huawei that they’d be forced to, politically.

Eg With the liberals being just a minority, the majority of the Canadian parliament got together and recently passed legislation for and subsequently set up a committee to review Canada-China relations, on the backdrop of China holding our citizens hostage and extraordinary Chinese intervention into Canadian governments (federal, provincial and municipal).

But realistically I know better than to bet against a Trudeau selling out Canada.

unethical_ban• 6 years ago

Here's my biggest question of the whole thing:

  * Can governments not inspect the hardware themselves to see if there are physical backdoors?

  * Could they not, as a precondition for any provider, demand to see the source code of the radios?

  * If the ISPs tunnel the backbone traffic combined with more/most Internet traffic being secured anyway, 
 wouldn't that minimize data leaks?

  * If you admit that the previous point isn't valid because of metadata concerns, doesn't that invalidate the US
 national security establishment's position on metadata towards the public? 
 They have previously scoffed at such concerns ("It's only a phone number") but now it matters.

  * Wouldn't rogue equipment exfiltrating data be rather obvious?

matthewheath• 6 years ago

For points 1 and 2 at least, the UK has the Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre where GCHQ can inspect all Huawei hardware as well as the source code, although it is run by former Huawei employees (overseen by GCHQ) so its independence is questionable.

timthorn• 6 years ago

The staff are actively employed by Huawei, but all undergo UK security clearance to DV standard.

hardlianotion• 6 years ago

I believe the centre cannot satisfy itself that the code they inspect is the code that is built into the hardware.

swiley• 6 years ago

Telecom equipment should be free as in freedom if we’re going to give it exclusive use of portions of the spectrum. Proprietary wireless equipment is harmful surf-like enslavement of the people.

JumpCrisscross• 6 years ago

telecom equipment should be free as in freedom

The author agrees with you:

“The U.K., for example, could force providers to work with open coding standards (“OpenRAN”) that would ensure interoperability between providers, thus lowering market entry barriers to future market entrants and disadvantaging Huawei, which has heavily bet on closed proprietary solutions.”

trimbo• 6 years ago

This is a really good article, worth reading all the way through. For me, this was the line that sums it up:

After Brexit, London sees itself as dependent on Beijing’s goodwill.

trhway• 6 years ago

Having more freedom to adjust regulations and needing new business/investments while still being part of Europe post-Brexit Britain can possibly find its future as the Chinese base and tunnel into Europe .

kmlx2• 6 years ago

isn't huawei already powering every country's 4g/lte offering?

thesimon3• 6 years ago

Yes and it's not that 5G is completely different from 4G anyway. Very much hyped up.

otoburb3• 6 years ago

>Yes and it's not that 5G is completely different from 4G anyway. Very much hyped up.

5G RAN (access) is very different.

I'd agree that 5G Core not be that different at the most abstract levels compared to 4G LTE packet core, but the reality on the ground is that they are still sufficiently different enough that network operators are using 5G as a strong reason to re-evaluate suppliers and put major network components up for tender.

Nokinside4• 6 years ago

You can control the security risk without following US lead.

US and Five Eyes countries following US are banning Huawei for strategic reasons, not for technical reasons. Telecom infrastructure is strategic industry and US want's to prevent Chinese getting ahead. US can't compete directly because US is out from 4G/LTE/5G game and US based companies are only component providers (Qualcomm and others).

but nevertheless permitted it to compete for up to 35 percent market share in the country’s access network—that is, its antennae and similar equipment.

There is magical thinking involved if someone thinks that base stations alone completely break national security. Mobile networks involve huge number of components. The components and the software in the mobile core network and services pose more risk than base stations. Interfaces are standardized and you can buy different components from different vendors.

European network operators (especially if they have government contracts) have silently limited what they buy from Huawei. Base stations and most hardware is OK. Operating services, network control, visitor and location registers, mobile switching centers, network monitoring, and rest of the software that deals with the core network can be bought from others. Many EU countries just "happen" to have one or two carriers with strategically shielded core networks without formally banning Huawei.

microcolonel4• 6 years ago

There is magical thinking involved if someone thinks that base stations alone completely break national security.

One thing that base stations need, by their nature, is total surveillance of location and unique identification of devices. It seems to me that these together are a major threat to national security, ignoring all the other things base stations have access to.

thesimon3• 6 years ago

No association however to the identity of the phone owner.

Phone billing records seem a lot jucier for that.

Nokinside4• 6 years ago

I don't even know the level I should answer.

To cut it short. No, those databases are not stored in base stations, not even close. They are part of core network.

In LTE your handset talks to base transceiver station who talks to eNB who talks to MME who talks to HSS where the data is physically located. MME (Mobility Management Entity) is already part of the evolved Core Huawei has no access to that. Even MME keeps data just temporarily. This all happens in control plane.

If Huawei supplies transceiver stations or eNB's it's nowhere near the point where it could store and distribute user information or track them and not be noticed immediately.

mindslight• 6 years ago

It would be prudent to push secure protocols that didn't require these things. eg scrap the IMSI, rotating ephemeral IMEI, network-independent VOIP, and blinded bearer tokens for payment.

But governments intrinsically see surveillance as an unquestioned good and likely wouldn't even approve such protocols for overt telecom use, never mind helping to develop them. The public has already been pwnt by design - this whole topic is just squabbling over who gets the proceeds.

corporate_shi11• 6 years ago

It's not just about privacy and security. It's about not entangling your communications infrastructure with a Chinese company that - like all Chinese companies - is completely beholden to and embedded in the framework of CCP governance.

Regardless of whether using Huawei tech makes you vulnerable to spying or not, it still means you are bound to Huawei products and infrastructure through vendor lock in. Maintenance may involve Huawei technicians, etc.

We should be actively trying to separate from China, and it's unfortunate many seem eager to do the opposite.

Nokinside4• 6 years ago

There is no vendor lock in in mobile network infrastructure. Everything is standardized trough and trough. You can buy components from different suppliers and they work together.

Maintenance may involve Huawei technicians, etc.

Who are not Chinese nationals. Working for foreign company subsidiary does not change your national allegiance.

badrabbit5• 6 years ago

There are European vendors like ericcson. This is about being cheap.

adventured• 6 years ago

This is a strange case where for some reason the EU isn't doing exactly what it very obviously should be doing: looking after its own self-interest and pushing European technology aggressively [1]. The EU should have taken the opportunity to severely deflate Huawei in the EU and push European alternatives.

Europe needs to gain in tech and this is one easy way to do it, by supporting their own players, their own ecosystem. And it's a self-interest freebie at that: the US and EU interests are mostly aligned, there will be no push-back for supporting Ericsson & Co. The US would rather everyone use Ericcson than Huawei.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/29/21113289/european-union-e...

niyikiza3• 6 years ago

I agree. This thread discusses that with a historical perspective: https://twitter.com/mikebutcher/status/1221842546881679360?s...

cm2187• 6 years ago

Plus there is likely a fair number of chinese nationals employed by all their competitors. All it takes is one line of code.

kube-system4• 6 years ago

US and Five Eyes countries following US are banning Huawei for strategic reasons, not for technical reasons. Telecom infrastructure is strategic industry and US want's to prevent Chinese getting ahead.

Despite the current president's personal crusades, this is not about US protectionism. Companies in the US wouldn't benefit from a ban on Huawei equipment anyway, it would be Finland and Sweden who do.

Supply chain trust has always been a primary concern of any kind of critical resource/infrastructure defensive strategy. Every time a country relies on another for a critical ongoing need, it introduces an inherent power imbalance that the supplying country can use as a leverage. This kind of stuff is centuries-old geopolitical strategy, and it's still in the news every day when we're talking about energy, food, minerals, etc. (e.g. Russian pipelines) Why is communications infrastructure any different? It's not.

anticensor• 6 years ago

Do you mean NOKIA and Ericsson?

sangnoir3• 6 years ago

Despite the current president's personal crusades, this is not about US protectionism. Companies in the US wouldn't benefit from a ban on Huawei equipment anyway

Why are you limiting US strategic interests to protectionism of private companies? It is in the American Interest (both private and public spheres) if "Made in China 2025" were to fail: Huawei is a just one front in that war. In this light, minimizing Huawei's market access with (even in the absence of domestic competitors) makes strategic sense: less experience in the market, less revenue, less R&D). Technological expertise tends to bleed into military applications

empath75• 6 years ago

All the “American” products are made in China, too, so I don’t see what the difference is.

freyir2• 6 years ago

OP said it’s strategic, not that it’s protectionist for US companies (in fact, they pointed out that no US companies are competing in the next sentence that you didn’t quote). I think you’re both saying essentially the same thing.

appleshore• 6 years ago

What about banning them for philosophical principles? Why would I buy anything from someone who denies Enlightenment principles and views human rights as “Western rights”?

On a long enough timeline, authoritarianism always wins.

codedokode• 6 years ago

You might not like China's internal policy but US foreign policy is not nice too.

otoburb3• 6 years ago

>Interfaces are standardized and you can buy different components from different vendors.

You can buy components from different vendors, except that the overhead of working with thousands of different suppliers for your network is a non-starter, hence network operators around the world have moved to a model where they prefer large domain players to provide packages (e.g. 5G Access, 5G Core, 4G RAN, 4G EPC, etc.) to streamline purchasing, coordination, responsiveness and costs.

>Operating services, network control, visitor and location registers, mobile switching centers, network monitoring, and rest of the software that deals with the core network can be bought from others.

Such extra components can be bought from others, except it should be noted that Huawei seems to provide very attractive prices for their "good enough" offerings in these other categories.

mFixman• 6 years ago

Dumb question: why is Huawei the only available provider of 5G technology? Are all other companies too far away?

Jefro118• 6 years ago

It's the most viable at the lowest price point I believe. Other companies like Ericsson can also provide 5G but I think Huawei is furthest ahead yes. This has really been poor planning on the part of the UK government going back a few years - this decision has been coming for a long time but not enough effort seems to have gone into creating a better set of choices. Instead we are accepting Huawei despite believing they are a bad actor and only now starting to seriously plan for reducing our dependence on them.

ddeck• 6 years ago

They are not. From the article:

Yet Europe is home to two of the world’s leading vendors, Ericsson and Nokia; Samsung offers yet another alternative from a trustworthy democracy.

gabaix• 6 years ago

Why are there no US vendors?

It is rare to see a cutting-edge sector without the US.

thesimon3• 6 years ago

Though I'm not sure if they are more secure, they also have offices in China.

roywiggins2• 6 years ago

Huawei is apparently just far and way cheaper.

lwkl• 6 years ago

No for example Swisscom in Switzerland is using Ericsson for their 5G network and Huawei for their IP core transport network. A lot of households got upgraded to Huawei G.Fast technology for example.

So it's also about price. Huawei is just cheaper than Nokia and Ericsson. I don't know how the technology of the different providers compare but it probably won't be that much of a difference. It probably also depends on your existing 4G infrastructure since 5G can sometimes be rolled out as a software upgrade using existing antennas. So if your existing infrastructure uses Huawei you don't want to switch.

blackrock• 6 years ago

What is the price point? Exactly how much cheaper is Huawei vs. Nokia/Ericsson?

Some rumors say that Huawei has 4,000 software engineers that they can throw at a problem, like their current goal to replace Google services.

If an average software engineer in China makes $10,000 USD, vs. an average software engineer at Google making $160,000 USD. Then Huawei will spend $40 million USD, vs. Google spending $640 million USD.

That’s a pretty significant difference. Huawei’s operating cost is 6% of Google’s.

Huawei can afford to throw a lot of human brain power at solving an engineering problem. And especially when a lot of Chinese companies are operating in start-up mode and working 60+ hours a week.

avocado4• 6 years ago

Chinese government criticized UK's recent decision.

- hard cap on the market share (35%)

- no Huawei parts in core part of network

- no Huawei in sensitive locations (military, energy)

- Huawei declared as the only provider that poses national security to the UK

It's not a complete ban but it sure is a blow to Huawei who has been expanding globally unopposed in the past decade.

HlessClaudesman2• 6 years ago

Can't we just buy Chinese stuff... and copy it?

I'm only half joking. History teaches us that any technological shortfall can be remedied fairly quickly if you have a clear priority and the audacity to steal.

5G doesn't require imploding plutonium.

johnchristopher2• 6 years ago

5G doesn't require imploding plutonium.

Reading HN, I was under the impression that we didn't need 5G anyway (except for people streaming videos in stadium, which I haven't really understood why yet).

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

This. Especially because 4G is far, from being deployed everywhere.

carlmr2• 6 years ago

I can stream Netflix on my 25mbit/s. For personal use I absolutely don't care about 5G. For professional use it might give me better picture quality when I remote into work, but I think my work's VPN server is more of a bottleneck currently.

rewq4321• 6 years ago

Your internet speed and latency may be fast enough for the current media/mediums on the internet, but I think it would be naive to assume (without strong evidence/reasoning) that "there's nothing left to be invented" which might consume more bandwidth, or require lower latencies in the near future.

scandox• 6 years ago

Well if it made VOIP a great experience instead of an so-patchy-you-have-to-survey-users-after-every-call experience then it might be a big deal.

smolder• 6 years ago

5G's very high bandwidth and other features help to solve the following issue: when you get a huge population close together all communicating, (as in stadiums, conventions or during emergencies in very dense population centers) the airwaves become too congested to get more than a few KB/s with older tech.

javajosh• 6 years ago

This requires a supply chain that the US no longer has, AFAIK. I mean, do know of any electronics still made in the USA? Shenzen is the world's 3D printer, and its non-trivial to clone it.

pmlnr5• 6 years ago

Arduino was originally Italian, made in EU. There are modern power tools, car electronics, and coffee machines made in Hungary - I'm only listing the ones I know for sure. The components however - IC, resistor, capacitor, etc - are nearly all from China.

HlessClaudesman2• 6 years ago

Yes, lack of manufacturing capacity in western nations is the root of the problem, not the particular technological fetish de jour. This is the chickens coming home to roost of chasing shareholder value maximisation rather than keeping some spare capacity in the system for a rainy day.

China is not the enemy, we should work with them to build a healthy middle class existence for all the world's citizens. Having one a country mono-culture doing the lions share of the advanced manufacturing is just asking for another dark age when that society suffers a catastrophe.

ardy423• 6 years ago

This requires a supply chain that the US no longer has, AFAIK....and its non-trivial to clone it.

The US (and other countries) lost much of its electronics supply chain (and manufacturing in general) due to political priorities, and it can regain it by shifting those priorities and enacting new policy. This idea of "it's gone and never coming back" is false and a result of an over-attachment to certain ideas and certain policies.

joejerryronnie2• 6 years ago

This shift is largely due to the cost of human capital. If automation advances exponentially like many believe it will, should we expect much of this manufacturing to move back to the US? At that point, shipping would probably be the largest variable cost in getting goods to market.

Strom• 6 years ago

I mean, do know of any electronics still made in the USA?

Most Intel chips are still being made in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_si...

roywiggins2• 6 years ago

My understanding is that the Huawei's hardware is just way cheaper.

rusk2• 6 years ago

It is. Ludicrously cheap. Not just in capital expenditure terms but also in terms of operating costs, as they’ll run it all for you, if you want. There are lots of possible reasons ranging from business pragmatics, to work practices through to the tin foil hatted. As far fetched as any of these might seem, none are as far fetched as that they’re giving you a great deal out of pure kindess.

Nokinside4• 6 years ago

Nokia is currently extremely cheap. P/S 0.85 and it includes Bell Labs, and Lucent and Motorola wireless networks assets in the US.

It's really not about owning.

niyikiza3• 6 years ago

It's more like they bought it from us. ARM used to be owned by Westerners. https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbanks-arm-holdings-to-sell-...

nickdothutton• 6 years ago

If the UK is limiting a vendor because it believes it to be malign, or more likely to be malign, or more susceptible to being turned malign by its Government, then limiting it to 30% or 3% isn’t going to help much. One fox in the henhouse is enough.

As for being able to mitigate a “man in the vendor”, whether the “man” is acting according to the vendor or whether the vendor themselves have been coercively controlled or infiltrated matters very little. Mobile operators generally don't even run their own networks today, they outsource the management of the critical platforms to the vendors themselves who often finance the deal too.

UK dropped the ball on this, but it dropped it 10-20 years ago, and now this kind of problem is going to keep coming up again and again.

Some of you might enjoy this examination I made of the topic and the context for all this. https://blog.eutopian.io/huawei-5g/

gnfargbl3• 6 years ago

From the NCSC themselves:

The cap at 35% ensures the UK will not become nationally dependent on a high risk vendor while retaining competition in the market and allowing operators to continue to use two Radio Access Network (RAN) vendors.

In other words, the limit isn’t there to mitigate the risk of Huawei being malign (there are other mitigations in place for that risk, such as keeping them away from sensitive network functions). The limit is there to prevent the operator from becoming entirely beholden to Huawei.

iso1631• 6 years ago

In general no single supplier should provide more than 35% of any source. Anyone beholden to a single supplier is opening themselves up to be ripped off at best.

Problems of course come when suppliers merge. I have contracts with 8 different supplier for my business, one goes bust, or jacks up prices, and I simply increase supplies of the other 7.

Then those 8 companies start merging, and before long you're left with a single supplier, or at best a cartel.

oxfordmale• 6 years ago

The truth is that if China wants to hack the UK, it will. It might possibly be easier when 5G is built on Huawei equipment, however, other suppliers will inadvertentlg introduce security weaknesses which can be exploited by China as well.

tyingq5• 6 years ago

I imagine the UK weighs Huawei equipment with potential Chinese introduced backdoors vs Cisco equipment with potential US introduced backdoors. Probably cases exist where Huawei is the safer choice. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

Feels like there's a niche market for a UK, French, German, Australian, etc, line of equipment.

aldoushuxley0013• 6 years ago

But the UK is part of the 5 eyes, it makes more sense to use US backdoors than Chinese backdoors, despite both being undesirable to say the least.

tyingq5• 6 years ago

That's weird and funny to me. Doesn't the UK have its own foreign policy that's distinctly different from the US view? Isn't there room for some selective divergence? Consider, for example, Ukraine, Syria, or Iraq. I wouldn't trust US sanctioned intelligence at all in those areas. Chinese influenced info might (sometimes/often) be more neutral.

ethanbond6• 6 years ago

This is only true if you naively believe that being compromised by the US carries even remotely similar risk to being compromised by the CCP.

One key difference: China is an adversary to the US and UK. The US is not an adversary to the UK. This strategic relativism is tired and indefensible in any version of reality.

tyingq5• 6 years ago

"The US is not an adversary to the ...UK."

Not generally, but there are cases where they are. Ask Assange, for example. Surely the UK has information they would rather not share with the US in some cases.

w72• 6 years ago

As far as I'm aware most of the US installed backdoors were via interception of the hardware en-route to its point of installation without the vendor's knowledge. Hardware being a direct product from Huawei doesn't by itself prevent this from happening.

kalleboo2• 6 years ago

Cisco doesn’t make mobile network equipment. Motorola also got out of the business. The alternatives to Huawei are Ericsson (Sweden), Nokia (Finland) and Samsung (South Korea)

badrabbit5• 6 years ago

From what I understand, using Ericcson(european) instead would delay it by around a year and £4B.

It is guaranteed the CCP will wage information warfare against the UK in the future. If there's a global war, China is the most powerful country based on current politics that will be the UK's adversary. Ability to limit or interfere with public communicarion infrasructure is an invaluable war-time advantage.

For those that say this is just edge gear, I say that makes it even worse. Redundancy and access control is easier at the core than at the edge which lives in the field and direcrly interfaces with possibly hostile end devices. Even just a dumb antenna can be built in a way that makes it easier tl cripple or help with jamming/DOS.

mark_l_watson• 6 years ago

Thanks, you triggered an interesting thought: is the U.K. really likely to be an adversary of China? Based on reading James Rickard’s Aftermath and also Gaft Luft’s and Anne Klein’s De-Dollarization, I can list out how different the UK’s and the USA’s situations are re: China:

China and Russia (with many smaller countries who are growing more resentful of the advantage we get having the dollar as the world reserve currency) are actively trying to undermine the dollar (let’s hope they fail, or that it takes a long time!) but they probably view the U.K. as a trading partner and as much as possible be cordial with.

England is done with being the world mono polar superpower so they don’t show up strategically as a real adversary.

For financial and ego reasons, the USA is trying to hold on to its status (although by over using tariffs and sanctions, we are being incredibly clumsy - we need to get our act together!)

badrabbit5• 6 years ago

UK is the US's closest ally,it will likely be something about taiwan,HK or elswhere outside mainland. And it will probably slowly escalate if I had to guess to where in one shape or form China attacks SK ,US military bases,hawaii or western US as a retaliation ,after which the UK will be presurred to join ,except the public would be divided and that's when comms will have issues: is it US or China hacking brits?

China does not care for the west as a trading partner much more than as a stepping stone to reach elsewhere. The west uses economic advantages to arm twist domestic Chinese policy. If they have their grip on Africa, Asia and S. America who cares about the fading west?

And the USA right now is vital for continued world peace and stability as a superpower. There many many nations that owe their geopolitical stability right now to the US being the sole super power.

China has sheer volume but being maybe a third at most their population size the US dominates many things still. Technologically they're still behind in military appllications. The US woud squash China in a heartbeat in both conventional and Nuke warfare. And you have to undetstand how much SK and Japan (both important UK allies btw) are important to the US. Their loss too China will happen only after losing WW3. These are one ot many reasons why both China and Russia are working hard to dismantle the US and UK from the inside out as well as sow discord between them. UK fought with US in both Iraq and Afghanistan!!! Many brits died in America's wars already.

golemotron• 6 years ago

Britain is sending a signal to the US that is time to negotiate trade.

SlowRobotAhead3• 6 years ago

I don’t thank anyone anywhere disagrees that now is the time for UK and US to work on trade. You could be the most strict “remainer” there is and have to accept this - regardless of 5G.

silasdavis• 6 years ago

Where is the part that explains why using Huawei equipment sells out national security? I have heard zero satisfying arguments. What is the proposed attack? How does it not apply to the penetration of Chinese made chips everywhere. Why should we trust US made chips and their companies' obligations to US national security apparatus any more? Or other countries? If strong trust in certain hardware is the requirement for some level of trust in the network then I think we are already lost.

siavosh2• 6 years ago

I’m wondering if this is a negotiation tactic post Brexit as they’re about to enter trade negotiations with the US. Just a bluff bargaining chip to concede.

mattrp• 6 years ago

I think it’s not a neogiting tactic but an indicator that post-Brexit the UK will permanently seek to increase open trade with all parties. I also think in a zero trust environment one has to assume everything is compromised and deal accordingly. Finally I think UK has stronger ties than its peers due to its history in Hong Kong and it will seek to leverage that as the belt and road initiative develops to ensure it is not left out by a revengeful EU.

siavosh2• 6 years ago

I would imagine the UK would like to have its cake and eat it too, but the US will make them choose.

gnfargbl3• 6 years ago

There’s a lot of speculation in the comments here around exactly what the UK is or isn’t doing, and why. The NCSC’s Technical Director has laid it out in detail: https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/the-future-of-telecoms-in-.... The linked article points to the blog post, but then largely ignores the points it makes.

AsyncAwait5• 6 years ago

Serious question, as an European why would I trust say Cisco more than Huawei?

deltron30304• 6 years ago

Surrounding culture the company is embedded in. As an European I'd always favor an US company over a Chinese one that's linked to a dictatorship.

AsyncAwait5• 6 years ago

I just saw this story regarding Afghanistan:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/28/admission-colos...

Were any of the war criminals that lied us into Iraq prosecuted? Nope. Did the NSA modify Cisco routers and tap the phones of its EU allies? Yes.

Is Guantanamo Bay still open? Did the U.S. just commit an international crime by assassinating a top Iranian diplomat?

Am asking all these questions, because while the U.S. is still better domestically, (be it with huge cracks, even on that front), I'd say that internationally it isn't as clear cut as I'd once have agreed with you it is.

Youden3• 6 years ago

And as an Australian living in Europe I think both options suck but at least I'm yet to see any evidence of China putting backdoors into networking equipment. In fact, less biased countries have evaluated Huawei's equipment and found no issues.

hogFeast• 6 years ago

I don't know whether this is technologically sound but a few things to bear in mind:

* Before they took this decision, the govt consulted with the UK's Cyber Security Centre (these guys are not meek civil servants...GCHQ end up owning every Home Secretary, they are powerful).

* The distinction they made was between allowing Huawei into the "core" part of the UK's networks.

* Because Huawei won't provide "core" infrastructure, there is no risk.

Tbh, I am not an expert but this sounded very wrong to me. 5G is going to require building out a dense blanket of receivers...if you let them do this, then they are in...it doesn't matter.

The suggestion was that sensitive data is only carried through certain infrastructure...I don't really buy this because it doesn't really protect 5G which is obviously a component of the network anyway, and I don't really believe that there is some kind of parallel internet out there for GCHQ only...but I don't know.

To me, this sounded a lot like cheapness. The issue with lack of competition was brought up in the Parliamentary debate...that is a problem that exists but the way to solve that is not to buy equipment from unsafe providers (the Foreign Secretary seemed to accept btw, that Huawei was controlled by the Chinese govt).

amaccuish• 6 years ago

As someone who works in retail, a large number of the UK population support this decision, as they also buy Huawei phones. Huawei phones are incredibly popular and customers tell me they're very angry at the current anti-Huawei/China feeling at the moment. For those who don't have a lot of money, they really appreciate that Huawei makes phones for all kinds of incomes, not just £40,000+ a year. A lot of them (rightly imho) perceive the US action against Huawei to be out of fear that the US may not be topdog in an area of technology.

If the British government was truly concerned about market failures, it would not reward Huawei, which profits from unfair support by Chinese state capitalism, giving it advantages over its competitors from market economies.

Is this not outrageous? That we're so intolerant of other kinds of economies that we must try and band and block so that people don't realise the disadvantages of our own system? If your system is so superior, let it compete on its own merits.

kypro• 6 years ago

Is this not outrageous? That we're so intolerant of other kinds of economies that we must try and band and block so that people don't realise the disadvantages of our own system? If your system is so superior, let it compete on its own merits.

What are you arguing? Would you want to live in an economic system similar to Chinas? Many economists believe there is a genuine merit to China's economic system, but that doesn't mean it's something we in the West should support. There is a social cost to China's state intervention. The largest being that it leads to corruption. Do you think Huawei can ever take a stance against the Chinese government? Of course not. China's economic system is basically just corrupt capitalism. It's not about who's got the best economic system, it's about who has the right values.

w72• 6 years ago

Is this not outrageous? That we're so intolerant of other kinds of economies that we must try and band and block so that people don't realise the disadvantages of our own system? If your system is so superior, let it compete on its own merits.

Is this a criticism of the West or China? Because China does this currently with multiple Western companies.

nitwit005• 6 years ago

Is this not outrageous? That we're so intolerant of other kinds of economies that we must try and band and block so that people don't realise the disadvantages of our own system? If your system is so superior, let it compete on its own merits.

Any country with any sort of economic system can toss money (or labor at least) around. If you want to dominate the tire industry for some reason, you can just give them money, favorable government contracts, or whatever else.

That doesn't prove your system is superior, just that you can tax people and write checks.

niyikiza3• 6 years ago

It all really comes down to being the cheapest option. Huawei has no monopoly on 5G technology. It just has the means (and government support) to make big R&D investments.

This Twitter thread discussed that point of a view a few days ago:https://twitter.com/mikebutcher/status/1221842546881679360?s...

gumby• 6 years ago

London sees itself as dependent on Beijing’s goodwill.

If only Britan could join together with others perhaps in a supra-national group of nations so that collectively they'd have more strength to resist large economies like China's.

tim333• 6 years ago

I would have thought for any communications that you are worried about the security off you'd encrypt them with https or similar. I've never really given thought as to whether there is a chinese bit of equipment in the chain of not when I do a bank transfer or such like and along those lines, as a brit I'm not that worried that some bit of the network may have a back door from Huawei or whoever. Is this really a problem?

Britain knows it’s selling out its national security to Huawei

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