this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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14
America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring (www.economist.com)
submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Archive link: https://archive.is/vGKin

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

The title is based on a false premise that apparently has nothing to do with the content of the article.

Is there no author listed for this article?

First of all, the US had no plans on eradicating Huawei. They explicitly tried to limit Huawei's international and especially US expansion as a delaying tactic while the US refocused on and invested in chip tech and domestic tech production. That succeeded. They were very clear that the US lack of support for Huawei was a result of Chinese corporations being legally compelled to collaborate with their government, which is indisputable, proven and ongoing.

There was no stated intent to eradicate Huawei.

Backfire? China's economy has been severely disrupted, their tech sector is not catching up despite truly massive investment in chipmaking and other sectors and the US has secured a technological alliance with the most advanced chipmakers in the world and funding for them.

The rest of the content of the article rehashes years old news tangential to China technology but nothing that has to do with eradication or backfiring and pretends the old tech news is relevant or new information, which I'm not seeing.

China is trying to develop new hardware and software. That is a security threat given repeated cyber attacks by Chinese corporations and the prominence of chipmaking in modern technology.

Their failure in developing these innovations during the past decade to an international competitive advantage is not proof that any "eradication" that never existed has "backfired".

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

News articles without an author and date shouldn't be allowed to be posted. The legitimacy of news sources goes way down without those.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I mostly agree, although this particular case was my ignorance showing.

I've never noticed before that economist articles don't list their authors.

The economist uniquely states on their website that they deliberately don't post the author s for their articles because many of them are collaborative and they think that the content of the article should be more important than who wrote it.

Which in most cases is a very admirable mission statement, but can obviously be frustrating in cases like this where you want to hold a party responsible and the only recourse is to wait for a possible internal investigation by the new source themselves.

There are obviously a lot of pros and cons there, and I'm not. Convinced that the cons outweigh the pros, but at least they aren't deliberately hiding this specific author. The economist authors publish from anonymity as a matter of course.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I had to double check when reading the article that this was indeed published by the Economist, particularly after this line:

As a private firm whose goals dovetail neatly with those of the Chinese government, it is becoming a model for how China thinks about innovation.

How do they know this, besides perhaps an official from the CCP making a statement about it?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Exactly, I was shocked that this was on the economist, it seems like a highly biased while mostly irrelevant article.

Very bizarre.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

To give them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps they are trying to stay neutral by publishing articles from various points of view, including the CCP's.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

I would be fine with that, and the economist has lots of great international articles, but my concern is with this article in particular.

They are very clearly starting from multiple false premises with zero direct evidence to back them up, and then book-reporting on piecemeal unrelated content in the article.

It's inaccurate and misrepresentative reporting of a straightforward and well-documented tech struggle.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The Economist does not typically list individual authors on their articles.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Oh, okay. Thanks.

https://medium.economist.com/why-are-the-economists-writers-anonymous-8f573745631d

I actually like that reasoning, that what is written is more important than who wrote it.

This article is so poorly written and reasoned that I was curious, though.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

The current version of the OS has been built with open-source Android code to make Android apps compatible for the time being. It is designed to be used in all Huawei’s consumer products, including watches, televisions and vehicle systems, which makes it possible to integrate functions across devices. It is said to have 700m users and 2.2m developers.

The next version of Harmony is expected to drop all Android-linked code.

Harmony OS is an Android fork. Dropping all Android-linked code in an Android fork means removing almost all its code. I'm curious to know if Huawei have indeed developed their own OS, like Samsung's Bada, and if it really contains no trace of Android.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

I was curious about this too, but digging around on the internet doesn't seem to give a definitive answer to this question. The "breaking Android application compatibility" story is real, see this Technode article.

What I think seems to be happening is that Huawei is developing HarmonyOS the way GNU/Linux came out of Unix, replacing bits and pieces at a time. They started out using many prominent Android components which led to some commentators dismissing it as just an AOSP fork, but over time they're diverging into a genuine third mobile operating system, including their own ABI and development toolchain.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 4 months ago (2 children)

There is no good strategy or good outcome with Huawei. CCP virtually controls any Chinese economic entity and has appetite for "secrets" of the West. Embracing Huawei would've been as bad as outcasting it. We're at the point where I hesitate to buy most things that originated in China.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Everyone has the appetite for the secrets of everyone.

Surprisingly, China publishes a lot of it. Like, a lot a lot. As in, pretty much all the work done at CAS and similar institutions is published, which is the equivalent to US national labs or Lincoln Lab or what have you.

At the same time, Huawei itself publishes an obscene amount of work and is incredibly proactive in academic research - they open-source code, fund top-tier conferences, and publish basically every result they get. It's actually stupid how much money they dump on conferences.

Now, you might ask yourself, what secrets does the West have? Well, China already leads in 80% of critical technology fields, so unless you're working in integrated circuit design/fabrication, quantum computing, high performance computing, natural language processing, vaccines, small satellites, or space launch systems... You probably don't have much to hide. Plus, if you're working in a field where secrets are important, you already likely have security clearance.

As a Canadian I'm pissed off about Nortel too, but a bunch of Canadian companies got fucked by the dotcom crash and the 08 crisis and Nortel was unfortunately one of them. I'm more pissed off about Bombardier, which is an issue I'm actually affected by. Fuck the hyenas at the DOJ that killed Bombardier and the CSeries to protect their golden goose. How's 737 Max sales going, Boeing? Getting outcompeted by the A220 that Bombardier was forced to sell to AirBus for $1? Yeah...

Plus, Nortel outsourced their entire manufacturing and product design teams to Huawei in the 90s, so I don't have too much sympathy for Nortel.

The big powers bully us because we have no choice. That's the repercussions of Trudeau's foreign policy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (4 children)

So, I'm not exactly well versed in all this, could you fill me in on what threats Huawei poses to I, a random poor person going about my day in the US?

I refuse to believe a Corp or the NSA isn't already looking over my shoulder, and with nothing to steal, wouldn't using Huawei tech be like picking between McDonald's and Wendy's? Same product, different flavor sort of situation?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

it's a game of influence and data collection. Even when you work at McDonalds they still can use you either as data point or leverage information gathered influence/coerce you to do things on their behalf. Look at their control level in China - your behaviour is constantly monitored and your life options get limited in life if your behaviour does not align with CPP expectations. Given that lots of stuff originates in China, would you like prices online be higher for you just because you've criticised CCP? Or, more invasively - some content disappearing from your device while bring substituted with some form of fake news etc? Randsomware is still a vector as well. Opportunities for benefiting CCP are endless once they own key device(s) in today's economy: your smartphone, that is used for company logon, bank operations, personal information storage. Imagine dataset they can feed AI yo simulate you and sll the fraud they can perpetrate under your name. Or they can wipe you off internet, closing your accounts pretending to be you and intercepting all communications. India and China already been proven using coercive powers to silence dissent abroad. So, no, it's not just specific industries. It's collective Western citizens.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

could you fill me in on what threats Huawei poses to I, a random poor person going about my day in the US?

One example: You are likely employed by a business here in the USA. If you were to lose your job, that would be a large negative in your life. The NSA isn't going to ruin an American business unless its the extremely small chance that there's a national security reason. The CCP would absolutely ruin an American business if it helped a Chinese one. Unless you work for a Chinese employer, the NSA snooping on you would be more beneficial to you than the CCP.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I get that, but I'm taking on a practical point. I, a warm body behind a counter of a franchise in the Midwest, am not privy to any valuable corporate information that can't be gleamed by simply walking into the store. We don't have WiFi and I can't plug my phone in. What is the espionage device in my pocket actually going to do to me on my day to day life of browsing Lemmy and playing music?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What is the espionage device in my pocket actually going to do to me on my day to day life of browsing Lemmy and playing music?

In your case its not so much the device in your pocket, but the telecom switching gear on the backend that all that corporate and government data flows though. Huawei makes lots of that gear.

In specific cases of phones, while your job may not be high value for espionage , there are lots of people that do work highly sensitive positions. If the specific handset redirects email, txt, or phone conversations then that would be a problem at the national security level.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Considering Chinese companies like Tiktok have been more than happy to sign agreements where data is only transmitted and hosted in the US, with US DoD oversight...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Go on. Complete your thought.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

The thing everyone warned would happen happened?