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

[petschge]

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

[Alupis]

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

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

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

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

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

[mey]

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

[cljs-js-eval]

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

[tssva]

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

[mythrwy]

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

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

[myrandomcomment]

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

The reality is that both just liked screwed up.

[mark_l_watson]

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

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

[soared]

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

Fixed.

[theNJR]

Sort of like UN weapons inspects?

[igravious]

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

[dajohnson89]

good idea but it sounds like a highly expensive affair

[quotz]

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

[bogomipz]

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

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

Alcatel-Lucent - France

Nokia - Finland

Siemens - Germany

Samsung - Korea

Fujitsu and NEC - Japan

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

[nickpsecurity]

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

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

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

[HillaryBriss]

isn't all this stuff actually manufactured in China?

[elamje]

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

[burtonator]

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

[samirm]

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

[dx87]

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

[mschuster91]

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

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

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

[gramstrong]

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

[stunt]

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

[dang]

Please don't.

And please don't violate the site guidelines by making insinuations about astroturfing. It's a long-established rule that those are not allowed on HN, because the overwhelming majority of the time they are just an internet trope, and a poisonous one at that.

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

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[toomanyrichies]

For those confused about the Winnie the Pooh reference (like I was):

https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/blogs-china-blog-40627855

Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.

[robertAngst]

Can anyone stop him?

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

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

[swebs]

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

[__d]

I think there are two different philosophies at work here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[chrisco255]

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

[jeffdavis]

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

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

[criddell]

I think this is something most Americans probably support.

[taiwanboy]

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

Because of China, Taiwan is barred from attending WHO.

[hedora]

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

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

(Edit: and you can stop him by voting)

[cletus]

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

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

- Chinese companies are not separate from the state.

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

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

[bvdba]

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

[EamonnMR]

What is this gonna mean for my OnePlus