Using a throwaway to share our $0.02 relating to this. AMA I guess.
We're a US-based startup that does about $100-200k in business annually with Futurewei (Huawei's R&D subsidiary). I've never dealt with Huawei proper. I can say they're genuinely investing in R&D, and trying to build a product unlike anything being offered right now. We're working with tech that's floating around the academic conferences, but no one else commercially will touch.
This in contrast to our experiences with established US companies which, a) don't want to deal with early-stage research, b) wouldn't work with us as a new, small company, and c) gave bad IP terms (ironically).
Not excusing other activities, but for us it's been above-board and beneficial. If they want to pump their profits into the US ecosystem, I see that as beneficial.
About a dozen years ago I was working for a small-ish hardware company ($350-400M revenue), which was acquired by a bigger company. BiggerCo had a Joint Venture with Huawei (let’s called it JVco).
About 6 months Post acquisition one of our employees found that Huawei was selling a 100% complete rip-off of one of our products. JVco had access to some of our development resources, but Huawei was never supposed to see any of that per the agreements.
The box looked, acted, and functioned the same - all they did was localize the language, barely rebrand it, and repackage our weekly updates for their customers the day after we released them.
Legal from BiggerCo got involved, and it was all papered over as a ‘misunderstanding’ by the Joint Venture company. Haven’t trusted a thing with their name on it or any company that does business with them since...
My previous employer and my current one (both Fortune-50 tech companies) each had quiet policies that prospective job candidates who had Huawei on their resume needed extra clearing before they could even interview. Reading through the indictment makes the policies seem less paranoid or perhaps even not paranoid enough.
> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business.
These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor. And they've since lost their manufacturing ability. Oops.
It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time.
> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time.
I see this as a win-win. These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China and they got burned. China engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior in the process and will (hopefully) get burned.
in a lot of cases the low-cost competitors are not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance. They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood.
On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it.
It’s not just China that does this. This is a proven path for developing economies, that still have a labor price advantage. It’s the reason “Made in Germany” exists as a label, forced by the brits to mark “inferior goods” that turned out to be cheaper and better. Just like China now...
It is a DoJ allegation and that department has lower credibility than gas station sushi. It is perfectly possible that as Chinese companies continue to prove to be more competitive across the tech value chain USA will increasingly take irrational positions to hurt Chinese companies. This is an old American model that as long as Americans can control you (la South Korea, Japan,etc.), Americans treat you as business partners but since American influence on China is next to none, American come up with all these allegations.
> They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor.
This is pretty obvious and highly desirable. I think if all other countries adopt this chinese model they will be more competitive and earn more without engaging in wars and American companies will be forced to be lot more competitive.
Note that China is already making pretty big moves in other areas of Tech. Tiktok happens to be incredibly popular and I would expect DoJ to make more delinquent claims about Tiktok soon.
Exactly. All's fair in love and war... Provided you play by our rules, is what the companies are espousing.
Going out to plunder foreign countries for cheap labour and materials and then complaining when they begin to 'return the favour' so to speak, is just being woefully ignorant.
I would note that these companies were likely paying a Chinese company's American subsidiary for these services.
Paying an American company—and such a subsidiary shell company, despite being purely a legal fiction, is still an American company—for its services, no matter who owns it, should not result in China being taught how to build your tech; and it's not the responsibility of other American corporations to ensure it is. If such bad things happen, that's the fault of the American government for allowing the business relationship between the foreign company and its American subsidiary to exist, in light of clear treaties (WIPO, for one) that require the American government to embargo trade with countries that don't comply with them.
By analogy: it's not your web browser's responsibility to protect its memory from other processes snooping on it. That's the OS's job. If another process can read your process's memory, it was a failure on the OS's part. The process shouldn't be expected to be spending resources securing its memory; it should be expected only to pay its dues to the OS (in e.g. context switches) such that this gets handled for it.
You mean "for a few decades"? Modern China hasn't even existed for 50 years yet (and the revolution made sure that there is absolutely no way to even pretend that China's way of life before the revolution has _any_ bearing on modern China).
These American companies thought that having them sign a confidentiality agreement would mean they would actually follow through with the agreement. It wasn't just a "send em the plans and get our widgets for cheap!"
I don’t feel sorry for them because those companies are engaged in something else that’s intrinsically bad.
But that doesn’t diminish my criticism for China and their culpability in egregious acts. Our greatest sin is ever working with any authoritarian country but their sin is they fundamentally deny what it means to be a human being.
That was a terrible interview - are they all like that? She was just shouting at him and every time he tried to elaborate on their testing mechanisms she just called him a communist. He asked for the evidence and she said that she doesn't need evidence... ??? !!!
As much as I assume that Huawei and co have backdoors in foreign electronics, I can't get over the racism and hatred for China shared by her and the comment section.
Are the comments real? Everyone is claiming that he's a traitor, a "Clinton friend", a liar, a commie, and that he should rot in hell. And the videos already got 80k views and a near perfect like/dislike ratio. Am I crazy for thinking this a bad interview, or does half the United States really feel this way?
Are you saying Toga Networks was always Huawei and they hid that fact, or that 7 years after they were founded Huawei just bought them? (like it says on the front page of their website [1])
While this doesn't directly have to do with the CCP having backdoors in Huawei products, it does seem a bit too coincidental that the DOJ is just happening to go after them since corporate espionage is a common theme when dealing with China.
Hopefully this reflects a changing of the tides when it comes to enforcing IP laws in China rather than just an excuse to target a single company. I don't even like IP laws but if we are going to hold the rest of the industrialized world to the letter of the law then at some point China will have to be brought into the fold.
I think the perception that people commonly have of IP protection in China is out-of-date by several years.
From what I've read, the level of IP enforcement has increased dramatically since about 2014, to the point where there are more IP cases heard in Chinese courts now than in any other country. Likewise, more patents are now filed in China each year than in any other country. It's also not as if local companies always win disputes - foreign companies apparently have a very good track record in Chinese courts.
There's a description of the changes in recent years here:
Back when China was in the earlier stages of industrialization, it really didn't care much about IP. But things aren't the same any more: China spends about as much on R&D as the US, and it has its own IP to protect. IP law was not on their radar before, but it very much appears to be now. But you can imagine how difficult it is to set such a system up. They've had to create an entirely new legal system, train judges, etc. China has changed so rapidly that it's difficult for these sorts of systems to keep up.
I think the train on Huawei has already left the station. The most likely scenario is a U.S. maybe a few states highly dependent on U.S. security assurances vis-a-vis China toeing the line and everybody else using some combination of Huawei and Nokia/Ericsson in various combinations within their infrastructure based on how close they align with the U.S. or China.
This whole thing looks just like AIIB a couple years ago where the U.S. made a huge stink about not joining the club and in the end everybody but Japan and Taiwan signed up.
> "Huawei is alleged to have stolen source code for Company 1’s routers, which it then used in its own products."
I've never really understood how IP theft works. I've been a software engineer for a long time and I know that Reading and making sense of an existing million line code base is a hella of a lot harder than just writing new code from scratch. Why on earth would anyone want to steal source code from a competitor?
>Charges also Reveal Huawei’s Business in North Korea and Assistance to the Government of Iran in Performing Domestic Surveillance //
Surely evidence would reveal that, but this DOJ press release doesn't appear to be concerned with that.
>As revealed by the government’s independent investigation and review of court filings, //
Mwah-ha-ha-ha! They know how to tell 'em.
>the new charges in this case relate to the alleged decades-long efforts by Huawei, and several of its subsidiaries, both in the U.S. and in the People’s Republic of China, to misappropriate intellectual property //
Aren't new charges a new case? Aren't these extending speculations rather leading for a case that is in process, shouldn't they make the allegations and present any evidence - if they wish - rather than make extended claims bracketed by "allegedly". I can't believe that this has been written as anything other than a chance to make unsubstantiated claims ... have the courts hear the charges and then expound at length about the conviction.
I thought these sorts of things from one of the main parties involved (the USA government) were strongly decried by courts as they tend to colour juries and judicial bodies; aren't the DOJ perverting the course of justice here with such a diatribe?
>"Huawei’s efforts to steal trade secrets and other sophisticated U.S. technology were successful. Through the methods of deception described above, the defendants obtained nonpublic intellectual property relating to internet router source code, cellular antenna technology and robotics. As a consequence of its campaign to steal this technology and intellectual property, Huawei was able to drastically cut its research and development costs and associated delays, giving the company a significant and unfair competitive advantage."
That may all be true, but if you're currently prosecuting a case and have to determine if it's true it would be nice, as a DOJ, to not making statements that -- despite legal ass covering -- is clearly intended to presuppose the guilt of the defendant.
When USA decided to go after Huawei to bolster their own telecoms companies, I wondered if they realised they'd end up stooping so low?
>In one case, a technology company looking for a partnership with Huawei sent over a presentation deck with confidential information about its business in order to generate commercial interest with Huawei. From the indictment:
> Immediately upon receipt of the slide deck, each page of which was marked ‘Proprietary and Confidential’ by Company 6, HUAWEI distributed the slide deck to HUAWEI engineers, including engineers in the subsidiary that was working on technology that directly competed with Company 6’s products and services. These engineers discussed developments by Company 6 that would have application to HUAWEI’s own prototypes then under design.
Well, yeah, what the hell else are you supposed to do when some supplier sends you a highly technical slide deck, except discuss it with your engineers working on the same thing? I seriously can't fathom why anybody involved here would have any expectation to the contrary.
Copying successful technology is a goes-around, comes-around cycle. In 1780-1850, the USA was the premier pirate, stealing the world's premier technology and know-how, from Britain. By 2050, the Chinese will be fighting the very same battle with someone else (Nigeria and Angola maybe?), and bitterly bemoaning IP theft in the same terms.
<quote>and using proxies such as professors working at research institutions to obtain and provide the technology to the defendants</quote>
You know this talk about using American Professors as proxies for exfiltrating information reminds me of this: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00291-2
Pretty clearly Huawei is now the cow that the US and China will be fighting over. Meng is now likely to be caught up in this as well regardless of how the current charges go. The US standing right up to China and punching it the nose. It's an inflection point for the world economy.
This another example of what is called the Master-Slave dialectic from Hegel, an 18th century philosopher. Something that I studied in a philosophy class and had a profound influence on my understanding of work. Please take 10' to understand it and it applies to the relationship between engineers and salespeople, to the relationship now between China and the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_dialectic
so what does this mean? do they haul all the executives and workers into court? what happens if they are found guilty? do the executives go to jail, is the company forced to shutdown, or do they just have to pay a fine and all is good. hell, do they even have to pay the fine?
I see it this way, apologies if it seems off topic or judgmental but....
The third world is a place where many people have an idea of astuteness that differs from intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to design, build, create, manage, or otherwise achieve something in a novel way.
Astuteness is the ability to take an advantage when one presents itself. Think Diego Maradona, or Aladdin.
US technology companies have a great deal of creative intelligence, institutional knowledge, trust from customers, access to talent, and freedom to execute on corporate strategy.
But even the company you mention, Apple, is arguably being outdone by Samsung (moved production out of China) and Huawei (Chinese).
Two things come to mind: 1) Consumers want an iPhone, not an iPhone equivalent from China, 2) Apple might have enough influence and connections to evade blatant theft.
[+] [-] throwawei|6 years ago|reply
We're a US-based startup that does about $100-200k in business annually with Futurewei (Huawei's R&D subsidiary). I've never dealt with Huawei proper. I can say they're genuinely investing in R&D, and trying to build a product unlike anything being offered right now. We're working with tech that's floating around the academic conferences, but no one else commercially will touch.
This in contrast to our experiences with established US companies which, a) don't want to deal with early-stage research, b) wouldn't work with us as a new, small company, and c) gave bad IP terms (ironically).
Not excusing other activities, but for us it's been above-board and beneficial. If they want to pump their profits into the US ecosystem, I see that as beneficial.
[+] [-] djrogers|6 years ago|reply
About 6 months Post acquisition one of our employees found that Huawei was selling a 100% complete rip-off of one of our products. JVco had access to some of our development resources, but Huawei was never supposed to see any of that per the agreements.
The box looked, acted, and functioned the same - all they did was localize the language, barely rebrand it, and repackage our weekly updates for their customers the day after we released them.
Legal from BiggerCo got involved, and it was all papered over as a ‘misunderstanding’ by the Joint Venture company. Haven’t trusted a thing with their name on it or any company that does business with them since...
[+] [-] anonobviosly|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allovernow|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nostromo|6 years ago|reply
These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor. And they've since lost their manufacturing ability. Oops.
It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time.
[+] [-] tharne|6 years ago|reply
I see this as a win-win. These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China and they got burned. China engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior in the process and will (hopefully) get burned.
[+] [-] AsyncAwait|6 years ago|reply
You mean every developing nation? Just look at U.S. industrial espionage in Europe during the 18th-19th century when it was developing.
Pretending this is somehow how China specifically operates is disingenuous.
[+] [-] nimbius|6 years ago|reply
On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it.
[+] [-] ricw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Koremat6666|6 years ago|reply
> They didn't stop to consider that by teaching China how to build their products they were creating a new low-cost competitor.
This is pretty obvious and highly desirable. I think if all other countries adopt this chinese model they will be more competitive and earn more without engaging in wars and American companies will be forced to be lot more competitive.
Note that China is already making pretty big moves in other areas of Tech. Tiktok happens to be incredibly popular and I would expect DoJ to make more delinquent claims about Tiktok soon.
[+] [-] cmroanirgo|6 years ago|reply
Going out to plunder foreign countries for cheap labour and materials and then complaining when they begin to 'return the favour' so to speak, is just being woefully ignorant.
[+] [-] chrisjc|6 years ago|reply
Perhaps a bit of an over generalization. Some were interested in licensing technology to Huawei as was the case with Akhan.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190204005211/en/AKH...
This case was especially alarming considering the dual-purpose potential of the IP.
[+] [-] jdc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|6 years ago|reply
Paying an American company—and such a subsidiary shell company, despite being purely a legal fiction, is still an American company—for its services, no matter who owns it, should not result in China being taught how to build your tech; and it's not the responsibility of other American corporations to ensure it is. If such bad things happen, that's the fault of the American government for allowing the business relationship between the foreign company and its American subsidiary to exist, in light of clear treaties (WIPO, for one) that require the American government to embargo trade with countries that don't comply with them.
By analogy: it's not your web browser's responsibility to protect its memory from other processes snooping on it. That's the OS's job. If another process can read your process's memory, it was a failure on the OS's part. The process shouldn't be expected to be spending resources securing its memory; it should be expected only to pay its dues to the OS (in e.g. context switches) such that this gets handled for it.
[+] [-] chalst|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheRealPomax|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heartbeats|6 years ago|reply
There's two ways this can end:
1. China becomes the global #1, we all get social credit scores, etc
2. Something is done to stop the ascendancy of China
Our losses far exceed the companies' short-term gains.
[+] [-] addicted|6 years ago|reply
So I’m not sure what they have to complain about.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Vinnl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hxyhsjsxycy|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] oh_sigh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] appleshore|6 years ago|reply
But that doesn’t diminish my criticism for China and their culpability in egregious acts. Our greatest sin is ever working with any authoritarian country but their sin is they fundamentally deny what it means to be a human being.
[+] [-] busymom0|6 years ago|reply
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-co...
Also here's Huawei Technologies Chief Security Officer Andy Purdy talking to Maria Bartiromo:
https://youtu.be/iPczYamcruo
[+] [-] jkelleyrtp|6 years ago|reply
As much as I assume that Huawei and co have backdoors in foreign electronics, I can't get over the racism and hatred for China shared by her and the comment section.
Are the comments real? Everyone is claiming that he's a traitor, a "Clinton friend", a liar, a commie, and that he should rot in hell. And the videos already got 80k views and a near perfect like/dislike ratio. Am I crazy for thinking this a bad interview, or does half the United States really feel this way?
[+] [-] thorowawaytoga|6 years ago|reply
This company was paying as twice as you currenly earn, if you work at Cisco or Juniper. Just like that, as twice as, just ocme work with us.
One year went by, and it turned out that Toga Network is no other than Huawei.
So I do not know about stealing source code, but I know they looked after its IP which is in people's mind.
[+] [-] lexs|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aperocky|6 years ago|reply
I think a general term for acquiring that IP is called employment.
[+] [-] Ardren|6 years ago|reply
[1] - http://toganetworks.com/
[+] [-] emmelaich|6 years ago|reply
Huawei bought Toga in 2016.
https://venturebeat.com/2016/12/07/huawei-reportedly-acquire...
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] KingMachiavelli|6 years ago|reply
Hopefully this reflects a changing of the tides when it comes to enforcing IP laws in China rather than just an excuse to target a single company. I don't even like IP laws but if we are going to hold the rest of the industrialized world to the letter of the law then at some point China will have to be brought into the fold.
[+] [-] DiogenesKynikos|6 years ago|reply
From what I've read, the level of IP enforcement has increased dramatically since about 2014, to the point where there are more IP cases heard in Chinese courts now than in any other country. Likewise, more patents are now filed in China each year than in any other country. It's also not as if local companies always win disputes - foreign companies apparently have a very good track record in Chinese courts.
There's a description of the changes in recent years here:
1. https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/05/07/rapid-changes-chinese-...
2. https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/chinas-progress-on-intellect...
Back when China was in the earlier stages of industrialization, it really didn't care much about IP. But things aren't the same any more: China spends about as much on R&D as the US, and it has its own IP to protect. IP law was not on their radar before, but it very much appears to be now. But you can imagine how difficult it is to set such a system up. They've had to create an entirely new legal system, train judges, etc. China has changed so rapidly that it's difficult for these sorts of systems to keep up.
[+] [-] Dahoon|6 years ago|reply
But we have proof that the NSA steals and shares secrets with US companies so throwing rocks in a glass house maybe?
[+] [-] euix|6 years ago|reply
This whole thing looks just like AIIB a couple years ago where the U.S. made a huge stink about not joining the club and in the end everybody but Japan and Taiwan signed up.
[+] [-] thorwasdfasdf|6 years ago|reply
I've never really understood how IP theft works. I've been a software engineer for a long time and I know that Reading and making sense of an existing million line code base is a hella of a lot harder than just writing new code from scratch. Why on earth would anyone want to steal source code from a competitor?
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|6 years ago|reply
Surely evidence would reveal that, but this DOJ press release doesn't appear to be concerned with that.
>As revealed by the government’s independent investigation and review of court filings, //
Mwah-ha-ha-ha! They know how to tell 'em.
>the new charges in this case relate to the alleged decades-long efforts by Huawei, and several of its subsidiaries, both in the U.S. and in the People’s Republic of China, to misappropriate intellectual property //
Aren't new charges a new case? Aren't these extending speculations rather leading for a case that is in process, shouldn't they make the allegations and present any evidence - if they wish - rather than make extended claims bracketed by "allegedly". I can't believe that this has been written as anything other than a chance to make unsubstantiated claims ... have the courts hear the charges and then expound at length about the conviction.
I thought these sorts of things from one of the main parties involved (the USA government) were strongly decried by courts as they tend to colour juries and judicial bodies; aren't the DOJ perverting the course of justice here with such a diatribe?
>"Huawei’s efforts to steal trade secrets and other sophisticated U.S. technology were successful. Through the methods of deception described above, the defendants obtained nonpublic intellectual property relating to internet router source code, cellular antenna technology and robotics. As a consequence of its campaign to steal this technology and intellectual property, Huawei was able to drastically cut its research and development costs and associated delays, giving the company a significant and unfair competitive advantage."
That may all be true, but if you're currently prosecuting a case and have to determine if it's true it would be nice, as a DOJ, to not making statements that -- despite legal ass covering -- is clearly intended to presuppose the guilt of the defendant.
When USA decided to go after Huawei to bolster their own telecoms companies, I wondered if they realised they'd end up stooping so low?
[+] [-] jhallenworld|6 years ago|reply
https://www.eetasia.com/news/article/Integrated-5G-Chips-Unv...
And in particular, with its 5G modem:
http://www.hisilicon.com/en/Products/ProductList/Balong
Some news about this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-09/huawei-an...
And also for the base stations:
https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/huawei-s-5g-ran-port...
[+] [-] sandoooo|6 years ago|reply
> Immediately upon receipt of the slide deck, each page of which was marked ‘Proprietary and Confidential’ by Company 6, HUAWEI distributed the slide deck to HUAWEI engineers, including engineers in the subsidiary that was working on technology that directly competed with Company 6’s products and services. These engineers discussed developments by Company 6 that would have application to HUAWEI’s own prototypes then under design.
Well, yeah, what the hell else are you supposed to do when some supplier sends you a highly technical slide deck, except discuss it with your engineers working on the same thing? I seriously can't fathom why anybody involved here would have any expectation to the contrary.
[+] [-] jonathaneunice|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crmrc114|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ReptileMan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunstone|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatiscool|6 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/us-german-intel-...
[+] [-] jbduler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway954|6 years ago|reply
so many questions :(
[+] [-] pastime|6 years ago|reply
If China steals all the US IP, why are US technology companies still so valuable?
For example, Apple is a very valuable US technology company that also has extensive dealings in China.
[+] [-] totalZero|6 years ago|reply
The third world is a place where many people have an idea of astuteness that differs from intelligence.
Intelligence is the ability to design, build, create, manage, or otherwise achieve something in a novel way.
Astuteness is the ability to take an advantage when one presents itself. Think Diego Maradona, or Aladdin.
US technology companies have a great deal of creative intelligence, institutional knowledge, trust from customers, access to talent, and freedom to execute on corporate strategy.
But even the company you mention, Apple, is arguably being outdone by Samsung (moved production out of China) and Huawei (Chinese).
[+] [-] sumedh|6 years ago|reply
Marketing plays a big role.
[+] [-] LO22m|6 years ago|reply