[HN Gopher] Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027
___________________________________________________________________
Huawei 5G kit must be removed from UK by 2027
Author : doener
Score : 239 points
Date : 2020-07-14 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| gberger wrote:
| The justification is that the equipment presents a national
| security risk.
|
| If that's true, how is it reasonable to allow this equipment to
| operate in the UK for 7 more years? Doesn't that mean the UK is
| willingly under national security risk for 7 years?
|
| Unless, of course, there was never a security risk...
| beezle wrote:
| Because it will be obsolete and 6G will be the new hotness in
| seven years.
| orwin wrote:
| I think we just passed peak production in europe last year, i
| highly doubt we will be able to afford more energetically
| expensive devices anytime soon without overexploiting shell
| oil.
| tomfanning wrote:
| Not dissimilar to how face masks are being made compulsory in
| shops by the British government.
|
| In 11 days' time.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| And 2 days ago Gove said they wouldn't be compulsory.
|
| They are just panicking because of the economy (latest
| figures show a 20% crash).
| nicky0 wrote:
| Future-dating it is a sensible move to allow people to get
| used to the idea, to disseminate the news, and to allow time
| to obtain the necessary equipment. It will increase
| compliance compared to an immediate rule change. Bear in mind
| that only about 5%-10% of people in UK currently are wearing
| masks in shops (based on my own local observations).
| ben_w wrote:
| While that is true, these rules should've been brought in
| months ago.
|
| (Also: do people really need more than one week?)
| nicky0 wrote:
| Months ago there were massive shortages of PPE and UK was
| largely in lockdown with most people only going out to
| exercise and to shop, not going anywhere else, and not
| seeing famliy, friends etc.
|
| Now the risk profile of things has changed because people
| are out and about more.
|
| But 11 days does seem a bit long, sure.
| ben_w wrote:
| The masks normal people need to wear aren't the same
| masks that medical staff need to wear -- the former
| mainly stop you infecting others, the later keep you safe
| from others.
| krona wrote:
| You're assuming everyone who must to go to a shop in the next
| 11 days already have in their possession an appropriate face
| covering; the definition of which is as yet unknown.
| reallydontask wrote:
| they could introduce the measure immediately for all but
| essential shops, with essential shops a week later to allow
| people to acquire appropriate face covering
| blhack wrote:
| If the face masks are that essential (which they probably
| are): wrap a t shirt around your face.
| boopmaster wrote:
| yet, dissimilar in so many ways (number of manufacturers,
| ease of access, cost, offenses against fellow humans
| notwithstanding)
| nicky0 wrote:
| Presumably it's about judging what is an acceptable degree of
| risk vs stripping out all Huawei equipment immediately and
| effecively crippling the nation's comms infrastrtucture.
| ben_w wrote:
| Is 5G really already "critical"? I thought it was only just
| starting to be phased in when the virus became more important
| to worry about.
| dazc wrote:
| It isn't just 5G, Huawei equipment is used throughout the
| telecom industry.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Which does raise the question, why are we concerned about
| 5G when Huawei is presumably also behind much of the 4G
| and other existing infrastructure? What's the difference
| in terms of security risk?
| dazc wrote:
| One reason explained here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23831435
| room271 wrote:
| Our governments balance these concerns all the time: economic
| cost vs security risk. It's very normal.
| goalieca wrote:
| I see you've never been in charge of risk mitigation measures.
| I do them as part of my job and am tasked with scoring risks
| and possible mitigation responses. Sometimes the mitigation is
| so effective that it can eliminate the risk but other times it
| is practically useless.
|
| Decision makers then need to asses those risks and possible
| mitigations and weigh them against a million other factors.
| krona wrote:
| Many things represent a national security risk. Switching off
| the equipment overnight, I would argue, _also_ represents a
| risk to national security.
| andylynch wrote:
| That is exactly what BT have been saying. Moreover they
| rightly point out that losing access to software updates due
| to US sanctions is a security risk in its own right too.
| geogra4 wrote:
| Right. I think it's mostly just to keep the US happy.
| georgespencer wrote:
| This is a good example of the kinds of tradeoffs which must be
| made at the highest levels of public service.
|
| > Doesn't that mean the UK is willingly under national security
| risk for 7 years?
|
| No, and I'll come on to why in a second.
|
| Huawei, just like any Chinese corporation operating overseas,
| is an attack vector for intelligence gathering. Anyone
| presenting a counter-argument to this is either a shill for the
| Chinese government, or totally uninformed.
|
| China has a culturally distinct attitude towards intelligence
| and intelligence gathering to nearly every western country. The
| national emphasis on the collective good blurs the line between
| private citizens, acting in a personal or professional
| capacity, and the stereotypical impression of a "spy"
| perpetuated in the west: on the payroll, going to their cubicle
| at the CIA each day. China's voracious appetite for
| intelligence (and, particularly in recent years, industrial
| espionage), means that it is impossible to distinguish between
| the commercial interests of a Chinese company and the Chinese
| state furthering its apparatus.
|
| Remember Crypto AG? The Swiss crypto company jointly-operated
| by the CIA and German intelligence?[1] That's newsworthy
| because it's unusual: western states are typically limited to
| publicly lobbying their corporations for backdoor access, or
| working around things like end-to-end encryption (e.g. I
| believe PRISM used a combination of vulnerabilities to
| exfiltrate data from Hotmail and MSN prior to encryption taking
| place).
|
| In China, we must assume that the reverse is the norm: the
| Chinese government does not need to lobby its companies to
| provide it with data, or to build-in backdoors or exploits. A
| Chinese corporation can be compelled to turn over everything it
| has, silently, and to compromise users and products to benefit
| the Chinese government, silently.
|
| Crucially this is not a criticism of China. China can best be
| understood by Westerners as a series of tradeoffs to benefit
| the collective good, at the expense of personal liberty and
| privacy. Literally the argument you might encounter would be:
| "If you have nothing to hide then why do you care?"
|
| The information gathered is not always as exciting as you might
| imagine. It's not just deployed into military intelligence or
| kompromat. It might "just" be used as a means of preserving
| China's status quo as a leading manufacturing hub (and,
| therefore, China's position as a growing economic power).
|
| So China a) has a vast appetite for intelligence of all kinds,
| and b) does not draw a distinction between private
| citizens/corporations and state actors/corporations.
|
| To answer your question:
|
| Huawei has been a cornerstone of the UK's telecoms
| infrastructure for nearly twenty years, and in order to gain
| its foothold committed to allowing GCHQ full access to its
| codebase (HCSEC)[2]. The stipulation from Britain's
| intelligence community was that Huawei must not be allowed to
| have a monopoly position, or even a significant market share
| beyond a certain level.
|
| I am not familiar with the specific technical reason that
| Huawei at 70% vs. Huawei at 40% of the UK's telecoms
| infrastructure would represent a disproportionate increase in
| risk, but I believe it is likely to be related to resource
| constraints -- fuck me guys, GCHQ is having to actively monitor
| and review the code deployed across a double-digit % of our
| telecoms infrastructure from the starting position of "this is
| provided by a bad actor"! -- and the doomsday scenario that
| Huawei's position of market dominance would drive competition
| down, resulting in a choice to either have e.g. 7G with Huawei,
| or not at all (7G is a fictitious example, but you see my
| point).
|
| The UK is balancing the very real ongoing nightmare of
| monitoring Huawei's involvement in UK telecoms with the fact
| that it's a cheap, high quality supplier, and the fact that our
| closest allies -- the United States -- have been on a warpath
| over Chinese intelligence gathering since long before Obama put
| the kibosh on China acquiring Aixtron in Germany for national
| security reasons. Oh, and we want to get a trade deal out of
| the US in the near future.
|
| The risk:reward for Huawei is at a point where it's no longer
| sustainable. Phasing its removal from our infrastructure will
| smooth our relationship with our closest ally, reduce our
| reliance on a Chinese state manufacturer, and reduce the
| workload on our signals analysts in GCHQ.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-
| ci...
|
| [2]
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
| geogra4 wrote:
| https://news.sky.com/story/mi5-chief-shrugs-off-us-
| warnings-...
| georgespencer wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what point you're making
| with this link.
|
| The link states that Sir Andrew Parker (head of MI5)
| doesn't believe that the inclusion of Huawei in UK telecoms
| infrastructure will have a negative impact on the UK's
| relationship with the US.
|
| The US has been emphatic that it could:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51581095
| simion314 wrote:
| >That's newsworthy because it's unusual: western states are
| typically limited to publicly lobbying their corporations for
| backdoor access, or working around things like end-to-end
| encryption
|
| Isn't this contradicted by secret courts approving NAS
| warrants, loopholes like meta-data can is legal to collect,
| digital data is considered different that data you have on
| paper in your home etc. If CIA, NSA has some judge approval
| to ask Apple access to someone data and keep it secret do you
| think Apple(or Google) can challenge the secret orders?
|
| What if a judge produces soem secret order so Apple and
| Google provide full access to everything do you think some
| manager or developer will make this public and suffer a fait
| similar or worse as Snowden? IMO we people in the west we
| sometimes forget how corrupt people in power are and how
| exceptions to laws and constitution can be found when
| national security is mentioned.
| georgespencer wrote:
| This is why the free press and personal liberty are vital
| components of most western civilisations: they act as a
| release valve for the sort of behaviours you talk about.
|
| What you are broadly driving at is the necessity for many
| areas of intelligence gathering and espionage to be
| invisible to the public eye. There is necessarily a strong
| tradition of civilian oversight of intelligence agencies in
| nearly every democracy. For example, in the UK, domestic
| intelligence is overseen by the Home Secretary, the
| Intelligence and Security Parliamentary Committee, and the
| Investigatory Powers Tribunal.
|
| Needless to say, a free press, whistleblowers, and civilian
| oversight do not exist in China.
| simion314 wrote:
| I agree, and I am not trying to say West and China are
| the same - the point I am struggling to make is that we
| might not have it as good as we think and there are many
| things hidden from us. How many time we see old documents
| released where US or other government was doing crazy
| shit - I mean is insanity to think that for some reason
| they stopped doing same level of insane stuff.
|
| I seen a video a few months back about US military
| considering internet as a new area of war and considering
| how to engage in such war , it is clear that not only
| China is trying to push their propaganda but the others
| are doing a similar thing (again I am not trying to say
| is the exact same thing just trying to prevent everyone
| focusing too muc in one direction and not noticing what
| is happening behind their backs at home)
| elicox wrote:
| 2027? I guess to install 6G
| someperson wrote:
| > UK's mobile providers are being banned from buying new Huawei
| 5G equipment after 31 December 2020
| rdxm wrote:
| lol....by 2027....what's the point?! if you think your comm's
| infra is popped for real you don't sit around with your d __* in
| your hands for 6 years!
| room271 wrote:
| This kind of thing is going to play out a lot over the next few
| years. It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the
| political realities. When China was very poor, it didn't really
| matter, or perhaps the assumption was that China would liberalise
| more quickly than it has. But China, while increasingly mature
| economically, has not developed proper civil society, human
| rights, freedom of expression, democracy, and so on. Let us hope
| they do so as quickly as possible, not least for the sake of the
| Chinese people themselves. And let us work to improve our example
| and unity too in countries where we do have these things, however
| imperfectly.
| bzb3 wrote:
| It's not like the UK is a paragon of freedom of expression.
| bigfudge wrote:
| paragon
| bzb3 wrote:
| Thanks :)
| [deleted]
| ogogmad wrote:
| This reminds me of a joke:
|
| During Soviet times, a Russian man was arguing with a British
| man over whether their respective countries had freedom of
| speech. The British man said "I can go to the Houses of
| Parliament and call Margaret Thatcher an idiot". To which the
| Soviet man said "It's the same for us. I can go to Red Square
| and call Margaret Thatcher an idiot".
| [deleted]
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| :-)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Whether China liberalise is a red herring.
|
| This is a geopolitical clash of power. It's not about
| respective political regimes, it's about relative power and
| influence. If China liberalises tomorrow none of the
| fundamental issues will change and China will still be a threat
| to the US. The only thing that will change is that the US will
| have to find something else in order to label China 'evil'.
| ahelwer wrote:
| This is a good analysis. You aren't seeing a constant
| drumbeat of bad China news because the US suddenly cares very
| deeply about Muslim lives - otherwise we'd be hearing a lot
| more about India, for example. China threatens the US' global
| hegemony. To the extent people in power care about China's
| political system, it is used to rope in liberals to an anti-
| China stance and manufacture consent for various measures
| against them, military or otherwise.
| enitihas wrote:
| The comparison with India is wrong, or you don't understand
| the scale of what is happening in China. For starters,
| India is not re-educating anyone.
| longliveTrump wrote:
| the real kashmir massacre 2019 nobody cares unfortunately
| ferest wrote:
| i doubt you understand the "fact" you are talking about
| in person, rather than from some "news".
|
| India is not re-educating anyone, but rules out muslim
| from citizenship? Not even mention the caste system,
| which is way worse than the color discrimination in US.
| When India became the 2nd biggest power in the world, all
| these will become target
| ferest wrote:
| > Your arguments lack context. India isn't ruling out
| Muslims from citizenship. While the CAA is a very bad
| step forward, and has several problems, it is about what
| criteria satisfying refugees are available for quick
| citizenship, and doesn't apply to citizens of the
| country. India is certainly not running anything close to
| the camps China is running for Uyighurs.
|
| I could argue the same, the so-called reeducation camps
| only applies to xinjiang province, and for those could
| only get education from religion maniacs, rather than a
| normal school. And there were numbers of attack events
| were caused by it. Keep in mind Uyighurs are not only
| living in xinjiang, there are uyighurs living in rest
| parts of China and doing well.
|
| > India is actively trying to fix disparities caused by
| the caste system. It took the US 200 years to get civil
| rights, India had affirmative action from day one, and
| one of the biggest examples of affirmative action at
| that. The caste system is horrendous, but social change
| can never be brought so quickly ( atleast in a democratic
| way, we certainly don't want Stalin or Mao style quick
| changes)
|
| Aye aye, it took 200 years for the US to have civil
| rights for all (still problematic), and Inida takes 70+
| years still working on the caste problems, when it
| reaches China, which was founded after India, we are
| suddenly asking for all equal society. Yes, unwillingly
| education is bad, but keeping them blank and poor is
| evil. Learning skills to fit into a society, even it
| doesn't fit into your propaganda, is not wrong.
|
| > The caste system, while bad, isn't in any way worse
| than color discrimination in the US. To quote just one
| example, India has very strong laws against caste based
| violence.
|
| US also has strong anti hate crime law, and is one of
| countries offers most assistance for anti-discrimination,
| law doesn't help unless vast majority are educated to do
| so, and vast majority has economy power to do so.
| enitihas wrote:
| Your arguments lack context. India isn't ruling out
| Muslims from citizenship. While the CAA is a very bad
| step forward, and has several problems, it is about what
| criteria satisfying refugees are available for quick
| citizenship, and doesn't apply to citizens of the
| country. India is certainly not running anything close to
| the camps China is running for Uyighurs.
|
| India is actively trying to fix disparities caused by the
| caste system. It took the US 200 years to get civil
| rights, India had affirmative action from day one, and
| one of the biggest examples of affirmative action at
| that. The caste system is horrendous, but social change
| can never be brought so quickly ( atleast in a democratic
| way, we certainly don't want Stalin or Mao style quick
| changes)
|
| The caste system, while bad, isn't in any way worse than
| color discrimination in the US. To quote just one
| example, India has very strong laws against caste based
| violence.
|
| India has it's own shares of issues, but it's still an
| order of magnitude better than the Chinese Government.
| typon wrote:
| This is why the Chinese strategy is not to give in to US
| bullying but create an alternative order in the world. Either
| the US comes to terms with it or we see the US empire lash
| out even harder
| advanced-DnD wrote:
| An alternative where criticizing the CCP or that Pooh will
| end you up in jail? An alternative where China claim my
| country's ocean, far from its Mainland?
|
| No thank you. Stop pushing "China is victim of bully" or
| "China is here to save you from evil West" rhetoric.
| chrischen wrote:
| China claiming your ocean is exactly the same political
| power clashing as US claiming UK's 5G networks.
| adventured wrote:
| No it's not. The US isn't claiming the UK's 5G networks.
| The alternative solution providers such as Samsung,
| Ericsson and Nokia are not US companies.
|
| China is using its military to forcibly steal territory
| the size of France from neighboring nations. That
| territory does not belong to China.
|
| The US can rightfully sanction any nation that uses its
| technology and its currency. Those things belong to the
| US. The sea territory that China is stealing does not
| belong to it.
|
| Other nations do not have to obey US sanctions. They're
| free to abandon all US technology and abandon the US
| dollar and its banking structures. Go for it.
| jaekash wrote:
| > If China liberalises tomorrow none of the fundamental
| issues will change and China will still be a threat to the
| US. The only thing that will change is that the US will have
| to find something else in order to label China 'evil'.
|
| Cite please. And won't the best way to debunk the
| "propaganda" be to just liberalize right? So ... everybody is
| waiting and has been waiting for decades, China should stop
| making excuses and get on with it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The US destroyed Iranian democracy and replaced it by the
| Shah, a brutal autocratic leader whose abuse of power and
| violation of human rights led to the rise of the current
| far-right Islamic theocracy : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
| /1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
|
| The US destroyed Bolivia, replacing an elected government
| that was legally found to be allowed to run, with a far-
| right nationalist military-backed junta that refuses to
| hold elections : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Bolivia
| n_political_crisis
|
| The US installed a brutal dictator in Chile, with the coup
| killing the legitimately elected president and overthrowing
| the liberal democracy, replacing it with dictatorship :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende
|
| No, it is entirely clear to anyone in the world that the US
| will destroy your country and kill you if you oppose, no
| matter how liberal it is, if it suits their geopolitical
| interests.
| adventured wrote:
| > The US destroyed Iranian democracy and replaced it by
| the Shah
|
| Iran had no democracy. Mosaddegh was appointed Prime
| Minister by the Shah, he was not democratically elected
| by the people of Iran. The Majlis that nominated him were
| a collection of feudal lords that dominated Iranian
| politics, they were not democratically elected by the
| people of Iran, they co-ruled Iran as a feudal kingdom.
|
| If Iran were a democracy the Shah wouldn't have been
| appointing the Prime Minister.
|
| It has been 40 years, and just look at Iran today: zero
| human rights. You're going to try to blame the US for
| four decades of theocratic dictatorship? Laughable. The
| timer on that excuse has long since expired. Iran is
| responsible for the condition of Iran today, and the
| people that installed the theocracy are solely
| responsible for that too.
|
| > The US destroyed Bolivia, replacing an elected
| government
|
| That's an entirely false, invented claim. Which is why
| you didn't even try to support it.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| > Iran had no democracy. Mosaddegh was appointed Prime
| Minister by the Shah, he was not democratically elected
| by the people of Iran. The Majlis that nominated him were
| a collection of feudal lords that dominated Iranian
| politics, they were not democratically elected by the
| people of Iran, they co-ruled Iran as a feudal kingdom.
|
| The Majles was literally an elected body. Yes, he was
| appointed by the Shah after being nominated by the
| parliament. That's how constitutional monarchies work.
| Justin Trudeau also was elected by a parliament and then
| appointed by the Queen.
|
| The fact that a lot of the people in the Iranian
| parliament had feudal land is completely orthogonal here.
| They were still elected. A lot of the people in the US
| Congress are also incredibly wealthy.
|
| Mossadegh was elected fair and square. He was overthrown
| and replaced by a puppet when he went against Western
| interests.
|
| As for Bolivia, Morales was a legitimate, elected
| president of Bolivia. Under US pressure and support, the
| OAS fabricated evidence that the election was
| illegitimate, and the US backed a millitary coup. It was
| a coup orchestrated and following the interests of the
| US. Here is my source: https://www.theguardian.com/commen
| tisfree/2019/dec/02/the-oa...
|
| All of that information is also in the link I provided.
| lihan wrote:
| I disagree. Reports about China from many western media tend to
| exaggerate things about China, mostly influenced by western
| politics, not good at all. Also, western media tend to report
| selective facts to only show things they want people to hear
| and see.
|
| The right to life is the first clause of human right, which I
| see they are violated in many western countries. They refuse to
| treat the poor and old. Do you hear China criticise? Maybe they
| are, but for sure western media choose not to report them.
|
| Freedom of speech is a relative term in today's world. I can
| say some of the things you shouldn't say in China are equally
| not welcomed in many western countries. If you split US, see
| how many troubles could come to you?
|
| On democracy, I'm not sure what to comment. China has ran 4000
| years under one empire system, and it's just the culture there.
| Why democratic society is better than the 1 party system?
| What's more important is to have the party represent people's
| interests. In many democratic countries, each party represents
| the interests from certain groups, that's why it's necessity to
| have multiple parties perhaps. The downsides to democratic
| system is also quite obvious. There are countless debate on
| many small matters which waste tax payer's money etc.. Also,
| the democracy can be manipulated, and if it is the case, it's
| worse.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| comments like this make me wanna reach 500 karma so that i
| can downvote :-)
|
| man are you REALLY and seriously arguing that a single party
| empire system is better than democracy? dude please. It might
| be better if you like to live in your bee hive and play your
| assigned role. But what if you are different? what if you
| want to be something else than society forces you to be? what
| theb? you are screwed my friend.
|
| and thats why i happily accept.that democracy might be slower
| and more expensive. because its for EVERYONE. in theory
| though ;-)
| yushuf wrote:
| How is democracy working out in Arab spring countries or
| Eastern European countries? Most westerners have it wrong
| where they think Democracy --> Economic prosperity, where
| in fact it's quite the opposite. Economic prosperity -->
| Strong government --> Democracy. If you don't have a strong
| state, Democracy (or any political system) just leads to
| widespread corruption.
|
| If you're interested in learning more about how China,
| America, UK, etc were able to rise to power, I recommend
| checking out this paper: https://s3.amazonaws.com/real.stlo
| uisfed.org/wp/2015/2015-00...
| mlindner wrote:
| You've got it completely backwards. Strong government
| leads to the corruption of society and a reduction in
| freedom. If you have weaker government then there is more
| freedom for everyone and greater economic prosperity.
| [deleted]
| baybal2 wrote:
| > It's a tough question: how to marry globalisation with the
| political realities.
|
| Very simple explanation: it's impossible, unless the West can
| mow the rogue regimes left, and right, and is ready for a war
| with a nuclear power to do that.
|
| > When China was very poor, it didn't really matter, or perhaps
| the assumption was that China would liberalise more quickly
| than it has.
|
| Expecting a communist party to "liberalise" is effectively to
| expect it to kick itself out of power. The moment they loose
| power, their people will murder them. And if people wouldn't,
| then it would be their internal factions who will strangle each
| other without an iron handed big boss at the top maintaining
| internal order.
|
| There is no way out for them. Their only way to avoid being
| torn apart alive is to stay in power, and their only way to
| stay in power is to exert, push, and expand it.
|
| For them, to stop repressions, means to let their enemies to
| take the proverbial rifle from which barrel's the power grows,
| and to seal their fate, essentially to voluntarily chose death.
|
| Any totalitarian system has an expiration date for this very
| reason.
|
| In case of China, what that means is an instant gulag, or worse
| for 5 political dynasties:
|
| 1. Few remnants of Mao, and his wife's reign, and their
| confidants for, well, everything.
|
| 2. Deng Xiaoping's era communist billionaires, who will have to
| return millions they stole from the state in eighties.
|
| 3. Shanghai people, and Jiang, who will have to at least
| surrender their posts, and titles which they bought, and sold
| illegally, and all privileges coming with them.
|
| 4. Hu's clique, whose members will have to surrender their
| businesses, and stocks which they got through connections
|
| 5. And finally, Xi, and his friends, who managed to make a
| bigger mess in their 8 years in power, than the three previous
| dynasties combined.
|
| Put it simply, do you expect a thief to voluntarily give a gun
| to the person whom he just robbed? An expectation that the West
| can share the planet with rogue regimes, is an expectation that
| a kleptomaniac, and a really rich person can live under the
| same roof. Even if the later can keep the former compliant
| under a gunpoint for some time, eventually the former succumbs
| to his urges, and the later has to shoot.
| yorwba wrote:
| They might be able to take some inspiration from the KMT
| slowly giving up power in the ROC without being eaten alive
| by their enemies afterwards.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Not a good example. Have the KMT top brass made it a raison
| de etre to live off their privileges? No.
|
| KMT is a way different fruit than the CPC.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I think the simplistic sort of thinking that capitalism and
| human rights are 'inseparable' from each other and can be
| 'exported' like Coca Cola or Blue Jeans is just a leftover from
| the Cold War. The reality is much more complicated
| unfortunately, together with the slowly growing realisation
| that the USA has quickly lost it's 'role model' status as the
| leader of the 'Free World' after the Cold War has ended.
|
| The West needed 30 years to realize that (some are still
| working on this I think) because it thought that it had
| actually 'won' the Cold War through it's actions _during_ the
| Cold War, when the reality was much more likely that the East
| had collapsed also without much 'help' from the West.
|
| The countries on the 'losing side' in this battle of ideologies
| (like the Soviet Union and China) had adapted to this new
| reality much more quickly, both in different ways though, but
| none of them copied the 'obviously superior' model of the Free
| West.
|
| Of course hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes I've got the
| impression that many people in the West still wear their rose-
| tinted Cold War glasses ;)
| Waterfall wrote:
| The US seems to be stuck in the 1950s, with much of the
| infrastructure and the attitudes in a similar state of
| stasis. The US however hasn't lost its role model status,
| despite embarrassments like Bush (unless your definition is
| different). The petrodollar is just as powerful as ever, the
| dollar is the most powerful currency still, and US hedgemony
| is just as powerful.
| cptskippy wrote:
| The US government is stagnated by politics and the current
| political culture focuses on screwing over the opposing
| party above all else. On the surface it seems like the
| grumpy old men in charge are just being stubborn and
| exercising their power to ensure their opponents lose, but
| if you look at the legislation that does get passed you
| start to see something very different.
|
| Most of the legislation passed revolves around
| redistribution of wealth, and it's not taking from the rich
| and giving to the poor but quite the opposite. Any and all
| amassed wealth is being extracted from the poor and being
| given out to businesses in the form of lucrative contracts
| or, more recently, bailouts. The companies that receive
| this money promise that it's going to trickle down while
| they fill Golden Parachutes, perform stock buy backs, and
| find other ways to funnel that money to their wealthy share
| holders.
|
| The message for decades was that the government was
| inefficient and wasteful, and that private business can do
| it better. We've all heard the stories of the $300 hammer.
| But when things are privatized things generally get worse.
| Fewer workers earning lower wages doing more work but the
| overall product is worse and it's usually not cheaper. Any
| and all reductions in cost are just converted into profit
| margin.
|
| The US is being sucked dry and when there's nothing left,
| the globalist in charge will just up and move on.
| Waterfall wrote:
| I don't think it's that cut and dry. If people are being
| oppressed, why don't they leave? The innovations and
| benefits must outweigh the problems. I'm happy to be a US
| citizen, with excellent buying power.
|
| What product is worst and more expensive that you have in
| mind?
| cptskippy wrote:
| > If people are being oppressed, why don't they leave?
|
| It's not that easy. Assuming they can afford to leave,
| most cannot, the fact that they've lived their entire
| lives here and their whole support system resides here
| makes it hard. Many people aren't upwardly mobile, and
| things aren't bad enough to make them desperate.
|
| > What product is worst and more expensive that you have
| in mind?
|
| Privatized utilities. The pitch in the 90s was that you'd
| have a bunch of providers competing to offer lower rates
| and the result would be lower prices. The reality is that
| you pay a very high base fee (no longer subsidized in the
| rate), and then you pay a service fee to your provider.
| Most rates are promotional so once a year you shop around
| or call up your gas provider to negotiate like you would
| your ISP. Switching providers usually results in
| activation fees and other costs.
|
| This works great for large consumers (e.g. factories,
| businesses) who pay lower overall rates but the poor
| suffer. An example, I used $1.76 in natural gas last
| month but my bill was $36. I paid more in taxes ($2.04)
| than I paid for the gas. People in my state pay $32 a
| month in fees for the privilege of being able to pay for
| gas. That's on top of the deposit people with poor credit
| have to put down.
| rch wrote:
| Community owned ISPs seem to outperform privatized
| providers in terms of customer value, even if achieving
| sustainable cash flow can prove challenging.
|
| -- https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:34623859
|
| -- https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/6611-report-
| municipal-f...
| iso1210 wrote:
| > Of course hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes I've got the
| impression that many people in the West still wear their
| rose-tinted Cold War glasses ;)
|
| In the UK we haven't got past the rose-tinted WW2 glasses
| (especially those born from 1940-1970 who grew up with tales
| of WW2 as kids)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Considering the actions of these capitalist nations during
| Cold War it's pretty clear in retrospective that promoting
| human rights and democracy wasn't very high priority.
| Propping up dictators and terrorist don't seem very much in
| those lines.
| chillacy wrote:
| America had to undergo a great amount of social change too
| before it came out the winner. With groups like the Black
| Panthers carrying around Mao's little red book, it seems to
| me that America had to (was forced to) become more
| inclusive to build allies and compete with the soviet
| union.
| jeffsboi wrote:
| Dont you talk about black panthers in this manner.
| einpoklum wrote:
| "Proper civil society and human rights" - like the ones
| afforded to Julian Assange? Or the treatment of the Grenfell
| tower victims' families?
|
| Glass houses etc.
| gspr wrote:
| > "Proper civil society and human rights" - like the ones
| afforded to Julian Assange? Or the treatment of the Grenfell
| tower victims' families?
|
| Now imagine a society where _every_ dissident is treated like
| Assange, and _every_ poor nobody is treated like the Grenfell
| tower residents. And with no recourse. And no free media to
| spread the outrage. And no reasonable expectation of privacy
| to even discuss the matter privately as a third party with
| other third parties. And no way to even talk about voting out
| those responsible.
|
| That's China. Take your false equivalence elsewhere.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Now imagine a society where every dissident is treated
| like Assange, and every poor nobody is treated like the
| Grenfell tower residents
|
| The British colonies over the years? Possibly Britain
| itself as far as the treatment of poor nobodies.
|
| Look, China's a repressive regime, but: (1.) A bit less so
| than it's described by Western media, and (2.) Britain and
| the US are not categorically different, they're just, well,
| different in the contexts and degrees in which they oppress
| more and less.
| gspr wrote:
| > The British colonies over the years?
|
| Sure. I don't see anyone here defending that in this
| thread.
|
| > Possibly Britain itself as far as the treatment of poor
| nobodies.
|
| _Currently?_ Are you serious?
|
| > Look, China's a repressive regime, but: (1.) A bit less
| so than it's described by Western media,
|
| "Western media" is such a large set as to be meaningless.
| If you mean the mainstream media, please provide an
| example of two of where they claim China is more
| oppressive than it actually is.
|
| > and (2.) Britain and the US are not categorically
| different, they're just, well, different in the contexts
| and degrees in which they oppress more and less.
|
| No. There is a categorical difference between being
| democracies with major flaws and being a totalitarian
| state, between having real struggles in their open and
| adversarial justice systems and having arbitrary arrests
| as the norm, between abhorrent detention of immigrants
| and outright concentration camps based on ethnicity.
|
| Placing the dystopian hellhole that is China in the same
| category as Western democracies is an affront to those
| that suffer under CCP rule and highly unproductive with
| regards to fixing the serious problems we have at home.
| jialutu wrote:
| > please provide an example of two of where they claim
| China is more oppressive than it actually is
|
| I'll give you one. Pretty much every single mainstream
| media basically says religion is banned in China. However
| to my detriment, every time I go back to China to visit
| my paternal grandma (who is a catholic), I get asked to
| go to Sunday mass with her. So, where is religion banned
| in China? Let me know your thoughts about this, do you
| think religion is banned in China?
|
| > adversarial justice systems
|
| You do realise that "adversarial justice systems" only
| pretty much exist in Common Law countries right? Whereas
| Civil Law countries don't use an adversarial system,
| which is pretty much the legal system of the whole of the
| EU and pretty much all of Asia including China. I've even
| read arguments from British barristers that the
| adversarial system can be an inferior system. I mean, the
| adversarial justice system certainly didn't do too well
| for the incarceration rate of black people in America now
| did it?
| remarkEon wrote:
| CCP views religion just like any other technology. It can
| be useful, as long as it furthers the goals of the Party.
| Once it stops doing that - or becomes a threat - it's
| dealt with, and severely in the case of Uyhur Muslims[1].
|
| It's also worth noting that the Catholic Church in China
| is actually a state sanctioned organization that is not
| in Communion with the Holy See. There exists an
| underground Catholic Church that _is_ in Communion with
| Rome, but, for obvious reasons, it 's much smaller.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/
| asia/ch...
| tlear wrote:
| Now imagine after you posted your comment some men bust down
| your door take you in, torture you. Not some sleep
| depravation, but hammer to your knees and electrodes to your
| testicles. See difference? Oh and yeah nobody will ever see
| you again, cause well you are just gone.
| gspr wrote:
| And no newspapers write about your mysterious
| disappearance, and your best friends and family can't even
| discuss it quietly among themselves without fear.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Yes, nobody's hands are clean here.
|
| There is, however, a pretty big gulf between the stuff the US
| has done and engaging in ethnic cleansing and running
| concentration camps as a matter of policy.
|
| The difference is massive, and well known. Please don't try
| to falsely equate the two.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > There is, however, a pretty big gulf between the stuff
| the US has done and engaging in ethnic cleansing and
| running concentration camps as a matter of policy.
|
| A big gulf. Hmm. A big gulf. Umm, maybe you mean the Gulf
| of Aden? That's kind of big, and it's right near where the
| US participating and supporting the ethnic-cleansing-level
| siege and bombardment of Yemen by Saudi Arabia.
|
| Remember most states of the US were founded on ethnic
| cleansing. The US supported Pol Pot, a notorious cleanser
| (although more of a self-ethnic-cleansing); it carried out
| mass bombing and poisoning campaigns in the same region of
| SE Asia, which constitute ethnic cleansing; it starved out
| the Iraqi people for years, which is borderline ethnic
| cleansing; it's doing the same to Venezuela right now; it
| supports Israel, an ethnic/religious-supremacy state held
| up by keeping the indigenous people of the country outside
| of it, as refugees - to ensure a demographic majority for
| the privileged group; it has supported Myanmar/Burma, while
| it ethnically cleanses the Rohingya; it has supported and
| still occasionally supports Sunni fundamentalists who aim
| to cleanse non-Muslims, Shia etc.
|
| As for concentration camps - the US is infamous for its
| concentration camps. Mostly in countries it occupies, but
| also for a significant fraction of its citizenry - over 1%
| if I'm not mistaken. They're more class-based than strictly
| race-based, but still.
| chrischen wrote:
| Well the dominant class in America is white western
| European. So effectively race-based superiority which is
| why we have the BLM movement right now.
| free_rms wrote:
| Different != Improper.
|
| They're not perfect, but over the last 30 years they lifted
| half a billion out of poverty and didn't wage war all over the
| world.
|
| Not everything needs to be wrapped in our style of propaganda,
| sometimes it can be wrapped in other brands instead.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Percentagewise, China hasn't done any better than South Korea
| or Taiwan at lifting their populace out of poverty. So I
| don't see how that comes anywhere close to excusing China's
| human rights abuses. And while SK and Taiwan only became
| democracies relatively recently, their human rights abuses
| even before then pale in comparison to what China is
| currently doing to Uighurs, Tibetans, and religious
| minorities in general. So yes, if anything improper is
| putting things too lightly.
| getmeoutofhere wrote:
| Surely this is a joke right? The white terror in Taiwan on
| a per capita basis was more brutal than anything in China.
| People were summarily executed, jailed, and robbed for even
| the slightest hints of anti-establishment sympathies.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| From the numbers I can find from a cursory search, the
| upper estimates for deaths caused by the White Terror is
| ~32,000 (28k from the massacre that kicked it off plus
| 4,000 executed in camps). That's about .35% of Taiwan's
| then population of ~9 million.
|
| By contrast, the Great Leap Forward alone killed 16
| million, and that's at the _lower_ end of estimates. The
| population of China at the end of this was ~665 million,
| meaning they killed 2.7% of their population just in the
| Great Leap Forward.
|
| So even with the numbers most favorable to China and
| least favorable to Taiwan, Taiwan comes out ahead by an
| order of magnitude.
| free_rms wrote:
| But you hadn't even heard of that. Or the gwangju
| massacre in korea. Right?
|
| Why is that? How come some things are marketed
| extensively to the American public but others are never
| mentioned?
|
| (Also, if the goal is to criticize maoist China, I'd go
| with the cultural revolution instead of the great leap
| forward)
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I had, in fact, heard of the White Terror, and the
| suppression of the island's indiginous people. I had not
| heard of the Gwangju Massacre.
|
| There are two reasons why they aren't mentioned as much
| as Mao's atrocities. One is that those countries are our
| allies, and as a result we are more willing to overlook
| their faults. And I don't think that's necessarily right,
| but it's part of human nature to overlook the faults and
| flaws of friends and allies. But the second reason is
| that, even ignoring those effects, Mao killed far more of
| his citizens (and far more per capita), making it a much
| more interesting and disturbing event in history. The
| atrocities of Taiwan and South Korea come across as "run
| of the mill authoritarian leaders violently cracking down
| on dissent" while the atrocities of Mao's China are on a
| whole different level.
|
| FWIW, as far as dictators and genociders go I think Pol
| Pot gets the least attention relative to the scale of his
| atrocities since he wiped out 25% of the population, and
| in extremely brutal and arbitrary ways.
| free_rms wrote:
| The cultural revolution is interesting. Yet another
| famine exacerbated by govt screwups is a lot less so.
|
| Like you said, it's all about which side people are on.
| And I agree on pol pot. The only self-genocide I'm aware
| of in the record.
| free_rms wrote:
| I think you're understating the human rights impact of
| going from third world to first world living standards. You
| like having your teeth?
| HideousKojima wrote:
| No, I'm saying that similar countries were able to lift
| their populations out of poverty without creating
| concentration camps for millions of political dissidents
| and religious minorities in the process. China's economic
| success isn't tied to its authoritarian regime, and it's
| actually pretty easy to argue that they would have lifted
| even more of their population out of poverty even faster
| if they hadn't had harebrained/genocidal schemes like the
| Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and
| communism in general. China didn't begin to see any
| significant economic success until after they abandoned
| most of their communist policies and began liberalizing
| markets in the late 80's and early 90's.
| ferest wrote:
| Lifting 100 millions people out of poverty is totally
| different from lifting 1 millions people out of poverty.
| Moving a car involves much more engineering than moving a
| carpet.
|
| If they haven't done great leap forward and cultural
| revolution it would be better, that is true. But by
| "abandoning all communist policies and began liberalizing
| markets", not all countries see economic success,
| ukraine, iraq and all recent "liberated" countries, and
| russian living quality in 90s was even worse than their
| late 80s.
|
| And ironically enough, the fast developing era of taiwan,
| south korea, by today's standard, are not under any form
| of democracy.
| chillacy wrote:
| > And ironically enough, the fast developing era of
| taiwan, south korea, by today's standard, are not under
| any form of democracy.
|
| This is I think an under-appreciated point... Taiwan and
| SK both made the most economic gains under military
| dictatorships. Social liberalization followed economic
| growth.
|
| Something similar might have happened in Singapore,
| they're technically a democracy but have been governed by
| the PAP forever and don't really subscribe to freedom of
| press in the way the US does (but have their own ways of
| building accountability).
|
| All very fascinating stuff. 10 years ago I would have
| said that China would follow the same path but in that
| case social liberalization still hasn't come yet.
| Certainly the GDP per capita has not yet caught up but
| the PPP was pretty close last I checked.
| chrischen wrote:
| I lifted myself out of poverty. You canmt exactly compare
| myself (population of 1) with the efforts to move a
| country of over 1 billion people out of poverty. It's not
| as if I have somehow figured this out and can scale this
| up to 1 billion people.
| yifanlu wrote:
| Jeez as a Chinese person who lives in USA I find this comment
| very condescending and offensive.
|
| > But China, while increasingly mature economically, has not
| developed proper civil society, human rights, freedom of
| expression, democracy, and so on.
|
| I don't want to get into a whataboutism debate about all the
| human rights violations the USA has engaged in (yes Trump but
| Obama as well and W before him and etc). But really I'll just
| focus on "proper civil society". Jfc is the sinophobia getting
| overt around here.
|
| Even if I take the good faith argument that "it's commentary
| about CCP not Chinese people" as I often hear after racist
| remarks, I'll just point out I've been hearing comments like
| this all my life in all sorts condescending ways. Most of the
| time in bad faith. So I don't give a shit about how you
| "intend" it to be.
| vinay427 wrote:
| 1. I agree that "proper civil society" is rather questionable
| as criticism of China goes, but do the others not apply? I
| think they clearly seem to be points of commentary on the
| Chinese political system, which isn't a reflection of a
| race/ethnicity. I have no trouble believing that comments
| that you have received throughout your life were in bad
| faith. I've heard similar (at least in sentiment) comments
| about the society in my parents' country of origin. However,
| I think the majority of those comments (as with the ones in
| question here) fit into the bucket of clearly criticizing a
| social structure that applies to but does not immutably
| define the people living in it, and certainly doesn't apply
| to you if you live outside of it.
|
| 2. On a slightly different note, I think that while
| whataboutism is generally neither productive nor relevant, in
| this case a small amount could be relevant because the
| implication is that some other countries have developed to a
| state of "proper civil society, [...] democracy, and so on"
| while China has not. If the claim relates China to some base
| standard in the author's mind, then pointing out failings in
| those places seems like an attack on the point itself, but I
| don't know whether the US was at the top of their mind when
| crafting that sentence.
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| Hypocrisy.
|
| Looks good to exibit tolerancy between like minded friends
| about accepted topics, abortion, sexual orientation, skin
| color and the like... But about a different political system
| other than western liberal democracy? No way!
|
| And it's not like Chinas Communist Party (from Deng Xiaopin
| on) has not good credentials. It might be the more succesfull
| regime in the history of humanity if we talk about taking
| people out of poverty. Which system has improved the life of
| millions like the party?
|
| But it doesn't matter. The aglosphere keeps with its cultural
| war against the new enemy. What are the signs that the
| Chinese want to export their way of life? Any recent war
| launched by China? Any attempt to force a Western goverment
| to accept their condicions? They are not the ones messing
| with other countries democracies.
|
| Anyway, there are plenty of things not to like about the
| Communist Party, but seriously, the propaganda is out of
| control.
| chillacy wrote:
| > What are the signs that the Chinese want to export their
| way of life? Any recent war launched by China? Any attempt
| to force a Western goverment to accept their condicions?
|
| There are two distinct reasons I see:
|
| 1. Some people read recent actions like "investing in a
| deepwater navy", "setting up economic relations with
| Africa", and "forcing trading partners to not recognize
| Taiwan" as doing exactly those things.
|
| 2. Even if you ignore those things, if you believe the
| western powers have done these things already in the 20th
| century like "investing in a huge carrier fleet and naval
| bases around the world", "setting up colonies and promoting
| democracy around the world, sometimes through force", and
| "forcing trading partners into labor standards including
| pay and hours, bundled into a package we call human
| rights", then it's probably easier to assume others are
| capable of doing similar.
|
| At that point it's a clash of values.
| mlindner wrote:
| It's not sinophobia. I've got _zero_ issue with Chinese
| Americans as long as their English is good enough that their
| primary news sources still don't still sit in China (for
| example second generation or greater Chinese Americans). It's
| the legitimate concern about China pushing remote spying into
| its software and hardware that is sold overseas as well as
| the manipulation of people through companies like TikTok aka
| ByteDance.
| jialutu wrote:
| Chinese Americans are cool because they can read English,
| which is real news. I won't bother reading anything in
| Chinese or learn Chinese values, but I can judge them
| according to my beliefs because the English one is far
| superior.
|
| Sounds kinda sinophobia to me.
| chrischen wrote:
| There's no way defend against your accusations. It
| essentially boils down to "you've been brainwashed." You've
| already decided your viewpoint is right and anything
| against it has read too much Chinese language news (whether
| true or not).
|
| The "manipulation" you speak of is more hypothetical. If
| anything Facebook has done more manipulative harm thus far.
|
| One way to think about this is what exactly would TikTok
| have to do to satisfy your accusations of them
| "manipulating" people? How does Huawei stop spying on
| Americans? If there is no answer then you can see not only
| how it is pointless to argue, but that your primary
| motivation is actually to prevent the shift of power,
| rather than based on any actual infractions by Huawei or
| TikTok. So should the Chinese just sit out of global
| economics because they _could_ threaten US dominance and
| _potentially_ spy on or manipulate US people? The current
| dialogue is centers on future power, not on any actual
| abuse of power by these companies. Not like the US actually
| spying on Angela Merkel.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| A trade war masquerading as national security concerns.
| jaekash wrote:
| Really this is a war of value systems masquerading as a trade
| war masquerading as national security concerns.
|
| I would much rather the west comes out and say this has nothing
| to do with national security concerns or trade or economics,
| but that there is no way the west can tolerate how the Chinese
| Communist Party conducts itself, regardless of how many people
| get rich from their immoral actions.
| pinkfoot wrote:
| At the risk of attracting the ire of the whataboutism nerds,
| value-systems are only 'values' and a 'system' when they are
| well-defined and consistently applied.
|
| So most of the planet will only buy thise elaborate line when
| Saudi Arabia and Pakistan get told to keep their riches.
| jaekash wrote:
| > value-systems are only 'values' and a 'system' when they
| are well-defined and consistently applied.
|
| I get what you are trying to say but definitely a value
| system requires neither of those things.
|
| > So most of the planet will only buy thise elaborate line
| when Saudi Arabia and Pakistan get told to keep their
| riches.
|
| There is hypocrisy but the threat posed by China to the
| liberal world order is much more serious than the thread
| posed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and in both those cases
| there is a bit of a deal with the devil.
|
| If the Saudi and Pakistani regimes fall we will probably
| see much worse things popping up.
| franklampard wrote:
| Saudi trained terrorists, planned 9/11, and more recently
| dismembered a dissenting reporter in Turkey.
|
| Their values are far more regressive than China's.
| (Women's rights, religious freedom)
|
| How is Saudi Arabia less of a threat?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Total crap;either it is a security risk and it has to be removed
| yesterday or it is not. 2027 is meaningless.
| jaekash wrote:
| Deferred action is better than nothing, but yes, I would prefer
| it happened immediately also.
| IshKebab wrote:
| That's not how risks work.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Do you buckle your seatbelt before you start driving or when
| you're 68% of the way to your destination?
| kube-system wrote:
| A closer car analogy: antique vehicles without seatbelts
| were not banned from public roads when seatbelts became
| mandatory.
| IshKebab wrote:
| No because buckling my seatbelt at the start is free and
| easy.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| A potential security risk in a conflict with China doesn't mean
| an existential eminent risk.
|
| That equipment is everywhere it will take years and cost
| billions to remove and replace.
|
| And yes there has been already pushback around it both in terms
| of demands to lower the time frame to 3 years and to increase
| it to 10.
| kube-system wrote:
| Risk is a continuum and we accept many risks on a daily basis
| as a compromise to cut costs. The deadline is that compromise.
| Grandfather clauses, deadlines, and phased approaches are
| exceedingly common in regulatory requirements around the world
| for this reason.
| totalZero wrote:
| The date is a compromise between security concerns from the
| government and its allies, and business concerns from telcos
| that have already shelled out the cash to buy Huawei
| infrastructure.
| neximo64 wrote:
| Following the German strategy I see. Just put things so far out
| they're the next governments responsibility
| tzs wrote:
| Or maybe the idea is to put it far enough out that no one
| actually has to start replacing equipment until the US has a
| new administration and they can see where that administration
| stands on China.
|
| If Trump gets reelected this year that will be his second term
| which is the limit, and so there will be a new administration
| in January 2025. If he doesn't get reelected there will be a
| new administration on January 2021.
| stephenheron wrote:
| I would encourage people to read the NCSC blog post on this as it
| goes into technical detail on why the decision was made.
|
| https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/a-different-future-for-tel...
| pqhwan wrote:
| Effectively US is pulling US-made chip design tools from under
| huawei's manufacturing process. Seems that the political
| calculus is that this will damage huawei's standing, at the
| expense of global technological cooperation. But to what end?
| It falls short of providing Huawei (and the state behind it)
| with incentives to be more transparent with their technology,
| and at best creates a necessity for them to become wholly
| independent in their process. I guess the US is betting they
| can't pull this off, but if they do, this policy has bought US
| nothing but a few years of suppression and a fiercer
| competition.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| So at least park of the justification here is that we have to
| comply with Americas foreign policy?
| jaekash wrote:
| Sometimes USA still manages to do the right thing it seems.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| "You can rely on the USA to do the right thing; once it had
| exhausted all the other options"
|
| - Churchill (I think)
| jaekash wrote:
| Very true in this case, if it was not for US foreign
| policy choices China would not be the problem it is
| today.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| All providers had their infamy moment at some point, leaving a
| backdoor behind.
|
| Maybe for spying, maybe because QA failed.
|
| Huawei is on the US radar but somehow when Cisco left a backdoor
| on some routers it was "just a mistake".
|
| Every country is guilty of stabbing in the back others
| (occasionally or all the time), it has been the case for
| centuries and is not likely to change.
|
| I am French, we do not have our own tech so we get stuff from
| everyone around - we are probably in the worst spot from that
| perspective.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I think this is the most practical realization - That everyone
| is doing it, and will probably continue doing it until the end
| of time. If you accept this, then you can quickly constrain the
| things you should actually worry about to a much smaller list.
|
| The first thing that pops into my mind here is the importance
| of end-to-end encryption. If you cannot trust anything in the
| middle (presumably because the internet goes everywhere),
| perhaps we can at least trust the networks and devices under
| our immediate control. This is still not perfect because these
| devices can be compromised at the factory too, but it's still a
| much better position to be in. I can't make my ISP install core
| routers that I am comfortable with, but I can make sure that I
| install network hardware and use computers & phones that I
| trust on both ends (or convince my counterparties to do the
| same).
| melonkidney wrote:
| According to [1], Huawei employs 1,500 people in the UK. I'm
| curious - if anyone from Huawei UK is reading, how is this news
| being perceived?
|
| [1] https://www.huawei.com/uk/facts/huawei-uk
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| If the protocols used for mobile networks were designed to be
| secure, most of the infrastructure couldn't do anything worse
| than a DoS attack. It'd still need some trusted servers for key
| management, but those could be standard hardware with relatively
| simple software.
| electronWizard wrote:
| If China can cause a denial of service attack on a country by
| remotely bricking all the network infrastructure or even
| slowing it down to a degree, this would still be economically
| devastating at the least.
| Traster wrote:
| I think there's a difference worth noting between subtle
| monitoring & coersion vs. a full out act of war. By the time
| China is trying to denial of service the UK's 5G
| infrastructure we've got other things to worry about.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| But they don't need to dos the whole country, just
| interfere up to the point of plausible deniability. They
| could do targeted outages for some UK firm at a stratetic
| moment or something.
|
| Also in the case of an actual war, it's surely better to
| not have your entire nations communications under enemy
| control.
| pedrocr wrote:
| That could be solved one layer up by just using Signal or
| similar for messaging and calls. Unfortunately voice over an
| LTE IP link is still quite unreliable compared to an actual
| call.
| chopin wrote:
| How would that be in the interest of any government? Even in
| the most liberal democracies (I know of) there is a strong
| surveillance tendency.
| aphroz wrote:
| Will the brexit still be in progress by then?
| violetyellow wrote:
| Security flaw, sometimes may not root in technology side, but
| politics side.
|
| China is treating everything they own as a politics weapon now.
| 5G contract is a perfect weapon in this view. Telecom
| infrastructure is huge, and almost monoplied by the base
| infrastructure builder due to compatibility issues. Once Huawei
| finished the 5G base infrastructure, China can coerce UK by
| attach extra terms for maintaining, upgrading or selling 5G
| equipments.
|
| China has already used this approach on loans of asia investment
| bank. The countries which supports HK Security Law coincidentally
| matches with the countries which receives loans from investment
| bank.
|
| There may be more under water. Some may already exposed: (China's
| evil virus plan) https://www.foxnews.com/world/chinese-
| virologist-coronavirus...
|
| Some may still remains to be conspiracy theory: China increased
| production of hydroxychloroquine, in their reports
| (http://tn.china-embassy.org/chn/dtxws/t1787078.htm), they
| already used Chloroquine in treating their patients. However,
| WHO, FDA and even Lancet banned or announced inefficiency of
| hydroxychloroquine, and people died from this misinformation.
| What role did China play remains suspicious and mysterious.
| jaekash wrote:
| And we already know China has been backdooring other equipment:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-h...
|
| So yes, this is a small victory in a massive war.
| rfoo wrote:
| Wait, it has been two years and people are still referring to
| that fake story?
| enitihas wrote:
| You aren't helping your case by citing the Supermicro article,
| which was denied by both Amazon and Apple, led to widespread
| criticism of Bloomberg, and no source came forward.
| jaekash wrote:
| Corporations getting rich off the CCP's action siding with
| the CCP is hardly surprising.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This is fallacious thinking, if you already have biases
| that confirm or deny information in accordance with your
| conclusion. If you continue to apply different standards of
| proof you will end up with a distorted perception of the
| world. Maybe not in this subject (but maybe so), though
| certainly in many more.
| disgu wrote:
| Bloomberg is not to be trusted when it comes to technology
| news. Seriously, they're absolutely incompetent. They
| called Telnet a secret backdoor. Their articles about China
| are annoying because they're either without any tangible
| proof whatsoever or simply factually wrong.
|
| There are other, better sources.
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23831415.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The cost of that victory, according to the BBC, is a 1 year
| delay in the rollout of 5G tech.
|
| That's a pretty large economic cost. Bob can't watch his
| medical lectures on the train, so ends up behind in class,
| Mary's company looses a contract to a foreign competitor
| because she got frustrated with her bad VPN and didn't read
| over the bid one last time, Fred couldn't afford the cost of
| the new 5G contracts so didn't get much data and ended up
| losing touch with his friends who were all group video calling
| eachother.
|
| All these socio-economic costs cascade for decades or more. Do
| they really outweigh the theoretical ability for another nation
| to disrupt network traffic for a few hours until a mitigation
| is put in place?
| fock wrote:
| lately, more and more articles appear, which outline what's
| the real and actual economic cost of 5G: local area,
| decentral, unlicensed Wifi-networks should get replaced with
| a centrally managed and tunable (for $$$ or power)
| alternative. I suspected this for a long time, but now, more
| and more people are openly acknowledging it. While this is
| good for surveillance capitalism, it's not good for anyone
| else... (I'll happily add some refs, if I'm off the commute).
| nradov wrote:
| Existing 4G LTE connections work well enough for those use
| cases you listed; users will hardly notice any difference on
| 5G. The real benefit of 5G will be in the new types of
| applications it enables.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Today... But when webpages become 50 MB each on average,
| you're going to be waiting a long time for them to load
| over LTE...
|
| Those 'new applications' will be old applications with a
| few thousand more JavaScript libraries bundled with every
| page load...
| fock wrote:
| so for everyone outside China/the US: what's the problem
| if you have to stop the consumption of surveillance
| tools?
| vetinari wrote:
| From the experience with LTE-based FWA in the boonies: 50
| MB webpages each is fine. Even if someone else is
| watching youtube on the same connection.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| Wow, the stories of Mary and Bob was truly eye-opening. And
| don't even mention poor Fred...
|
| Guess I'm on team Huawei now!
| coolspot wrote:
| The big intrigue here is what Alice was doing that time?
|
| She is usually writes some messages to Bob, but probably
| couldn't afford 5G plan and decided to end the
| relationship.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but assuming you aren't.
| No consumer is asking for 5g, and I don't think any consumer
| will realise the difference. And not sure that 5g can do much
| good on a train, unless the train circles around inside a big
| city and never goes in the countryside where what matters is
| antenna with long range.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| 5g also doesn't beat my wifi. My wife and I slashed our
| data plans during COVID.
| fock wrote:
| but your wifi is unreliable and slow. Instead of buying a
| good AP, buy this 5G modem for only $5 and get your nice,
| capped 20MBit/s for $200 a month. Isn't this just what
| you need, when every site is slowly just getting a fibre-
| connection theoretically allowing a community hosted
| mobile mesh-network in any city which deserves the name.
| me_me_me wrote:
| But with 5G i can watch Netflix faster /s
|
| 5g is just another white rabbit big Multinational are
| chasing to justify/force infrastructure replacement.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Or to get 4k video streaming on my tiny smartphone
| screen, because I'm worth it!
| tridentlead wrote:
| Well I would call that about 0% of the impact of the COVID
| lockdowns so I think we will adapt and overcome.
| mpfundstein wrote:
| i run my whole office on 4g (amsterdam, europe). it works
| super nicely. in fact often better than my wifi at home...
|
| 4g is everywhere in NL. it just works great whereever you
| are. so i really wonder where the immediate need for 5g is.
| fock wrote:
| upselling it to everyone not satisfied with shitty wifi
| from their shittiest telco-modem/router/AP-abomination. And
| squeezing the lemon in the process.
| isbjorn16 wrote:
| My understanding is that 4g requires a lot more effort to
| provision more or less capacity as need arises. I've been
| to a few brownbags on the topic and I didn't fully
| understand it (it's not my area of expertise by many hops),
| but the big selling point the engineers were explaining to
| us was that they can effectively put telco equipment in
| cloud-like datacenters and spool up or spin down capacity
| much simpler than they can now. And then something about
| the tower-edge being far more advanced and able to be
| spooled up or down as need requires.
|
| I live on an island near a metro with a lot of traffic when
| the ferry from the metro arrives, then it disappears. Every
| single ferry that comes in knocks out 4g responsiveness (or
| takes it down entirely) while the ferry disembarks until
| everyone moves away from that area.
|
| So, for me, 5g has a projected material benefit (presuming
| my understanding of their brownbags were sufficient). I'd
| love to hear any actual cellular network engineers fully
| explain it because between words I didn't understand and
| trying to balance a salad and eat it without a table, I'm
| sure I misunderstood _something_.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| I'm constantly seeing westerners whine about Chinese human rights
| violations while simultaneously ignoring the HR violations
| occurring everywhere else, especially in the west. American cops
| routinely kill people. Yet, how many people have died in Hong
| Kong because of their protests?
|
| The notion that China lacks 'proper civil society' is in my mind
| rooted in a western sense of orientalism and good old fashioned
| racism. I'm no defender of China, but let's recognize that the
| same nations trying to punish China because 'human rights'(US,
| UK) are the same ones responsible for killing close to 1 million
| Iraqis and creating the largest humanitarian crisis on
| earth(Yemen).
| dang wrote:
| You did serious damage with this post. Please do not use HN for
| nationalistic or ideological flamewar, or other flamewar. This
| comment is exactly what we don't need here, and led to a whole
| bunch more of exactly what we don't need.
|
| You've broken the site guidelines egregiously before (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639749). We ban accounts
| that do these things repeatedly, so please stop that and follow
| the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| The idea is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it
| thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23831071.
| mantap wrote:
| Yes the USA commits human rights abuses. But this is a thread
| about China, and we shouldn't stop criticising China just
| because the US does something bad too.
|
| PRC does lack proper civil society, and it all started with Mao
| and his cultural revolution. Compare PRC and Taiwan the
| difference is night and day in their respective governments'
| respect for human rights. It has nothing to do with orientalism
| and everything to do with authoritarianism.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
| peteretep wrote:
| And also:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
| blunderkid wrote:
| Yo "Andy", you have nothing to offer by way of why huawei
| should not be banned. You go on a rant about racism and western
| war crimes which even if true don't imply that huawei is
| innocent and should not be banned. You my friend are a nut case
| or more likely a CCP sympathizer if not an bloody agent.
| dang wrote:
| We ban accounts that break the site guidelines like this,
| regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
|
| Please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules.
| Nursie wrote:
| > The notion that China lacks 'proper civil society' is in my
| mind rooted in a western sense of orientalism and good old
| fashioned racism.
|
| And this is good, old fashioned bullshit.
|
| Chinese citizens do not have the same rights and protections
| westerners do, nor a democratic system. They don't have the
| right to speak freely, congregate as they wish, protest or
| foment change in their own society.
|
| Western societies are imperfect, those rights are not protected
| or executed perfectly there. But they do exist, and the
| problems with them are orders of magnitude smaller than their
| total lack in China.
| gspr wrote:
| > I'm constantly seeing westerners whine about Chinese human
| rights violations while simultaneously ignoring the HR
| violations occurring everywhere else, especially in the west.
| American cops routinely kill people.
|
| Say _what?_ Haven 't the previous months' worth of protest
| illustrated quite well that exactly the HR violations you use
| in your example are very much _not ignored?_
|
| Besides, HR violations in a free and open society can be talked
| about and acted upon. China is a dystopian hellhole where even
| raising the plight of the Uyghurs in concentration camps, or
| the lack of free speech, or arbitrary arrests, or ..., is
| dangerous. Full stop. For all its problems, the West is in a
| completely different league where it comes to HR violations.
| For sure we have problems, but China's are orders of magnitude
| bigger. So no wonder we "whine".
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Whataboutism.
|
| China is literally running concentration camps to persecute
| religious minorities. This is happening at a huge scale and
| without any oversight on human rights.
| sbx25 wrote:
| I am really pissed. It's weird this showed up... i'm planning
| to apply for Y Combinator next deadline.. I just googled
| whataboutism
|
| Anyways
|
| Here is the reason i'm pissed: (I am user SeriousHyena in
| this thread) https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/black-
| girl-sent-to-juv...
| ardit33 wrote:
| China is currently doing slow motion genocide / ethnic
| cleansing in one of their major provinces.
|
| There is no comparison. Relativism... is a way to 'cleanse'
| somebody's crime, with saying: but x, and y, or doing something
| bad
|
| We see China bots doing this over and over on forums, (reddit
| being a prime target)
|
| Lets make it clear: by saying china is not doing anything worse
| than the west, you are clearly supporting genocide and
| concentration camps...
| throwawaybab323 wrote:
| Your point is? Every nation does this with their indigenous
| population. Yet you don't seem to be outraged at the fact
| native americans are raped and murdered almost everyday in
| america.
| ardit33 wrote:
| This is the typical Chinese bot I am talking about....
| fresh account and your logic doesn't make sense.
| dang wrote:
| You can't break the site guidelines like this here,
| regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel
| they are.
|
| Please read
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules.
| throwawaybab323 wrote:
| Of course anyone who disagrees with you is a chinese bot.
| Indians are going to steal our jobs. Yadayadayadayada
| jaekash wrote:
| > Every nation does this with their indigenous population.
|
| And it is always wrong.
|
| > Yet you don't seem to be outraged at the fact native
| americans are raped and murdered almost everyday in
| america.
|
| Not under sanction of the state, and Non native americans
| are also raped and murdered almost every day in america.
| These things are crimes in USA regardless of the victim,
| where in China the state is sanctioning it and doing it.
| throwawaybab323 wrote:
| Yes it wrong. But we aren't punishing africa for their
| genocide of muslims and christians and we arent doing it
| our own ally israel. So isn't it a bit weird that its
| mentioned with china every other day? Do you know what
| they call concentration camps in israel? The gaza strip.
| jaekash wrote:
| It is a bit weird that there are whole movements like BDS
| setup against Isreal, a wholly democratic and liberal
| country where people of all religions enjoy the same
| rights and nobody is placed in concentration camps, while
| every time someone mentions that China is a bad actor we
| get asked why does BDS not exists.
|
| BDS does exist, and China is a bad actor and should be
| opposed.
| throwawaybab323 wrote:
| Yea I'm just pointing out it doesn't work in the
| slightest. I agree with you for the most part. Especially
| in the case of China which for the most part is self
| sufficient. While israel relies on american intervention
| to even run sufficiently. But I also want to point out
| the groups perpetuating this in america are the
| republicans who dont actually care and are doing for
| xenophobic reasons not for the best interest of the
| people in these camps especially when they run their own.
| throwawaybab323 wrote:
| The US condemned BDS by the way. Look it up.
| jaekash wrote:
| I assume you are referring to the Democrat controlled US
| House passing a resolution with bipartisan support and a
| 398-17 vote which condemns BDS[1].
|
| BDS is still allowed to operate and the condemnation has
| no state-actionable consequences against BDS. And there
| are members of the US congress who openly support BDS.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/politics/house-
| israel-...
| throwawaybab323 wrote:
| No, actually I'm referring to almost every piece of
| legislature in each of the us states. In which the first
| to ratify the sanctions being Tennessee a republican
| state.
| http://jewishobservernashville.org/2015/04/22/tennessee-
| legi...
|
| But I assume all you did was a quick google search to
| confirm your bias.
|
| https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/anti-bds-legislation
|
| Hmm, It seems the majority of the states to ratify
| resolutions have been overwhelmingly republican.
|
| It seems as if. Everyone in the us who does not support
| the bds movement.
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for getting involved in
| flamewars and breaking the site guidelines in other ways
| also.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| jaekash wrote:
| > No, actually I'm referring to almost every piece of
| legislature in each of the us states. In which the first
| to ratify the sanctions being Tennessee a republican
| state.
| http://jewishobservernashville.org/2015/04/22/tennessee-
| legi....
|
| Individual US states is not the same as the "The US". And
| what you are linking to is not sanctions and again has no
| state-actionable consequences against BDS that I can see.
| It is a condemnation.
|
| > It seems as if. Everyone in the us who does not support
| the bds movement.
|
| Good they have some sense, even so BDS is still allowed
| to operate in the US. How will BDS ever survive now that
| it has been made clear that nobody likes them, while they
| are still allowed to operate. I mean they are entitled to
| everybody's support no?
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for getting involved in
| flamewars and breaking the site guidelines in other ways
| also.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bluerobotcat wrote:
| I don't understand how you can give 'American cops routinely
| kill people' as an example of human rights violations that are
| being ignored.
|
| Is change lacking? Yes. Is there outrage? Also yes.
|
| Of course, had you were to make the point that Western
| politicians are complete hypocrites then I would wholeheartedly
| agree. Although, I also don't think that's a uniquely Western
| phenomenon.
| [deleted]
| einpoklum wrote:
| When mass uprisings are necessary for even a serious
| discussion of the problem (intention to resolve it is nowhere
| in sight) - then, yes, killing by cops is being ignored and
| has been ignored.
| jaekash wrote:
| So where are the uprisings about china?
| jtdev wrote:
| You're completely ignoring the fact that protest and speech
| are exactly how things change in a free democratic society.
| Try that in China and you're likely to find yourself in a
| "re-education" (concentration) camp. It's not apples to
| apples comparing the US to China in terms of human rights
| and civil society... China is truly an authoritarian
| regime.
| bluerobotcat wrote:
| I strongly disagree. If you care enough about an issue to
| repeatedly go outside during a pandemic and protest, then
| you are not ignoring it.
|
| The set of 'Westerners' does not exclude the protesters.
| einpoklum wrote:
| _You_ aren't ignoring it - your representative have been
| ignoring it (and effectively and mostly, still are;
| they're just making a bit of noise in the hope that the
| protest goes away.)
| Waterfall wrote:
| China puts their own citizens in concentration camps. They're
| using machine learning to generate social scores. If you don't
| like America or the UK, you can leave. Try doing that in China.
| Dying in a free zone is preferable to the enslavement that the
| Chinese are subjected to. Freedom has a price, and it's not
| racist to not like these horrible cultural values or to go
| against them.
| deadfish wrote:
| You can leave China. There are millions of Chinese nationals
| living overseas.
| bluerobotcat wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gui_Minhai
|
| Can you though?
|
| Gui Minhai was a Hong Kong bookseller who had become a
| Swedish citizen. He was kidnapped while in Thailand and was
| moved to China. There he was denied consular access.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That seems very similar to what a certain US citizen that
| now lives in Russia almost had happen to them.
| dang wrote:
| Please stop posting nationalistic and/or ideological flamewar
| comments to HN. It's against the side guidelines, and it
| evokes worse from others.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| __alexs wrote:
| > China puts their own citizens in concentration camps.
|
| Is putting other countries citizens in concentration camps
| somehow morally superior?
|
| > They're using machine learning to generate social scores.
|
| America also has this they just call it a "credit score" or
| "klout".
|
| > If you don't like America or the UK, you can leave.
|
| Wow all my US expat friends who constantly complain about
| having to pay US taxes despite living here in the UK must
| have things totally wrong then.
|
| > it's not racist to not like these horrible cultural values
| or to go against them.
|
| No it's racist to ignore the injustices we commit in the west
| while condemning Asian countries for doing the same thing
| with different branding.
|
| The argument isn't "China is good actually." It's "We do most
| of the same stuff you are accusing them of."
| gspr wrote:
| > Is putting other countries citizens in concentration
| camps somehow morally superior?
|
| No, but since a country usually has jurisdiction over most
| of its citizens, concentration camps for those is a tool
| that is readily available. Putting other countries'
| citizens in concentration camps isn't morally superior, but
| it's a tool that usually has enormously bigger
| repercussions in international politics.
|
| Or if you're very bothered with the actual wording, how do
| you feel about a phrase like "he murdered his own
| neighbor"? Does it, to you, try to communicate that
| murdering non-neigbhors is morally superior? I don't think
| most people read it like that.
|
| > America also has this they just call it a "credit score"
| or "klout".
|
| Except these aren't systems explicitly constructed by the
| state that you are not allowed to speak out against. I,
| too, am worried by the diminishing power of the common
| worker in capitalist systems, but at least that worker can
| speak out against the system. And if he says "fuck the
| president", it doesn't affect his credit score. Nor does
| jaywalking. Etc.
|
| > Wow all my US expat friends who constantly complain about
| having to pay US taxes despite living here in the UK must
| have things totally wrong then.
|
| Indeed, the US system of worldwide taxation is pretty
| insane. That is, however, uniquely American, and does not
| apply to the West as a whole. Moreover, you _can_ leave by
| renouncing the citizenship. Yes, that is a ridiculous
| demand - trust me, I know - but it 's nowhere near needing
| government permission to leave the country.
|
| > No it's racist to ignore the injustices we commit in the
| west while condemning Asian countries for doing the same
| thing with different branding.
|
| Are you conflating "ignoring western injustices" with "not
| explicitly bringing out western injustices in every piece
| of writing about Chinese injustices"? I would claim that
| discourse in the West is pretty good at debating the
| injustices of Western societies.
|
| > The argument isn't "China is good actually." It's "We do
| most of the same stuff you are accusing them of."
|
| We do not. Here are some of the worst "stuff" China is
| being accused of:
|
| * Concentration camps for an ethnic group (do not mix this
| up with another injustice, like the immigrant detention
| camps at the US southern border)
|
| * Arbitrary punishment (do not mix this up with another
| injustice, like police violence).
|
| * No protections of privacy whatsoever (do not mix this up
| with another injustice, like expansion of surveillance
| powers)
|
| * No protection of free speech
|
| * The lack of democracy (do not mix this up with another
| injustice, like the erosion of democracy in some Western
| countries)
| reaktivo wrote:
| Don't forget about the prison population and the prison
| industrial complex in the US
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Wow all my US expat friends who constantly complain about
| having to pay US taxes despite living here in the UK must
| have things totally wrong then.
|
| If you are a US citizen, you are expected to pay a certain
| amount of US taxes even while living abroad. Presumably,
| this is because you still benefit from bring US citizen
| while living abroad.
|
| > No it's racist to ignore the injustices we commit in the
| west while condemning Asian countries for doing the same
| thing with different branding.
|
| No, that's hypocrisy, which is a totally different thing
| from racism.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The motivation for the hypocrisy, if we're assuming good
| faith, is either chauvinism or racism.
| Nursie wrote:
| > Wow all my US expat friends who constantly complain about
| having to pay US taxes despite living here in the UK must
| have things totally wrong then.
|
| This is not the same as being physically restrained from
| leaving, and they would find these stop if they renounce US
| citizenship.
|
| > The argument isn't "China is good actually." It's "We do
| most of the same stuff you are accusing them of."
|
| But we don't, neither to the same scale nor intensity.
|
| It's not racist to criticise the actions of another
| country, even if your own isn't perfect. You can criticise
| both, and you can call out which is worse.
|
| In this case it is the undemocratic nation suppressing
| speech and political expression, while commiting racist,
| demographic genocide within its own borders.
| Waterfall wrote:
| Yes. The point is not to hurt your own civilians, aka
| civilization. I don't even understand why you question
| that.
|
| Our credit system is bad and theirs is worst. Next topic?
|
| They can at any point renounce their citizenship, but they
| don't and continue to pay their taxes.
|
| I grew up with cultural values, and I don't like the
| Chinese ones. Does that mean the US is perfect? Of course
| not.
|
| Whataboutism is cushioning the evil creeping, instead of
| trying to stop the incoming flood, you're busy mopping up
| the puddle.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > China puts their own citizens in concentration camps.
|
| The usual counterpoint here is the US incarceration rate.
| jaekash wrote:
| A prison is not a concentration camp, US has a justice
| system with the right to trial and appeal, and if the
| people in prison actually committed crimes then I'm not
| sure what the problem is.
| p49k wrote:
| Many people in prison in the US did not commit the crime
| they were accused of; thanks to wildly inflated
| sentencing, many people choose a 1-year plea bargain over
| a 10-15 year roll of the dice.
| jaekash wrote:
| > Many people in prison in the US did not commit crimes;
|
| By all means cite %, and still does not make it a
| concentration camp.
|
| Further the DAs are themselves elected locally in many
| jurisdictions or appointed by locally elected officials
| and people can vote for change if they want it.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Still not even remotely comparable to the legal system in
| communist China.
|
| This whataboutism really needs to stop.
| jk20 wrote:
| Even people in concentration camps went through legal
| proceedings of sorts. See e.g. the infamous Article 58 of
| Soviet penal code.
|
| You can always tweak law to make criminal out of anyone
| inconvenient. Wasn't Assange's consensual sex relegated
| to rape?
| jaekash wrote:
| > You can always tweak law to make criminal out of anyone
| inconvenient.
|
| And this would be immoral and if you are suggesting the
| US is doing this you would need to actually back that up.
|
| > Wasn't Assange's consensual sex relegated to rape?
|
| Even if it was, that is not an example of tweaking the
| law to make a criminal out of anyone inconvenient, it is
| a case of tweaking the truth to fit the definition of
| something which is a crime, and should be a crime.
| dsomers wrote:
| When a fifteen year old can be put into prison for years
| in some U.S. states for some weed it hardly makes makes
| the U.S. look like it values human rights. It's more akin
| to the U.S. being 'the skinniest kid in fat camp.'
| Congratulations on being better than China and Saudi
| Arabia I guess...
| jaekash wrote:
| > When a fifteen year old can be put into prison for
| years in some U.S. states for some weed it hardly makes
| makes the U.S. look like it values human rights.
|
| Would like to see some examples of this, and numbers of
| this. I really doubt this is widespread.
|
| And further, if it does happen, it would have to get
| through prosecutors, jury, governors, etc - all of who
| will completely eaten alive by the press if the kid could
| even be misinterpreted to be a minority in the USA and
| the whole world would know about it. Where if someone
| mentions China is not exactly a good actor we get a
| whataboutism shitstorm.
| Larrikin wrote:
| There were judges that were convicted of sending black
| kids to for profit prisons they held stock in. Believing
| there isn't systemic racism in the prosecutorial system
| at this point is the same as believing there isn't
| systemic racism in policing. Just because you aren't
| personally affected doesn't mean a problem isn't wide
| spread.
|
| This has nothing to do with the topic at hand and was
| another whataboutism off shoot from the main topic.
| ecocentrik wrote:
| There's also indefinite detention and family separations at
| temporary immigration detention facilities.
|
| Most of the people in the US who make a stink about the
| Uighurs and forget about US human rights transgressions
| would quickly forget about the Uighurs if they moved in
| next door.
| eggsnbacon1 wrote:
| Classic whataboutism. China has more Uighurs in "re-education"
| camps than Nazis did in WWII. And plenty of people in HK have
| disappeared Stalin style. Its disingenuous to say "nobody died"
| just because you can't find the bodies.
|
| Middle east is a mess for a number of reasons and 40+ years of
| civil wars. You can't directly point the finger at one nation
| like you can for the human rights violations in China.
|
| And might as well throw the racism card in there too. Anyone
| who thinks China is ruining Hong Kong and imprisoning millions
| of innocent people, its because they're racist.
| geogra4 wrote:
| There is no evidence of this. Please cite a source that is
| not Adrian Zenz
| eggsnbacon1 wrote:
| If you think Adrian Zenz is some kind of fraud there's
| nothing I can post that will convince you so sources are
| pointless. Google "China re-education camps" and you'll
| find hundreds of articles on the subject from news
| organizations all of the world
| rich_sasha wrote:
| With zero sympathy for Chinese ethnic cleansing, Nazi
| concentration camps were perhaps a different league. Maybe
| people never even got to stay there: unloaded at the rail
| terminal, ushered into gas chambers, then burned in the
| crematoria.
| eggsnbacon1 wrote:
| The Nazi's didn't start that way. At the beginning it was
| labor and re-education camps. Just like China has now
| drieddust wrote:
| You aren't dealing with China. You dealing with CCP ruling
| China with ironhand.
|
| Recently they even failed to honour their fallen soldiers in
| recent clashes with India and you think they will let you know
| how many they killed in Hong Kong.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > and you think they will let you know how many they killed
| in Hong Kong.
|
| In the case of Hong Kong, there is no need to rely on the CCP
| to tell us how many they killed. Hong Kong has much higher
| levels of press freedom than China, and deaths would likely
| be made known in other ways.[1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index
| Karunamon wrote:
| That's likely changing soon. China basically stepped in and
| got a "security law" passed, which strips a lot of autonomy
| away from HK.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52765838
| dx87 wrote:
| If you don't have anything to add to the conversation besides
| "but what about what the rest of the world is doing", then why
| bother to comment? I don't know why any post mentioning China
| makes you people come out of the woodwork to argure that the
| rest of the world is just as bad.
| emptyfile wrote:
| iRaq? What's that? Some kind of new social network? Never heard
| of her.
| [deleted]
| room271 wrote:
| I'm very sympathetic to your criticisms of the UK/US, but I
| think you are taking for granted the great many freedoms you
| enjoy (I assume you are from one of these countries but
| apologies if not) and are being naive (or just perhaps it's
| driven by cynicism) over the very real differences here.
| jaekash wrote:
| > I'm constantly seeing westerners whine about Chinese human
| rights violations while simultaneously ignoring the HR
| violations occurring everywhere else, especially in the west.
| American cops routinely kill people.
|
| There has been protests for more than a month in the USA and
| the west because one black man was murdered by police. The
| police officer that murdered him will be charged and brought to
| justice.
|
| There has been nowhere near this level of outrage against the
| actions of China, and nobody will bring the perpetrators there
| to justice.
|
| To suggests that HR violations in the west is being ignored is
| laughable and dishonest and is evidence of your ulterior
| motives.
| poiuytrewqa wrote:
| I don't think it has been ignored in the west, but at the
| same time we need to be honest to say that it has never been
| tackled properly either
|
| And limiting the problem to only US is pretty much denying
| that HR violation is present also elsewhere in the west (look
| at the condition of the migrant in Europe as example)
| aaron695 wrote:
| Given we've found zero proof that China has ever put backdoors in
| hardware.
|
| And the devastation to their economy if we did find backdoors
| which would forever poison Chinese electronics is a far greater
| security risk to them, than any advantage they may possibly get
| from implementing backdoors.
|
| I assume it's actually because 5G has to be found causing the
| Coronvirus and they are covering it up?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| You're right about back doors, but this is about (like it or
| not) supporting the US and sanctioning China without saying so
| (likely a good think because of coronavirus, HK, minorities,
| democracy, etc).
| mrbonner wrote:
| It is increasingly appears that the CCP government wants to
| confront every countries at the same time. First, I thought this
| was just the power struggle/grab between US-CCP economically.
| Then, it spread to the political issues like the South China sea
| claims which pisses off Viet Nam, The Philippines , Taiwan. The
| CCP even manages to engage India into its territorial issue
| resulted in sanction from Indian gov. In the north-east side, the
| CCP is irritating Japan to a point Japan is considering ramping
| up its army.
|
| If the CCP wants conflicts at least it needs to find allies,
| right? So why then it tries to piss off just about every
| countries it's surrounded by?
| cameldrv wrote:
| Maybe they just feel that it's a good time strategically to
| push the envelope on multiple fronts while everyone is
| distracted by COVID.
| nindalf wrote:
| > it needs to find allies
|
| No shortage of Chinese allies - 70+ countries supported China's
| recent change to Hong Kong's laws
| (https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1193422.shtml). Certainly
| none of these countries are bastions of freedom - North Korea,
| Venezuela, Chad, Myanmar, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan. But all of them
| support China to the hilt. Tanzania didn't even stop with an
| endorsement of the HK law, they also felt it necessary to
| mention that Taiwan is a part of China. Turns out Chinese loans
| go a long way in creating a sense of gratitude.
|
| All countries barring the US need China more than China needs
| them. And China only needs the US until it has semiconductors
| of it's own.
|
| The US and EU were asleep at the wheel these last 30 years -
| allowing China to grow powerful without also creating a
| counterweight like India. Now the world's dependence on Chinese
| manufacturing and Chinese consumption means that no one dares
| to criticise China, and there's no shortage of countries lining
| up to praise every action of Comrade Xi's.
|
| That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking what
| they please. Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or Malaysia
| suddenly going to stand up to China? No, they will merely
| grumble. Is India willing to provoke an actual war? No, they
| will merely ban TikTok and call it a day.
| blibble wrote:
| > That's why China can screw over every neighbour, taking
| what they please. Who's going to stop them? Is Vietnam or
| Malaysia suddenly going to stand up to China? No, they will
| merely grumble.
|
| ah yes, exactly the same logic that resulted in World War 2
| nindalf wrote:
| The world is much more inter-connected than it was then.
| The cost of a war with China is orders of magnitude more
| than the cost of a war with Germany. In fact, for the first
| several months of WWII, British and French citizens barely
| noticed the war.
|
| War with China would be extremely painful, every single
| item that modern life depends upon apart from food will
| suddenly become scarce. That acts as a powerful deterrent.
| blibble wrote:
| > The world is much more inter-connected than it was
| then. The cost of a war with China is orders of magnitude
| more than the cost of a war with Germany.
|
| "economic interdependence prevents wars" was commonly
| accepted to be true in the 1910s, right up until the
| outbreak of World War I
| cadmuxe wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_island_chain CCP try to
| break US's seal, guess you forgot U.S. military bases around
| the world.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| If this is just Realpolitik/hardware independence, fine, but
| security..?
|
| Any worthwhile Internet traffic should be encrypted in 2020, and
| if it isn't, Huawei probably isn't the most immediate concern.
|
| And if it is encrypted, does it really matter who is listening?
|
| Comments welcome, I know zilch about telecoms hardware.
| hnarn wrote:
| > And if it is encrypted, does it really matter who is
| listening?
|
| If your argument here is "who cares if we can trust the
| hardware if the encryption works" I'd encourage you to think
| about how you know that the encryption "works" if you can't
| trust the hardware. A lot of the encryption is out of necessity
| far removed from the end user, it's not exactly PGP over email.
| And _everything_ is never encrypted, the operations of mobile
| networks require a lot of extra metadata about the operations
| that is still sensitive even if you completely disregard the
| traffic over the network.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| There isn't really an argument, only a question. As in, a
| basic tenet of cryptography is that we can communicate over
| unsafe channels, so long as we trust the cipher, the final
| recipient and our own hardware. Maybe I don't trust the 5G
| but I do trust the cipher and my computer, is that ok then?
|
| As for metadata, is there no cryptographic schemes that make
| metadata extraction impossible? I'm thinking like with Covid
| tracking apps, you can find out whether you were in contact
| with someone infected, without sharing any identifiable info.
| abc-xyz wrote:
| You probably wouldn't see a browser as a security risk either.
| In a recent example, all the big Chinese browsers blocked or
| rewrote the content on GitHub's 996 repo. Imagine if Chinese
| browsers became mainstream, then they could rewrite Wikipedia
| articles, insert their own links/propaganda in google results,
| Facebook feeds, change download links to include a version
| bundled with spyware, etc. They already demonstrated that
| they're willing to do it with the GitHub repo.
| someperson wrote:
| It's worth noting that Qihoo 360 owns the Opera Web Browser,
| which incidentally offers a Free VPN to protect your privacy.
| The Qihoo 360 Browser, Tencent QQ Browser and Xiaomi
| smartphone's native browser all reportedly blocks the GitHub
| "996.icu" repository [1]. It seems likely such client-side
| censorship also reports the attempted access to the Chinese
| government authorities for further investigation.
|
| Other than the risks of using Opera (and other software like
| AirDroid, TikTok, WeChat etc), the main way I currently see
| users outside China being affected by similar issues is if
| they use Chinese Android devices, including grocery store
| smartphones, or those popular HDMI android dongles.
|
| China's export of technological-enabled totalitarianism and
| surveillance states (especially to developing countries) is
| accelerating.
|
| [1] https://www.scmp.com/abacus/culture/article/3029260/chine
| se-...
| wyuenho wrote:
| National security != information security
|
| National security includes things such as the prevention of
| over-reliance on a foreign supplier working with a foreign
| subversive government hell-bent on their unfair mercantilist
| policies. It's economic security they worry about first, which
| could lead to a whole host of other security issues due to lost
| of leverage later on.
| coliveira wrote:
| > prevention of over-reliance on a foreign supplier working
| with a foreign subversive government hell-bent on their
| unfair mercantilist policies.
|
| If that was true, no foreign country would be buying from US
| companies.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Even if everything was encrypted (which is not the case) and
| that encryption could not be downgraded by a mitm (which is not
| the case - cf starttls), it can still be used to track
| whereabouts, or disrupt the connectivity or utilise any mitm
| zero day.
|
| But a good question would be why 5g, and not every other
| computer chip in any computer and network equipment, which
| could be backdoored, and I doubt anyone verified the conformity
| of the chip to the blueprint sent to the factory.
| yodelshady wrote:
| You can't encrypt "metadata" that the machine needs to know to
| do its job, and with enough of that, you can de-anonymise any
| public posters. And you'll have metadata on (some of) their
| contacts too.
|
| Plus, if it's your tower, you can just switch it off, at an
| opportune moment.
| haecceity wrote:
| If that's the case then you want as many providers as
| possible so no one has enough information to de-anonymize the
| traffic?
| wheatocean wrote:
| Turning aside concerns about current and future provider
| interoperability (which is also a common reason for concern
| when using huawei hardware for core network purposes and
| would get worse as you expect them to integrate with
| several different vendors)...
|
| Wouldn't traffic run through many parts of the network
| exposing data to even more providers? Wouldn't you be
| subject to any portion of the chain breaking, or being
| turned off?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Ok, that's fair enough
| totalZero wrote:
| You're missing one of the largest risk vectors in the whole 5G
| game.
|
| 5G operates on higher frequency and requires a larger density
| of base stations. If you can identify individual devices --
| even without cracking the encryption they use -- then you can
| track them them geographically, and also conduct traffic
| analysis.
|
| 5G presents a potential security risk because it allows far
| greater granularity of device localization, even without GPS.
| opless wrote:
| > 5G operates on higher frequency and requires a larger
| density of base stations
|
| No that's not required, 5G uses the same old frequencies as
| 2/3/4G for the bulk of the traffic, it only uses the >1Ghz
| frequencies for microcells in malls and other dense areas
| where appropriate.
| mattmanser wrote:
| I assume in order to be able to decide to serve those 1Ghz
| frequencies, all the phones are going to ping the local
| towers regardless, so it doesn't matter.
| Waterfall wrote:
| I don't know if I want 5G. It sounds like wimax but faster. I
| don't think it gives that much benefit, triangulation already
| was able to bomb a terrorist in Russia in the 90s. How much
| worst could it get?
| totalZero wrote:
| My understanding is that the difference between 5G
| density/localization and that of previous technologies is
| quite substantial, especially in urban areas.
|
| "The extension of spectrum range has an impact on the
| network architecture. mmwave cells will employ shorter
| ranges of around 100-to-200 meters which will require
| extreme densification to provide high coverage. 3G networks
| reached densities of fourto- five base stations per km2, 4G
| networks eight-to-ten per km2, while 5G networks could
| reach densities of 40-to-50 per km2."
|
| https://www.newtec.eu/article/article/choosing-the-right-
| con...
| Waterfall wrote:
| I'm wondering how much worst it is since we already can
| track people pretty well with cellular data now. Sorry if
| I didn't make that clear, seems like they can already do
| all those things. How much worst can it be?
| gruez wrote:
| Its the difference between knowing which neighborhood
| you're in and which street or mabye even which house
| you're in.
| Waterfall wrote:
| But you can already tell what house you're in with
| triangulation, and even the room.
| gruez wrote:
| Source on this? Maybe you can do it if it's combined with
| wifi/bluetooth signals, but I doubt you can do it with
| cell towers alone.
| Waterfall wrote:
| Yes you can. I used a jailbreak app on ios6 and I used
| llama on Android for this.
|
| >The average for Boston is 21 meters; New York 27 meters;
| Austin, TX, 28 meters; Washington 29 meters, and Chicago
| 38 meters.
|
| https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/news
| /re...
|
| I got my own room in my house with it, back in the 3G/4G
| days. I'm not sure what modern software and hardware can
| do it now, but I'm pretty sure it's even more accurate
| even without 5G.
| gruez wrote:
| >https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/new
| s/re....
|
| >The average for Boston is 21 meters; New York 27 meters;
| Austin, TX, 28 meters; Washington 29 meters, and Chicago
| 38 meters.
|
| >A number of factors can impact location data accuracy,
| including its source, which can include GPS signals, Wi-
| Fi and cell tower triangulation.
|
| Seems like the figures they're giving is _with_ wifi /gps
| signals, not just cell tower alone.
| Waterfall wrote:
| I am sure they were able to do it without it, but others
| can interfer. Triangulation was already a thing in the
| courts. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/victory-
| supreme-court-... It's in Carpenter vs US, for deducting
| he robbed a store from just the cell phone signals.
| [deleted]
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Your questions aren't about telecoms hardware, but about
| politics and the international flow of power. China is slated
| to take over the world economically. Their political model has
| the potential to spread around the world. These are attempts to
| limit China's capacity to grow as fast while inhibiting their
| capacity to knock out, intercept, or backdoor critical
| infrastructure.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > Their political model has the potential to spread around
| the world.
|
| Care to expand that thought? I don't particularly see how
| their communist-capitalism system would be ever accepted by
| EU or NA.
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| No... But many African nations are on the rise. They also
| have significant influence on other countries in Asia.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Yeah, this I get and, well, sympathise in a way. There is no
| war, but an ongoing struggle for staying ahead economically,
| and if this is a part of it, at least there is a logic to it.
|
| I'm asking, is there really a security risk that Huawei might
| listen in on telecoms. Is traffic at the low level more
| vulnerable somehow? Is it the prevalence of unencrypted
| communications? Is it leaking of metadata that people are
| worried about?
| shostack wrote:
| Is there no war? Or has the nature of it changed due to MAD
| and such that it is just a cold war taking on a new form
| with the battles being fought over economies, politics,
| infrastructure, and culture as the opening salvos?
| [deleted]
| TheAdamAndChe wrote:
| Yes, the risk is real. Imagine the US made phones for
| Russia during the Cold War, and the phones were so
| complicated and full of microcontrollers that reverse
| engineering and ensuring that a backdoor wasn't in place
| was impossible. Do you really think the US wouldn't have
| taken advantage of that?
|
| The specific technical risk is unknown, though. There are
| thousands of microcontrollers in a modern advanced
| electronic device. It's nearly impossible to inspect each
| one and see what exactly is backdoored and how.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The phones have access to the raw data. The towers
| shouldn't have access to the raw data, because presumably
| it's encrypted. If it isn't, it's game over anyways. Not
| really comparable.
|
| You could make an argument about metadata, which is much
| more questionable from the get-go.
| filoleg wrote:
| I think the parent comment wasn't talking about
| intercepting traffic and being able to know what your
| enemy is talking about.
|
| The parent comment was talking about being able to take
| advantage of the situation by making the enemy use your
| devices and then incapacitating their infrastructure at
| the perfect moment by activating the killswitch on those
| devices.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The solution for that isn't to boycott Huawei, it's to
| have multiple networks with many providers.
|
| A country using Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei is much better
| protected to such an attack than a company using only
| Nokia or only Huawei or only Ericsson, or both Nokia and
| Ericsson but not Huawei.
| filoleg wrote:
| Sure, I am not arguing one way or another regarding
| whether this ban is good or not. I am just saying that
| the cold war analogy had nothing to do with encryption,
| unlike what the post I am replying to is attempting to
| imply.
| lozf wrote:
| There's more to it than merely listening in or gathering
| metadata. In the future we'll all be used to widespread 5G,
| and increasingly dependent on it - it's already commonly
| touted as enabling self-driving cars, IoT etc. and even
| replacing WiFi.
|
| People are concerned that Huawei / the Chinese could
| effectively shut down important chunks of infrastructure
| that would cause chaos in a city like London, and many
| other places, and furtermore that the implied threat of
| such a mishap, might be used as a form of coercion.
| chrischen wrote:
| Frankly their political model is already spreading, since
| blocking foreign companies from local markets, mass
| surveillance, extra-legal imprisonment of suspected
| terrorists, war on encryption, is something the US has been
| more and more adopting.
| blackrock wrote:
| Are you trying to describe China here, or the United
| States?
| tompagenet2 wrote:
| On this thought, why is the concern about 5G rather than
| existing mobile networks and existing fixed-line networks
| (Huawei kit is common in both)? Is something different about 5G
| or the UK implementation of it?
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Just guessing, but maybe Huawei was more niche when the
| earlier generations were built, so organically participated
| less in them anyway?
|
| Or maybe the higher density of 5G kit makes the attack cross-
| section larger somehow?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They're cheaper and its more likely that profit constrained
| telcos will buy their equipment as a competitive edge while
| selling out their populace.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| This is from all UK networks.
| alexnewman wrote:
| Carrier maintenance modes still allow you to access the memory of
| the device and force screenshots to fire
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| This is about carrier equipment, not phones. In fact, phones
| are exempt from this decision.
| simonkafan wrote:
| Impressive how much power the USA has over UK. It is known that
| Cisco has backdoors in their routers - and UK politics doesn't
| care. Now the Trump administration is spreading the rumor that
| Huawei hardware _might_ have backdoors (when the most plausible
| actual reason for this warning is to gain the upper hand in the
| trade war) and England is already putting the wish into action.
| fluffything wrote:
| UK is in a weird spot now alone in the world out of the EU.
|
| The country is essentially for sale. China just needs to make
| the "right" political donations.
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| Honest question. Can someone explain why the comment below was
| flagged? I can see why some might disagree but I fail to see any
| problematic about any of the statements made. I think of HN as
| one of the few places were people can have open discussions where
| everyone is free to state their opinion and have it up for
| debate/rebuttal.
|
| "I disagree. Reports about China from many western media tend to
| exaggerate things about China, mostly influenced by western
| politics, not good at all. Also, western media tend to report
| selective facts to only show things they want people to hear and
| see. The right to life is the first clause of human right, which
| I see they are violated in many western countries. They refuse to
| treat the poor and old. Do you hear China criticise? Maybe they
| are, but for sure western media choose not to report them.
|
| Freedom of speech is a relative term in today's world. I can say
| some of the things you shouldn't say in China are equally not
| welcomed in many western countries. If you split US, see how many
| troubles could come to you?
|
| On democracy, I'm not sure what to comment. China has ran 4000
| years under one empire system, and it's just the culture there.
| Why democratic society is better than the 1 party system? What's
| more important is to have the party represent people's interests.
| In many democratic countries, each party represents the interests
| from certain groups, that's why it's necessity to have multiple
| parties perhaps. The downsides to democratic system is also quite
| obvious. There are countless debate on many small matters which
| waste tax payer's money etc.. Also, the democracy can be
| manipulated, and if it is the case, it's worse."
| poiuytrewqa wrote:
| I'm new here and I faced the same issue in many topic not only
| related to politics.
|
| If your opinion is not following the sentiment of the majority
| then you can get down votes.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Because it is false equivalence of the highest order.
|
| - Yes, the US has a police brutality problem. (Though not near
| as bad)
|
| - Yes, the US has a government corruption problem. (Though not
| near as bad)
|
| That acknowledged:
|
| * At no point will you disappear in the US for criticizing the
| government.
|
| * At no point will you be placed into a concentration camp and
| tortured.
|
| * At no point will you be barred from participating in society
| because you lost points on a "social score" calculated on
| things such as following the wrong religion or criticizing the
| government.
|
| * At no point will you be subject to ethnic cleansing.
|
| * This list could be many times longer.
|
| The US is not a totalitarian police state and it is
| _fundamentally dishonest_ , to the point of mendacity and/or
| trolling, to equate the two. There are no countries on this
| planet with entirely clean hands. All have committed abuses,
| all have fallen short. With the binary 1 and 0 off the table,
| that leaves us with a matter of degrees, and some countries
| objectively have worse human rights records than others.
|
| On top of all that, most of the posts like the one you quoted
| amount to whataboutism, or the tu quoque fallacy. This is an
| ancient trope. Soviet-era Russia tried it[1] too. The response
| to "China puts people that disagree with them into
| concentration camps" is not "But the US..", or "that's not fair
| because.. (it's not as if these accusations are unsubstantiated
| by fact)", the answer is "that is wrong and should be
| condemned".
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes
| franklampard wrote:
| > Yes, the US has a government corruption problem. (Though
| not near as bad)
|
| I don't know about this. the U.S. is corrupt to its core.
|
| Highest bidder for PPEs during a pandemic? Millions of small
| business loans go to Kevin Nunes' vineyard? President
| allowing bounties set on its own Troops?
| gspr wrote:
| > Reports about China from many western media tend to
| exaggerate things about China, mostly influenced by western
| politics, not good at all.
|
| Whether or not that is true is not really relevant here unless
| the author can argue that what is being discussed is an
| exaggeration.
|
| > Also, western media tend to report selective facts to only
| show things they want people to hear and see.
|
| Western media don't "tend" to do anything. That's way too
| diverse a set to make a sweeping statement like that. It's just
| spreading FUD.
|
| > The right to life is the first clause of human right, which I
| see they are violated in many western countries. They refuse to
| treat the poor and old.
|
| This is ridiculous. "Many" Western countries "refuse" to treat
| the poor and old? That's blatantly not true. At best it's a
| colorful way to say that many western countries have problems
| with poverty and care of the elderly. Indeed, I would agree if
| that is so. That doesn't begin to compare with the
| _intentional_ and _desired_ violations of human rights of the
| Chinese regime. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the
| elderly and poor are not sent to "reeducation camps". Uyghurs
| are. For being Uyghurs. Full, fucking, stop.
|
| > Do you hear China criticise?
|
| Sometimes. Is that really relevant though? You'd think that the
| worst kid in the class would sit very quietly when one of the
| better students is caught screwing up.
|
| > Maybe they are, but for sure western media choose not to
| report them.
|
| Huh?
|
| > I can say some of the things you shouldn't say in China are
| equally not welcomed in many western countries.
|
| This is completely broken logic. I'm sure lots of murderers
| equally agree that you shouldn't steal candy from a small child
| or push an old grandma. So what?
|
| > If you split US, see how many troubles could come to you?
|
| I really don't follow.
|
| > China has ran 4000 years under one empire system, and it's
| just the culture there.
|
| Are you seriously suggesting that the impressive history of a
| country should preclude its citizens from enjoying more recent
| human rights?
|
| > Why democratic society is better than the 1 party system?
|
| I'm sorry, it's becoming pretty obvious - both from what you
| write and the sentence structure of that writing - that you are
| a shill for the CCP.
|
| > What's more important is to have the party represent people's
| interests.
|
| And nobody has ever found a way to do that except for
| subjecting the powers that be to the will of the people through
| democratic elections. Please let me know if you have found a
| way; the Chinese way definitely isn't one.
|
| > In many democratic countries, each party represents the
| interests from certain groups, that's why it's necessity to
| have multiple parties perhaps.
|
| ... yes?
|
| > The downsides to democratic system is also quite obvious.
| There are countless debate on many small matters which waste
| tax payer's money etc..
|
| Of course there are plenty of downsides. Proponents of liberal
| democracies are usually just arguing that democratic systems
| are the _least bad_ one (in this thread the major point of
| discussion is that the current Chinese system is absolutely
| horrible). I know it 's a tired quote for many, but: "Democracy
| is the worst form of government except all those other forms
| that have been tried from time to time."
| coliveira wrote:
| We will end up like cavemen if we start to banish every new
| technology coming from China based on racism. China will not stop
| developing new technology just because the US doesn't like it.
| justwalt wrote:
| I don't think people dislike Chinese tech because it's made by
| Chinese people, but rather because the Chinese government is
| assumed to have some hand in it. Best faith interpretation and
| all that, right?
| coliveira wrote:
| Technology has no political badges or flags. First of all,
| scientists and engineers are not political actors. Moreover,
| I have all the right to use a technology if I want it, even
| if it was developed in a totalitarian regime. For the US to
| prevent me from using this technology is infringing on my
| freedoms.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Get of your high horse. Scientists and engineers in China,
| are political actors. Everything done in china is
| political. And your right is superseded by national
| security, and good luck trying to find infringment on it.
|
| I for one am rooting to start boycotting the whole of
| China, until their communist regime which conducts genocide
| is forced to change and play humane and fair.
| chillacy wrote:
| You do have a right to buy Huawei equipment but you do not
| have the right to force your city/government to buy their
| equipment.
| whatsyourpoint wrote:
| I made a well thought out comment to you above but it is
| clear from this response that you are willing to accept the
| rewards of mass extermination and will stomp your feet
| screeching about your "freedom" to profit from it.
| thekyle wrote:
| What freedoms does banning Chinese products infringe? I'm
| pretty sure that the national government has the right to
| control international trade in the same way that the state
| governments have a right to control interstate trade.
| [deleted]
| whatsyourpoint wrote:
| Hey maybe if CCP wasn't doing mass extermination camps where
| organs are harvested and tons of hair shipped to the US, there
| wouldn't be such a caustic reaction to Chinese enterprises or
| politics around it.
|
| The state backing of these things, and people in the US & other
| foreign nations embracing the profits from genocide have
| resulted in people's current world view of "China."
|
| This isn't racism, its ethics and business. I dare say you
| dragging race into such a clear cut issue is more racist than
| criticizing CCP or limiting their reach.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| People get too caught up in attaching technology to a given
| place or person. "Chinese technology" vs "US technology". And
| probably a related phenomenon, when the "lead engineer in
| charge of the original Pentium" goes to work for Samsung or
| something (hypothetically), people think that means that
| Samsung is going to start making x86 processors or something
| silly like that.
|
| Technology is bigger than any one person or place. Samsung
| could make x86 chips just fine without hiring a single Intel
| engineer, if they put enough money behind the project.
| Likewise, China could out-innovate silicon valley if they
| poured trillions into it (and I'm sure they make that
| calculation yearly and decide not to). Likewise, the US could
| build fabs and get back up to speed with China when it comes to
| chip production, but they would have to pour trillions into it,
| and it would disrupt our image of green/clean technology.
| [deleted]
| oliwarner wrote:
| This makes me nervous.
|
| If the last few years mismanagement of Brexit, privatising the
| NHS, "universal" credit, historic immigration renegs, the
| perpetually delayed reaction to Covid19, PPE procurement
| contracts going to zero-asset companies monetarily linked to Tory
| members and donors...
|
| Well... A large part of me _hopes_ it 's mere incompetence.
|
| But the bigger picture seems to be a party that --starting with
| May as Home Secretary-- has been pushing harder and harder at
| knowing everything about everybody. Kicking out incumbent foreign
| hardware providers seems like a bloody good way to plant your own
| hardware in its place and achieve another level of control.
| georgespencer wrote:
| Re-posting a nested comment at top level for those who see
| incongruity in "national security risk" and "seven years to phase
| out Huawei":
|
| This is a good example of the kinds of tradeoffs which must be
| made at the highest levels of public service.
|
| Huawei, just like any Chinese corporation operating overseas, is
| an attack vector for intelligence gathering. Anyone presenting a
| counter-argument to this is either a shill for the Chinese
| government, or totally uninformed.
|
| China has a culturally distinct attitude towards intelligence and
| intelligence gathering to nearly every western country. The
| national emphasis on the collective good blurs the line between
| private citizens, acting in a personal or professional capacity,
| and the stereotypical impression of a "spy" perpetuated in the
| west: on the payroll, going to their cubicle at the CIA each day.
| China's voracious appetite for intelligence (and, particularly in
| recent years, industrial espionage), means that it is impossible
| to distinguish between the commercial interests of a Chinese
| company and the Chinese state furthering its apparatus.
|
| Remember Crypto AG? The Swiss crypto company jointly-operated by
| the CIA and German intelligence?[1] That's newsworthy because
| it's unusual: western states are typically limited to publicly
| lobbying their corporations for backdoor access, or working
| around things like end-to-end encryption (e.g. I believe PRISM
| used a combination of vulnerabilities to exfiltrate data from
| Hotmail and MSN prior to encryption taking place).
|
| In China, we must assume that the reverse is the norm: the
| Chinese government does not need to lobby its companies to
| provide it with data, or to build-in backdoors or exploits. A
| Chinese corporation can be compelled to turn over everything it
| has, silently, and to compromise users and products to benefit
| the Chinese government, silently.
|
| Crucially this is not a criticism of China. China can best be
| understood by Westerners as a series of tradeoffs to benefit the
| collective good, at the expense of personal liberty and privacy.
| Literally the argument you might encounter would be: "If you have
| nothing to hide then why do you care?"
|
| The information gathered is not always as exciting as you might
| imagine. It's not just deployed into military intelligence or
| kompromat. It might "just" be used as a means of preserving
| China's status quo as a leading manufacturing hub (and,
| therefore, China's position as a growing economic power).
|
| So China a) has a vast appetite for intelligence of all kinds,
| and b) does not draw a distinction between private
| citizens/corporations and state actors/corporations.
|
| To answer your question:
|
| Huawei has been a cornerstone of the UK's telecoms infrastructure
| for nearly twenty years, and in order to gain its foothold
| committed to allowing GCHQ full access to its codebase
| (HCSEC)[2]. The stipulation from Britain's intelligence community
| was that Huawei must not be allowed to have a monopoly position,
| or even a significant market share beyond a certain level.
|
| I am not familiar with the specific technical reason that Huawei
| at 70% vs. Huawei at 40% of the UK's telecoms infrastructure
| would represent a disproportionate increase in risk, but I
| believe it is likely to be related to resource constraints --
| fuck me guys, GCHQ is having to actively monitor and review the
| code deployed across a double-digit % of our telecoms
| infrastructure from the starting position of "this is provided by
| a bad actor"! -- and the doomsday scenario that Huawei's position
| of market dominance would drive competition down, resulting in a
| choice to either have e.g. 7G with Huawei, or not at all (7G is a
| fictitious example, but you see my point).
|
| The UK is balancing the very real ongoing nightmare of monitoring
| Huawei's involvement in UK telecoms with the fact that it's a
| cheap, high quality supplier, and the fact that our closest
| allies -- the United States -- have been on a warpath over
| Chinese intelligence gathering since long before Obama put the
| kibosh on China acquiring Aixtron in Germany for national
| security reasons. Oh, and we want to get a trade deal out of the
| US in the near future.
|
| The risk:reward for Huawei is at a point where it's no longer
| sustainable. Phasing its removal from our infrastructure will
| smooth our relationship with our closest ally, reduce our
| reliance on a Chinese state manufacturer, and reduce the workload
| on our signals analysts in GCHQ.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-
| ci...
|
| [2]
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
| einpoklum wrote:
| The UK shows itself again as a lap dog for the US.
| Spearchucker wrote:
| Well because Brexit does the UK have much choice? No one
| survives alone. Not even China.
| einpoklum wrote:
| No longer will we Britons live under the iron heel of the
| Germans and the French! From now own we shall only grovel at
| the White House!
| Huntsecker wrote:
| there is so much talk on here that this is about security or that
| the USA has some hold over the UK. The one and only reason this
| has gone back to parliment to vote on and that it has been
| decided not to use Huawei is because due to the sanctions the US
| has placed on Huawei around procuring chips the UK has come to
| the conclusion that its not safe to use Huawei due to the risk
| that replacement devices might become an issue.
| euix wrote:
| Here is a meta comment: having read this entire thread, it's
| pretty obvious that if even reasonably educated and intelligent
| people on a technical forum like this descend into complete
| disagreement then one can think what happens among the society
| and people at large on both sides of the Pacific and how easily
| it is to descend into a conflict.
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| What a short-sighted, backwards knee-jerk, racist reaction. If
| Huawei's 5G infrastructure had leaks allowing Chinese control it
| would more than likely be spotted by UK engineers. The
| application of controls as simple as IP whitelists or air-gapped
| systems helps ensure no leakage. Transparency of schematics and
| specifications means both Chinese and UK engineers get to see
| what's going on.
| kwistzhaderach wrote:
| Yes the UK is delaying their technology simply because they are
| 'racist'
| catherd wrote:
| What's the expected service life for that kind of network gear?
| Wouldn't most of it be gone or upgraded by then anyway?
| franklampard wrote:
| 4G lasted probably 5 years
| m3kw9 wrote:
| 5 years serves 2 things, one is to show UK is with their partner
| US and two, 5 years is a long time for a punishment to be
| effective because so much policies can change(2 elections) during
| this, and China knows this isn't really a big punishment.
| jk20 wrote:
| U.S. is just concerned that China, and not them, will get an edge
| in spying and the next industrial revolution. Speaking of human
| rights it should be noted that U.S. not only wantonly attacks or
| bullies other countries, but it also has the highest
| incarceration rate in the world - in absolute terms the number of
| inmates is comparable to that of China and India combined.
| rashkov wrote:
| Regarding your first point, yes, that's an interesting take.
| Regarding the criticism of the US, yes you're probably correct,
| but this is a "what about" argument that doesn't really aid the
| discussion in my opinion.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Whataboutism gets brought out too fast to dismiss discussion.
| Democratic systems project their values by demonstrating
| them. A democratic state that cannot show that its values
| work will have no ability to demand of others to emulate it.
|
| In that context the failures of the US (as it is de-facto the
| standard-bearer of political liberalism in a broad sense),
| have real influence.
|
| When the Chinese look around the world and they see the state
| of the US on imprisonment, racial conflict, failure during
| the current covid crisis and so on, this strengthens the
| domestic control of the party and the alternative autocratic
| system the government is advocating.
| rashkov wrote:
| The US has certainly lost a lot of moral standing, and yes
| it makes it harder to criticize others, and it strengthens
| autocratic hands abroad to be able to point to the US'
| failures.
|
| That said, the parent poster isn't the US government, but a
| private citizen raising a valid criticism of another
| country. So why can't it stand on its own, without a big
| show of self-criticism first? Can we not criticize others
| until our own house is in order? Once that happens, the
| discussion turns into an argument over moral equivalence or
| lack thereof -- ie. "the US' crimes are just as bad as
| China's!" versus "No these things are of completely
| different degrees!".
|
| This line of argument quickly becomes tiring and, I think
| it completely muddles the original point, which is often
| what is intended when hurling "what about...!" into the
| discussion.
| free_rms wrote:
| I hear what you're saying here, and no, our country
| doesn't have to be perfect before criticizing someone
| else.
|
| But still, we should wonder if the criticism is motivated
| by something other than pure concern for human rights.
| You expect me to believe that Americans are mad at China
| strictly because they really, really care about the
| rights of muslims? With our record and our allies'
| records?
|
| Or is it possible that this is just motivated by
| geopolitical interest?
| rashkov wrote:
| I believe that people who claim to be mad at Chinese
| human rights abuses are mostly genuine in their feelings.
| They also have a blind spot for the abuses of their own
| country and their allies. That blind spot probably comes
| from the part of ourselves that's very tribal, as well as
| a social and political environment that ignores and
| minimizes self-criticism.
|
| Now, if we're talking about the US state department, then
| absolutely they're doing it for geopolitical interests.
| However, they're also reflecting the concerns of at least
| some of their citizens.
|
| I'd also like to note that there's a moral equivalence
| argument to be made here. It's possible that China's
| abuses are actually worse than our own. Or maybe not. I
| just want to acknowledge that aspect of this argument,
| but I don't want to get into it because I'm not really
| informed enough to make it, and I'm certain that 80% of
| that impression is formed by skimming headlines and
| whatnot, which is not really a proper basis for debate.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| A consequentialist analysis would say that attacking
| China when it is almost impossible to influence while
| ignoring the abuses of your own government is even worse
| than inaction, because you are giving even more power to
| a state that is pretty much as bad.
|
| I would be much more amenable to agreeing with the people
| that claim to be mad at China in the US if the solutions
| they proposed didn't give more power to US, that has no
| fundamental difference in foreign policy than China.
| Economically isolating China, for example, does
| absolutely nothing to help the treatment of Muslims in
| Xinjiang, but gives a _lot_ more power to the United
| States. But if the solutions that were being talked about
| changed the balance of power towards entities that didn
| 't wantonly abuse human rights, I would entirely agree.
|
| Therefore, I don't think it's whataboutism. It would be
| whataboutism if the claim was that China actually
| respects human rights because the US is worse. But the
| question is different - it's whether we should
| economically isolate China on the pretext of their human
| rights abuses, or not. Saying that the party that
| benefits from this and that is pushing it is
| fundamentally just as disrespectful of human rights is
| not whataboutism, it's a question of whether the proposed
| actions will do anything for human rights at all.
|
| It seems pretty clear to me that they won't.
| Nursie wrote:
| But it is whataboutery.
|
| We're discussing why the UK might not want a Chinese state-
| allied (if not owned) actor embedded in its comms networks,
| and here everyone is saying "buh buh buh America!"
|
| And frankly if you look at what's happening with BLM (mass
| protest in the US over a pattern of racist police murders,
| significant parts of the country vocally criticising the
| apparatus of state) and consider that somehow worse than
| the semi-secret genocide of millions, with all discussion
| suppressed, going on in China....
| Barrin92 wrote:
| nobody is saying that that is worse than literal
| concentration camps, what people are saying is that
| failures to live up to racial justice at home weaken your
| ability to authentically criticize violations abroad, and
| that's a very valid point.
|
| And as far as communications infrastructure is concerned
| it's relevant too. In countries like Germany or Eastern
| Europe in particular the behaviour of espionage among
| allies over recent years has created an atmosphere of
| "well everyone is spying on us anyway" substantially
| weakening the case against Huawei, say.
|
| Also as far as discussion here is concerned, most people
| here are from Western countries, so at the end of the day
| discussions will mostly be about our own behaviours.
| Nursie wrote:
| But it is whataboutery when it's used to deflect and
| minimise the original criticisms of what the Chinese
| regime are doing, which is what we are seeing here.
|
| What people are saying, pretty straight out and literally
| in some comments, is "Stop whining about China, the West
| is just as bad".
|
| It's not, and it's pure distraction.
| Karunamon wrote:
| > _weaken your ability to authentically criticize
| violations abroad_
|
| It does no such thing. Being a hypocrite does not impact
| the correctness or incorrectness of what you're saying
| (which is why the tu quoque fallacy is a fallacy), doubly
| so when we're talking about entirely different categories
| of abuses that invalidate the hypocrisy charge anyways.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| correctness isn't what's relevant in (geo)politics. What
| matters is being able to influence others and get your
| interests across. And on that front being a hypocrite
| matters, both domestically as well as internationally.
|
| Listing off fallacies is great in internet discussions,
| but it's not how the world works. To be honest it's also
| not really how internet discussions work any more because
| everyone's grown sick of it.
| godelmachine wrote:
| Guys, just my lame thought but can't differential privacy be
| legally enforced in every software on every digital device?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy
| haecceity wrote:
| I think the issue is that things that can not encrypted because
| of protocol requirements is enough to be dangerous
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/ex-nsa-chief-...
| benlumen wrote:
| Something I don't see many people talking about is how Openreach,
| the UK's main physical layer broadband provider, uses Huawei kit
| in the majority of its street cabinets and has done since FTTC
| VDSL was rolled out a decade ago.
|
| 5G is the tip of the iceberg with respect to the UK's
| communications infrastructure involvement with Huawei.
| wyuenho wrote:
| Worse, Hyperoptic gives everyone a terrible ZTE router lol
| dastx wrote:
| Not sure about Hyperoptic, but CommunityFibre (gigabit FTTP)
| also uses Huawei routers (and presuming kit in the rest of
| their infra). I can hands down say, as much as it was a shit
| router, it still was better than the routers I've been given
| with any other provider.
| mhandley wrote:
| The article does touch on this:
|
| _" New restrictions will also apply to use of the company's
| broadband kit._
|
| _Operators are being told they should "transition away" from
| purchasing new Huawei equipment for use in full-fibre networks,
| ideally within the next two years."_
|
| Not clear if this is just FTTP or whether it includes FTTC, but
| I doubt there's a lot of _new_ investment in FTTC going
| forward.
| dang wrote:
| All: HN has been seeing a dismaying increase in nationalistic
| flamewar. This is not allowed here. I know it feels important
| when you're caught up in the intensity of such feelings, but it
| is not _interesting_ , which is what HN is for. Worse, it has the
| effect on interesting discussion that tank battles have on a city
| park.
|
| If you don't have something thoughtful and substantive to say,
| please don't post until you do. Drop denunciatory rhetoric--it's
| tedious and evokes worse from others.
|
| Remember that the community is divided on divisive topics and
| that the person disagreeing with you is probably not a spy, but
| just someone who disagrees with you.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place. That
| way we can collapse it and prevent too much offtopicness at the
| top of thread.
| SheinhardtWigCo wrote:
| I know that it's difficult for you to discuss anti-
| astroturfing methods without disclosing information that
| could make circumvention easier, but can you give us an idea
| of how much effort is put in to detecting this kind of
| activity on HN? You seem very confident that this doesn't
| happen here; is that because you're doing something to
| prevent it? We are, after all, talking about an entity that
| is known to use these tactics on pseudonymous forums at
| extraordinary scale.[1] With that in mind, writing off these
| concerns as merely "nationalistic" comes across as
| dismissive.
|
| I guess the real question is: _could_ you really detect well-
| executed astroturfing here, even if you tried very hard? I
| worry that authentic discourse on high-traffic pseudonymous
| forums is basically impossible if someone is determined to
| sew an opinion and has significant resources at their
| disposal.
|
| [1] https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf
| inetknght wrote:
| > _This is a stub comment to collect replies in one place._
|
| Collapsing comments only works if javascript is enabled. It
| would be nice if a mechanism existed to collapse comments
| without javascript, perhaps with a list of collapsed
| identifiers in the URL
| dang wrote:
| Ah, that's a good point. I'm sorry not to have a better
| solution at the moment.
|
| One thing I think we'll do is add links to comments to jump
| to next subthread (and jump to parent), which would at
| least enable you to skip the noise easily.
| the8472 wrote:
| html5's summary/detail works without javascript, can be
| controlled via attributes and remains interactive with JS
| disabled. Maybe with some creative CSS it could be
| somehow wrangled into the [-]?
| UnbugMe wrote:
| It's incredible how when its not China, you are always "its
| up to the community to decide". But when it comes to China,
| you go out of your way to freeze discussion. People like you
| are weak ass hypocrite pussies when it comes to China, you
| should be ashamed of yourself. Dan G you pussy ass communist
| appeaser, shame on you.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| "Always" is a strong word. Usually it just means you
| noticed some things that you dislike [1]. The problem is
| that we're all far more likely to notice such cases and to
| weight them more strongly, so before long we've sample-
| biased ourselves to "always". The other side feels the
| opposite "always" [2]. Same mechanism in both cases. It
| always feels like the mods are against you, just as the
| refs are always against your team and you're always the one
| who gets the speeding ticket.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=tru
| e&que...
|
| [2] Here is an example I just ran across:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19956161
|
| also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20136743
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17823494
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17806125
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| I completely agree with your response but I have to say I
| found it hilarious.
|
| Faced with
|
| > People like you are weak ass hypocrite pussies
|
| the retort was
|
| > "Always" is a strong word.
|
| This is HN. :D
| dazhbog wrote:
| Happy to steer the conversation away from inflamatory topics.
| It is the right thing to do for a healthy forum.
|
| But I think it could be handled with a little bit more
| transparency @dang. When you "nudge" or "handicap" posts from
| reaching the homepage, we would like to know maybe.
| GuiA wrote:
| Attempts to build constructive conversations in these threads
| are almost always met with heavy flagging/downvoting. My own
| personal experience is that any comment that isn't 100%
| backing the CCP falls to a negative score in a matter of
| minutes. Sometimes it goes back to 0/1 over the following
| hours, sometimes not. I've been on HN almost 10 years and
| that's almost always been true, but it's gotten much worse in
| recent years. Speaking to others, I know I'm not alone.
|
| The standard mod answer is that you all are aware of voting
| rings and there's no CCP astroturfing on HN, but many regular
| users feel like that's not the case, so clearly there's a
| disconnect here.
|
| Edit: lol at this comment being -1 minutes after posting it
| dang wrote:
| > any comment that isn't 100% backing the CCP falls to a
| negative score in a matter of minutes
|
| This is so bizarrely remote from accurate that I don't know
| what else to tell you. As far as I can tell, the only
| explanation for this sort of wild misassessment is that
| people's perceptions are extremely affected by their
| passions. The more passionate our beliefs, the more they
| simply can't see the datapoints that don't fit the filter.
|
| That also explains why these claims are getting more common
| these days: passions are rising.
|
| When your comments are breaking the site guidelines, you
| need look no further for why they might be downvoted. I
| seem to recall that you've done that a lot.
| GuiA wrote:
| Ah yes dang. Users who are otherwise constructive members
| of the site break the rules only on CCP related threads.
| Not only that, but their rule breaking is only penalized
| in the minutes after which they post, only to slowly
| return to the mean over time.
|
| Keep telling yourself that.
| [deleted]
| dicomdan wrote:
| Can you present evidence of moderation not having a one sided
| bias? Every time I see anything critical of the US / Europe /
| Canada and other liberal democracies it's sitting at the top,
| no matter how unsubstantiated. While every time there's
| anything that puts CCP in a bad light there's strong
| moderation because it's "not interesting" (even though this
| particular event is objectively very noteworthy in tech world
| and beyond).
| DenisM wrote:
| > Can you present evidence of moderation not having a one
| sided bias?
|
| Can you present the evidence of manipulation? The data is
| in the open.
| Aperocky wrote:
| How does UK banning Huawei puts CCP in a bad light?
|
| If you see things critical of US/Europe/Canada sitting and
| not strongly moderated - that's because people can usually
| hold rational and informed discussion on those subject.
| (btw this one is sitting as well? is it not?)
|
| I don't see the same when it come to China, it just gets
| flooded by propaganda from both sides, and it devolves into
| a flamewar. People start accusing each other for being
| spies and shills, and wishing ill on an entire people
| because of where they're born and how they happened to be
| governed. And that doesn't belong to HN and should be
| moderated, if you like information or discussion that
| conform to your existing bias you can definitely
| participate at /r/worldnews.
| dang wrote:
| > Every time I see anything critical of the US / Europe /
| Canada and other liberal democracies it's sitting at the
| top, no matter how unsubstantiated
|
| The key word here is "see". The problem is that we most
| _see_ what we 're primed to notice--which is basically
| whatever we most dislike--and we simply don't see (or don't
| weight as heavily) all the cases that don't feel that way.
| This creates a feeling of "every" or "always" (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23835843 in this
| thread), which is a true statement of what you've seen, but
| only because your seeing is extremely conditioned by your
| passions on the topic. (I don't mean you personally--we all
| seem to have this bias.) People with opposite passions have
| literally the opposite picture. Moreover, the degree to
| which the picture you see feels unfair and unbalanced is a
| function, not of the raw data stream, but of the intensity
| of your passion on the topic, regardless of which direction
| it points.
|
| As for evidence, if you search my comments you'll find
| examples where I've admonished users for flamewar in the
| opposite direction, as well as for flamewar on other
| topics, including nationalistic flamewar about other
| countries (India is probably the second most common case
| these days; Russia was up there for a few years and still
| flares up at times).
| dicomdan wrote:
| Thanks for the response. If you claim there's no bias,
| would you be willing to release the full list of posts
| that have been nudged / downranked from the front page by
| moderator or trusted users as part of a "HN transparency
| report"?
| DenisM wrote:
| Thank you for your work, dang.
|
| I want to add that the flamewar type of discussion will
| attract a certain kind of visitors to the site, who will then
| steer the entire site in the flamewar direction attracting
| more of their own kind. For that reason I support nuking any
| thread that devolved into a flamewar and taking other
| measures to discourage them.
| fakeslimshady wrote:
| A well needed move. I was started to get sick from reading
| the thinly veiled GOP racist propaganda. Post Snowden, Huawei
| maybe the only equipment vendor in the world that non-five
| eye countries can trust
| macspoofing wrote:
| The China-US tensions are not going to get better, and, in fact,
| will get worse as years go by. More and more nations will be
| forced to choose sides. It's not good and I'm not sure what a
| resolution even looks like.
| [deleted]
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The alternative to Huawei in 5G is either Nokia or Ericsson.
|
| As an European I don't what to think that the US seems so
| against kit from a Chinese company and completely fine with kit
| from an European company.
|
| They should be worried about both. We also have a long term
| world domination plan (version 2.0)... ;)
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Maybe the fact that one is a totalitarian state and the other
| is an ally?
| orwin wrote:
| But for at least Portugal and Greece, and maybe Italy and
| some eastern European countries, the ally is china since
| 2014?
|
| While Obama made his move over SE Asia, the CCP applied the
| strategy they used in Australia with the PIGS. And while
| Trump very successfully destroyed what Obama tried to do in
| SE Asia, the CCP installed foreign military bases near
| center of trade in the Indian ocean while gaining political
| goodwill with middle east poorest countries. Most of Iraki
| oil is sold to China.
|
| I'm not claiming i know what should be done, i'm just
| saying that China have already a lot of political allies
| and try to gain more, and now reached europe.
| jaekash wrote:
| > But for at least Portugal and Greece, and maybe Italy
| and some eastern European countries, the ally is china
| since 2014?
|
| Maybe financially, but not ideologically. Not sure how
| far this "allegiance will hold".
| culturestate wrote:
| _> As an European I don 't what to think that the US seems so
| against kit from a Chinese company and completely fine with
| jit from an European company._
|
| The US would of course prefer that American technology be
| available, but since it's not then I suppose a partnership
| with two trusted allies is preferable to one with an
| untrusted adversary.
|
| Nokia and Ericsson also aren't arms of the state widely
| believed (fairly or not) to actively facilitate global
| industrial and military espionage activities on behalf of a
| hostile government, so there's that.
| [deleted]
| jaekash wrote:
| The only way this makes sense is abstract of any value
| judgements, and yes sure, if we in the west ignore that
| everything about the Chinese Communist Party and how it
| conducts itself is an affront to our values then it makes no
| difference. But we are humans, we have values, we make value
| judgements.
| strogonoff wrote:
| Perhaps having to take a side in this is not necessarily a
| negative? Better sooner rather than later.
| hrktb wrote:
| From a EU/UK perspective there's no good coming from it.
|
| It's like being caught in a fight between your drunk uncle
| and your berserk cousin.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There is definitely good coming out of it for the EU.
|
| Europe does not have to align with either side. It is a
| superpower in its own right if it gets its shit together
| (one can dream).
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I think it needs to be a stronger political entity in its
| own right for that. EU foreign policy is hamstrung by
| very different foreign policy objectives of member
| states.
| hrktb wrote:
| This is not some neutral decision, but a move forced by
| the fallout of US sanctions, that the UK can't do
| anything about.
|
| They're giving up a partnership they entered after
| independently reviewing the equipment, I can't see how it
| is a good outcome for them.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The UK left the EU so now it has no option but to be a
| big guy's bitch because it is too weak to face them by
| itself, and it has always been quite obvious that it
| would be a satellite of the US.
|
| This is not the same situation for the EU.
| hrktb wrote:
| The EU by design is not a single unit with governing
| power that would counteract the US or China. It's not a
| federation but a union, each member has to manage their
| own international relations.
|
| France for instance is about to take the same steps as
| UK, and get out of Huawei deals within the next years.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| One of the main goals of the EU is to counteract the US
| and China. Individual member states no longer manage
| their own international relations when it comes to trade
| and try to find a common position on other issues.
|
| The issue of a deeper integration is an old one and
| evolving, but the trend is more integration.
|
| It is becoming more and more important for Europe to
| stand on its own two feet and be independent in all
| aspects.
|
| There are benefits in having the other superpowers locked
| in conflict if you can stay out of it as much as possible
| and further your interests while they are distracted.
|
| The UK, on the other hand, is in a very weak position.
| China will feel comfortable retaliating strongly, and the
| US will probably extract a sweet trade deal from them.
| jaekash wrote:
| > Europe does not have to align with either side.
|
| Let's hope Europe makes the moral choice here though and
| aligns against China.
| est31 wrote:
| A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country and
| totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a
| democratic China would be any different when it comes to their
| claims to the world. They'd want to expand just as they want to
| expand now. Just look at the various western colonial empires
| of history. Many of them were democracies in some form or
| fashion.
|
| Any long term resolution to the conflict has to involve the
| realization that China has had 100 bad years and now has a
| giant comeback. And that the US has had 60 good years but now
| large parts of it decline.
| chosenbreed37 wrote:
| > A resolution is difficult. China is a totalitarian country
| and totalitarianism needs to be fought, but I doubt that a
| democratic China would be any different when it comes to
| their claims to the world.
|
| I wonder about this. Why does totalitarianism in a sovereign
| nation need to be fought? For those of us considering a
| democratic China...why do we think the country would fare
| better as a democracy? The Chinese civilisation is goes back
| thousands of years. Could the system they have now be the
| cumulative effect of all they have gone through to date? In
| other words it has evolved and generally serves its people.
| It may evolve into something else (possibly resembling
| Western democracies) but it may not. I don't particularly
| think it has to.
| magicsmoke wrote:
| Maybe the long term resolution involves recognizing that even
| if China is totalitarian, it's only within it's own borders.
| Unlike the cold war days, there's no race to convert
| countries to Communism or Democracy. China's main mode of
| interaction with other countries is through trade, it doesn't
| play the game of political/ideological proselytism. If
| democracy loses ground around the world, that's due more to
| it's own failings than a concerted push by China to replace
| it with totalitarianism. Spend more time and funds fixing the
| economic inequalities plaguing democratic society than
| wasting it on ineffective bogeymen like confronting China
| half a world away.
| jaekash wrote:
| > Maybe the long term resolution involves recognizing that
| even if China is totalitarian, it's only within it's own
| borders.
|
| If it was not for china North Korea and possibly Pakistan
| would not have had nuclear weapons now. So no, it is not
| just in it's own borders.
| franklampard wrote:
| Source?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| What is the solution for totalitarianism? Destruction of the
| country, plunging millions into poverty, for it to be
| replaced by a sham democracy where all the levers of power
| are behind US interests? How did that work out in Iraq?
|
| If you want China to stop being totalitarian, then you should
| wait until most Chinese citizens decide that they don't
| approve of the ruling party, and then let them decide what to
| replace it with. You cannot force democracy.
| room271 wrote:
| I'm not sure it's just a China-US thing. I think Europe will
| increasingly find itself taking a role. India too.
|
| To clarify, while US-China superficially seem like the 'sides'.
| Really, what I think is happening is that the values of many
| (especially Western) countries around human rights, democracy,
| freedom of religion and expression, are coming into conflict
| with a new kind of Chinese authoritarianism that really doesn't
| care for these things and is quite willing to subjugate large
| groups of people in doing so (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong,
| claims to Taiwan, etc.).
| 3PercentMan wrote:
| Enough of your nonsense. You don't have the higher moral
| grounds when it comes to human rights. How many Muslims have
| been killed during the wars in the middle east?
|
| Stop smoking crack already and getting high on koolaid.
| Waterfall wrote:
| 1RMB has been deposited into your bank account
| dang wrote:
| Please don't do this here.
| kwistzhaderach wrote:
| What makes you think he's American?
| dang wrote:
| Hey, please don't break the site guidelines like this. We
| ban account that do that.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
| Wohlf wrote:
| The annexation of Tibet was in 1951, claims to Taiwan have
| always been there, and the subjugation of millions is nothing
| new (Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution were in the
| 50s and 60s).
|
| I think people are just waking up to the reality that the
| opening of China will not automatically lead to greater
| liberalism as was predicted.
| flattone wrote:
| My 'being honest with ourselves' view is we know whats going to
| happen and its going to suck.
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