It seems America is scared by mini-vans from Canada and sedans from Germany as well and pretty much anything that creates an economic gain for anyone other than America.
Huawei could pose a security threat but we already know by now that this is all about the economy and maintaining America's indisputed supremacy at all costs. After China, EU will be the next buggy man.
I can see that happening too with the amount of anti-EU rhetoric happening at the moment. I mean I'm not going to defend every piece of legislation the EU has passed but some of the comments levied against the EU from their US counterparts have been down right hypocritical.
You know how a tyrant acts when he is losing control of his empire? He starts getting really insecure and conspiratorial. America's unipolar moment has passed and it's about time they acknowledge it instead of continuing to drown themselves in hubris.
Don't assume this is anything new, and don't forget that many foreign nations have tariffs on imports as well. Plus another method used by past administrations was in using patent law to put up barriers to market.
The Chicken Tax has been around for decades but manufacturers do work around it.
This is one positive aspect of Trump’s presidency. He has definitively shown Korea, Japan, and Europe that the Pax Americana can not be relied upon as much as it once was. Those countries will have to start leading more and have a stronger voice. They may not like the accompanying expense and tough choices this entails but I welcome it.
What is IR? I’m sorry I don’t understand what you are trying to say.
It is my belief that one positive result of the Trump’s Presidency is that other nations have to confront the reality that Americans are willing/able to elect an incompetent psychopath. This forces them to realize that they can’t rely on American stability. We have become erratic and unpredictable. Hence they will need to become less reliant on the U.S. I see this as a good thing.
I see the U.S. in a state of imperial decline and I’m glad for it. I’m not a supporter of Trump but I try to be objective and won’t deny that he’s done some good.
I did not know. Thank you for clarifying. Your second sentence is quite impolite. Clearly I have an opinion on international relations. It might be misinformed, poorly stated, foolish even but it’s clear I have an opinion.
I suggest it would have been better to say, “You know, that topic you are posting about in a rather misinformed way.”. And then gone on to state how it was misinformed. As it is your post comes across as angry/bitter. Like you have an ax to grind so to speak. You sound extremist and I get the impression that you think I think of Trump as some benevolent leader.
It appears your are not reading what I write. While it is a fact that the Pax Americana exists I’m not in favor of it and hope for its demise. I’m happy for American power to decline. I welcome it. But even if I was the caricature you seem to strongly wish I was, your points could be made much more effectively with a change in attitude. I enjoy witty sarcasm very much but yours lacks the requisite wit to be enjoyable. It’s also inappropriately aimed since I agree with what you believe. Not in how you say it though. I have the burden of knowing we are on the same side.
One viewpoint is that the USA are a crutch to the rest of the world.
Another viewpoint would be that this is based on self-interest.
The USA bombing Iraq because Hussein wanted to sell oil in another currency other than the USD and leaving the so called rest of the world with the humantarian crisis would be one counter example to the crutch-theory.
You're on the right track, but the reason you gave for invading Iraq is very naive. Research "Project for the New American Century", whose founders were very high up in the GW Bush administration. You'll see that the strategies they outlined in 1997 plays out quite well. Toppling Iran has yet to happen, but Syria and Iraq have gone according to plan.
From my perspective it has become a symbiotic relationship. The U.S. maintains the Pax Americana at great financial expense but does so for the benefits it provides. It’s not an altruistic act. Europe and Japan get benefits too. One of the benefits for Europeans is that they get to avoid the messy moral situations that come from wielding such power. Go back to the mess in former Yugoslavia in the 90s to see how the Europeans made a mess of things trying solve it on their own. I don’t want to get into a debate on the merits o that intervention but the situation wasn’t resolved to the liking of the UK, France, Germany, etc. until the U.S. got involved.
Yes, among a host of other things. Churchill said the world must be made safe for democracy while denying freedom to India. Great power is very corrupting.
It's definitely a two way street, but there's less incentive now for the US to stay involved. We're a net petroleum exporter now, Texas of all places is adopting renewables like crazy (proving their viability), highly autonomous and mechanized manufacturing is almost comparable to outsourced production and we don't need soyuz for space launches (soon).
All of that combined, plus the growing need to address our own impoverished parts of the country is making a lot of people in the US think it's time to let Europe do it's own thing.
In what sense is the US a crutch for the rest of the world?
I totally understand wanting to focus on domestic problems but all too often campaigns based on that like to blame everyone but those who are responsible for domestic problems. We saw this with the UK's EU referendum (or "Brexit" as it's now known) where immigration was a key point. We saw this with a great many despots that come to power that blame other cultures corrupting their way of life. Even Hitler used the same rhetoric. And what good does it ever bring us? The US has had frequent shutdowns and regressions to universal health care and the growth of the UK's economy has slowed, cost of goods have gone up and jobs have and will be lost. We are all worse off for it!
Blaming everyone else for your own domestic problems wont help solve your domestic problems. In fact more often than not, you're only going to make them worse because you're just giving more power to those who actually cause those problems to begin with.
Trump campaigned on whatever the audience of the moment was cheering for. So far he's cut taxes on the ultra wealthy to the point we can't afford to fix infrastructure if we wanted to. Gutted the EPA, refused to impose bipartisan sanctions on Russia, and is talking about stealing land and hurricane relief money to build a wall that nobody wants besides that painted-on-hair racist Stephen Miller.
European auto makers have massive sales in the US as do Chinese manufacturers of all sorts of things.
Given the proclivity of China to use their IT skills for all sorts of shenanigans, noted in the news daily, it's beyond reasonable for Western nations to be concerned about having a government backed entity 'in between' all of the most important information in the country.
You don't understand. There are no "western nations" anymore. It's America First and everyone for themselves. Strong competitors are now a national security issue regardless if we are talking about Mercedes, Huawei or french cheese. Say good-bye to fair competition(if there was ever a such thing).
There is nothing conspirational. It's the new foreign policy.
China appers in the news b/c it's still the clumsy underdog. U.S has done the hacking and all the spy stuff for decades.
As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government. The Chinese government has fewer ways they can use my data against me. Add in the fact that Huawei products are cheaper, and I'll be buying Huawei products for the forseeable future.
Privacy IS something I'd be willing to pay for, but that's not an option. If the US government and corporations wanted me to trust them, they shouldn't have spied on our communications at every turn and then attempted to silence every whistleblower. The US calling out Huawei on security concerns is obviously the pot calling the kettle black, and I don't think many people internationally will be persuaded.
Any government could make a serious play for privacy by making some privacy laws with civil and criminal penalties for violation, and protections and rewards for whistleblowers. But as things are currently, lack of privacy comes standard with communication devices from any country, and Americans calling Huawei out for it is just inane posturing.
Our politicians are grim enough without some dude rocking from the Chinese Ministry of State Security and extorting them into doing something worse than the thing they'd already do anyway*
Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are probably not important enough to be their target. Unless they could exploit you in order to exploit someone more powerful they care about, like a corporate or political leader. This is more to protect our leaders, which in turn keeps you more protected.
You are completely missing the point of government surveillance.
Yes, indeed, as an individual nobody cares about you. However you are a part of general census and by spying on you and everyone around you they can predict what you are thinking, what you are craving, what political stance you hold, what are the risks of you being involved in some future problems for them etc. You can go wider and wider to a city, to a state and finally to a country. Then, for example China can really see what american citizens are thinking in general and this is valuable information.
Also, second reason why you are completely missing the point. Let's say you are one of those "I don't care if they spy on me, let them record me on my toilet." - Now your kids are involved in some political activity and you did not pay your taxes for one month 7 years ago. Government wants to suppress your kids political activity and just tell them either they stop or their father (you) go to jail. At least this is how it works in totalitarian countries.
Recording the taxes is fine. Not having paid your taxes for month doesn’t mean you go to jail. But that information might now suddenly be used to coerce your children. That is not okay.
> you are probably not important enough to be their target.
So why are they hoovering it all up? Every last piece of digital dust they can get.
You're not important until you stumble across evidence of a Five Eye nation committing war crimes or try to whistleblow on the IC breaking laws or run for political office trying to limit military budgets or just about anything that goes against the narrative of faceless people in faceless buildings who can and do maintain their power using the tools they have available. When was the last time the Intelligence Community said the world was getting safer and they needed less funding?
Has a single person been prosecuted for the blatant crimes revealed by Edward Snowden? How about MKUltra, did even one person go to trial for the deranged human experiments conducted on American citizens by the American Government?
Everyday people need protection from these lawless organisations more than ever to be able to shine a light on injustices without fear. Society won't advance without it, the Western World world will start spinning it's wheels like authoritarian China and friends where everyone keeps their heads down in passive obedience and liberties go backwards.
I'm not so sure they did. The idea is that if you are of interest to a powerful adversary, then a second powerful entity that has previously collected pertinent coercive knowledge about you could try to strike a deal using that information they collected, potentially decades ago. Or they could threaten to release the info unless you compromise your positions.
Besides, surely in the future there could be a more automated intelligence brokerage between nations - who knows how long the current political climate lasts before it gets replaced with something more like HFT intelligence trading between the MSS and NSA.
> This is more to protect our leaders, which in turn keeps you more protected.
Nonsense. The leaders on the US are not on my side, why should I be on theirs?
Killing people in foreign wars is done in the name of protecting me, but I didn't ask for that, and I don't believe it protects me. In fact, it's painfully obvious to me that if you kill people in foreign countries, it incentivizes their families to come here and kill Americans. US leaders aren't protecting us.
The fact is, I'm more likely to be shot by an American cop than I am to be affected by China. If I'm going to prioritize personal security, it's going to be against the threats most likely to cause me harm.
I often hear this for argument. But in US, when you don't like what the government is doing, you gets to vote ( OK, might not be working so well but you do have the power )
Which ever nations spying on another nations which you don't have a choice. And that is not just social security, but also national security and business security. The implication is much wider.
I don't like the government spying on me, I've voted in every election since I was able to vote, worked on some campaigns, and it's done shit all for me. I'm not saying don't vote, but you'll excuse me taking other measures to protect myself from bad actors (which includes the US government).
The fact is, most US citizens are more likely to be shot by a cop than affect in any way negatively by the Chinese government.
That’s true. Americans need to be more informed about what they are voting on, but that is something we can change. Also, given the Chinese government’s love for internet censorship, it is not without basis to believe that non-Chinese governments will have more censored internet if their internet is relying on Chinese telecom. At least in the current world you can speak freely to spread awareness and enact change even if it is opposing the US government.
> As an American, I'd rather be spied on by the Chinese than by my own government.
Considering the low-quality of security in Chinese products, you are much more susceptible to be spied upon by the Chinese...and the American spy agencies, and Russia spy agencies, and criminal groups, and so on.
if we would really be worried about security (and not politics / foreign policy war mongering) we'd be speaking about threat models.. And here the China Supply Chain Threat doesn't hold up. Backdoor hardware implants are only tangentially interesting since the vulnerabilities that stem from shoddy engineering (hello crappy ASN.1 parsers and a thousand other flaws: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1093301841205456896.html) are much cheaper to harness than some hypothetical purpose-made backdoor that costs millions to implement and keep covered-up. (Occam's razor)
China is unable to use Huawei in western countries for mass surveillance without getting instantly caught. That's not the worry here.
What they theoretically could do is to use them to assist in targeted surveillance of small number people, or cause major mobile infrastructure collapse during major conflict.
because exfiltrating data is hard, and if all of your devices are doing it, it's only a matter of time someone notices. it's not going to be "instant", but the risk/reward ratio isn't good.
I do agree getting that data out unnoticed is tricky. But something remotely activated/deactivated (magic packet) would be trivial. So it's not necessarily all your devices doing it all the time and that could make it very difficult to detect. If that limitation still makes it worth doing depends on what you need to achieve. The reward could be huge.
Yes, but remote activation pretty much means targeted. I am absolutely convinced that there are backdoors in huawei devices, be it intentionally or through carelessness. There's news about backdoors in Cisco products at least once a year - completely accidentally obviously, since we are the good guys.
However, the Chinese would be very careful about using them. Every time you do, you risk getting caught, because just in that moment someone on the target network could be running wireshark to debug some unrelated problem. And once you're caught you're done. You won't risk that to fetch some random HN user's browsing history to blackmail them.
The issue isn’t China having “your” information or mine, its them having the aggregate of everyone’s information. Or being able to turn off all the pipes.
Lots of comments of how innocent China is being hard done by, really have a look at what China has done to exploit developing nations and censorship of their own people. People dont appreciate their freedoms until they get taken away
> but with IMSI catchers, the whole discussion is academic anyway.
that's like saying you don't bother with security because someone could force you to unlock your devices at gunpoint anyways. IMSI catchers only reveal your location and any unencrypted traffic, plus you need to be physically close to your target. compare this to a backdoored phone which has access to everything you do on it and can be accessed from the other side of the world.
In particular so when application-layer encryption is a thing, and trusting the network is a bad idea anyway, as demonstrated, among others, by the NSA abuses published by Snowden.
I think it's okay to want to do that. Yes, I don't want anybody spying on me, but as someone who's neither from the US nor China, I'd much rather choose to have the NSA/etc have access to my data than the Chinese.
Why though? We don't know what the Chinese will do, but we're somewhat informed what the US will.
Sure: the Chinese might be much worse. But they might also not be. So far, I haven't heard of intensive drone usage by the Chinese to bomb weddings half way around the world.
>>> So far, I haven't heard of intensive drone usage by the Chinese to bomb weddings half way around the world.
But you surely heard of "missing people" in China after speaking against the government. What if this very comment would put you in prison for the rest of your life or worse, get you a death penalty(with or without trial) ?
I'm pretty sure China would do some atrocious things given the chance to fight a foreign enemy. There is no real rule of law in China. That's the issue with all the communist/dictatorship system.
You can't compare them. No American accused of terrorist activity on US soil has ever been held at Guantanamo Bay.
If you hang around with terrorists in a war zone(i.e Afganistan) you can expect your rights to be violated. Surely mistakes are made in a war. That quite different than being kidnapped from your home for expressing different political views.
So there was an abuse and it seems there was a trial to prosecute. Some people got jail time for that. You may say that it was not perfect and some people didn't get what they deserved. I agree.
But, have you seen any such trial in China? You may be put in jail for even demanding prosecution of the officials responsible for such acts. The press is not allowed to talk/write about such things.
China like all the communist countries and authoritan states(i.e Russia) has no real rule of law. In practice the party leaders are the law.
They have show trials of corrupt politicians, just like we do. What does that matter, though? The CIA will continue exactly the same way, with or without some show trial. As will those Chinese government officials who weren't used as an example of Xi's latest war on corruption.
> You may be put in jail for even demanding prosecution of the officials responsible for such acts. The press is not allowed to talk/write about such things.
I'm not saying they are great. I'm saying maybe stop pretending we are. Sure, we have great explanations for all the extra-legal things ("they were terrorists", "this was a special case, it will never happen again", "it was wrong, the low level official responsible was punished") we do, but so do they.
It would be so much easier to criticize them for the stuff they do if the CIA didn't have torture camps all over the world and wouldn't kidnap people "just because" and get away with it by pointing the finger at China or Russia and saying "look, they are much worse than we are".
> But you surely heard of "missing people" in China after speaking against the government.
Sure, and that's terrible, there's no question about it. But it does not affect people outside China in the same way that the US's actions affect them.
China might very well do the same things the US does if they ever get to be the planet's only super power. But they are not, so why overhype the possibilities?
Better the demon you know than the demon you don’t. China has frequently implied jurisdiction of any Chinese national inside or outside its borders. Giving them more international data is a scary thought for me
As an Australian living in China one of the things that annoys me is that I have to provide all of my Australian bank accounts and investment accounts with my Chinese tax file number. I also have to tell my Chinese banks my Chinese tax file number. This only started 2/3 years ago.
This isn't for the Chinese government or the Australian government. This is for the American government because of the FACTA law.
The US government wants to have jurisdiction of everyone ... just in case you might be an American not paying taxes.
Starting this year it will be for China. Not sure if you heard, but now all foreigners who live in China more than 6 months a year will have to pay tax on their global income.
I'm not sure this is correct. According to [1], foreigners have to pay tax on foreign income if you have live in China for 183 or more days in 6 consecutive years. And you can reset it by leaving the country for 31 or more days. However, foreigners do have to pay tax on foreign income of Chinese entities if they stay longer than 183 days.
So don't invest large amounts in dividend-paying Chinese stocks if you plan on living in China long-term, I guess.
Thanks for this, you might be right. I will have to look into it more. If it's true then this is not so bad.
Edit: Can you find a better source? All of the sources I find say that "it is not clear" if the 5-year rule and 30-day leave reset still applies. Therefore, one should plan for the situation that it does not apply anymore.
that’s a fair grievance. At least in the current world you can raise those concerns publicly without being censored. You can raise awareness and organize individuals to enact change. I fear that given chinas love for internet censorship that would not be the case if your government gets too cozy with Chinese telecom.
Strange to hear that, given that China is the pretty much the only country whose financial companies pay the FATCA tax (yes, ICBC and co are some biggest FATCA tax payers in US)
US at least gives concerned citizens a framework in which to enact change, with China there is no such framework. Free speech on the internet in China is non-existent. You will not get censored in the US (or internationally) due to anti-American rhetoric. Sure there are currently flaws, but I am confident we can improve as humans in figuring out more meaningful ways to share our thoughts online.
I said this in another comment, but I will repeat it here; better the demon you know than the demon you don’t. With the preliminary data we have with the treatment of Chinese nationals living abroad, particularly in HK and Taiwan, and the continued rhetoric implying jurisdiction over all Chinese nationals worldwide, I don’t care to see what that world looks like.
What makes you think US will give you the same? U.S supports dicators and criminals as well(i.e in Saudi Arabia). It gives them weapons and inteligence. I think it's already clear that it's America First and democracy, freedom and the good stuff somewhere on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th place.
If North Korea would become U.S's ally against China, Kim would be presented(by US) as a strong man and the rightfull leader for NK people(i.e like MBS in SA)
You better make sure you don't have to choose between any of them (U.S or China). Get better relations with your neighbours and try to rely less on super powers(i.e US, China, Russia)
What makes me think that the US will give me a framework to enact change? They already do. You can freely discuss what you are currently discussing because of this framework. You are currently using it. Enjoy it, don't take it for granted
Spying stuff aside, I feel the bigger reason we should think long and hard about this is the same reason we don't source parts for our weapons program from foreign countries: mobile networks are now critical infrastructure and any form of sabotage would be devastating to our national security.
Sourcing foreign components alone massively increases risk surface area, never mind a full-scale nationwide implementation of an astoundingly complex tech.
As much as you can (rightly) criticize the US, particularly the current administration, the US still has the rule of law to a degree far larger than almost all of the rest of the world. While there are failures (eg holding anyone accountable for the subprime mortgage fiasco) there are also positives (eg it seems the US is the only developed nation that goes after the banks that enable tax evasion; see all the actions and settlements with Swiss banks as examples). The US has a largely independent judiciary that isn't afraid to say no to the administration (eg all the injunctions against the travel ban from Muslim countries).
It's also true that the US government spies on its own citizens to a degree that's debated in the post-Snowden era. So I certainly believe all phone call (and probably email) metadata is spied upon (and no doubt a sampling of the content for each). And NSLs and pen registers are obviously a thing. I certainly don't believe the tinfoil hats who think that a significant portion of Internet traffic of the tech giants is eavesdropped upon however just based on how much data that is.
Contrast this to China. Questionable rule of law. Chinese companies and their leaders are certainly complicit with the Chinese government and intelligence agencies. There have been recent stories about how the Muslim population is spied upon and/or put in "re-education" camps (this has also happened with other groups like Falun Gong). China continues a policy of erasing Tibet. Xi Jinping is largely installed himself as a Putinesque dictator (eg term limits for the presidency were recently abolished).
Given a choice between the US spying on me and China, it wouldn't even be close. The US "wins" hands down. At least I have some faith that there are limits to what the US can and will do and that the government can be held accountable to some degree (at least a far larger degree than in China).
China has aggressively pursued an agenda to further its national interest that includes the arguable exploitation of developing nations (through loans for capital programs), intellectual property theft from the developed world (through forced "partnerships" as well as repatriating Chinese nationals and outright hacking eg Google).
As largely tech people here we all know something about security. To me it's obvious that ceding control of your network (with all the potential harm that could do) to a foreign government is a national security issue.
Huawei (and others eg ZTE) have been caught here as bad actors and not actors I personally would trust if I had anything worth protecting.
China plays favourites with its own companies. It has clearly decided that it doesn't want a foreign company to control a local market, any local market, which is why you have the likes of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent instead of Google, Amazon and Facebook. And no it's not because foreign companies don't understand the Chinese market. It's because the Chinese government wills it.
Access to China's 1B citizens has been dangled as a carrot to the developed world for years. It should be clear that the game is rigged.
So, if China has decided not to relinquish control of domestic markets to foreign companies, why shouldn't the US respond in kind?
> As much as you can (rightly) criticize the US, particularly the current administration, the US still has the rule of law to a degree far larger than almost all of the rest of the world
And, conveniently, there are ad-hoc courts (FISA) for when you have to "legalize" massive surveillance.
> see all the actions and settlements with Swiss banks as examples
Meanwhile, banks at home apparently have no problem with this... As long as it benefits american corporations, of course.
> Contrast this to China. Questionable rule of law. Chinese companies and their leaders are certainly complicit with the Chinese government and intelligence agencies
Oh, I'm sure the NSA didn't have their support...:
> There have been recent stories about how the Muslim population is spied upon and/or put in "re-education" camps
Meanwhile in your country, 2% of your population is imprisoned (more than any other country in the world), and illegal immigrants are being detained FOR YEARS. Talk about "re-education camps"
> Xi Jinping is largely installed himself as a Putinesque dictator (eg term limits for the presidency were recently abolished).
The Clintons have been in power for how many years? What about the Bush family, Bolton and friends?
Also, have you ever questioned the amount of power US corporations have? Apparently not...
> Given a choice between the US spying on me and China, it wouldn't even be close. The US "wins" hands down.
I'm sure the US "wins" too, they can spy on you freely, and are said to be able to collect practically all your phone calls and 10% of all internet traffic (i.e., all data, excluding videos and other irrelevant stuff).
> China has aggressively pursued an agenda to further its national interest that includes the arguable exploitation of developing nations
They are literally copying what the US and Western powers have taught them. At least they don't bomb random countries thousands of miles away from their homeland under the argument of "freeing" them and "defending democracy", unlike US & EU neocolonial powers.
> As largely tech people here we all know something about security. To me it's obvious that ceding control of your network
And that includes trusting your own govt., right? People who "know something about security" should know that you simply can't do anything against governments... Much less against the most powerful govt. on this planet.
> Huawei (and others eg ZTE) have been caught here as bad actors and not actors I personally would trust if I had anything worth protecting.
Unlike those "accidental" backdoors in Cisco equipment, which your ISP probably trusts 100%?
> China plays favourites with its own companies
Exactly what the US govt. does when it talks about "national interests". Or, do you think your government is there to defend YOUR interests?
> It has clearly decided that it doesn't want a foreign company to control a local market, any local market, which is why you have the likes of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent instead of Google, Amazon and Facebook. And no it's not because foreign companies don't understand the Chinese market. It's because the Chinese government wills it
And they are right to do so. Why would they let a government that is known to play dirty control of their population? Obama, the democrat, a Nobel peace prize, bombarded 8 countries, even more than Bush Jr., yet people still believe he was a "good leader" and "better than Bush". It doesn't take much intelligence to notice the brainwashing...
> Access to China's 1B citizens has been dangled as a carrot to the developed world for years.
The US has been doing that for decades. And anyone who dares disobey gets a coup d'etat or destroyed.
> It should be clear that the game is rigged.
Indeed... It is rigged by the US (govt and corporations), against anyone who wants to compete fairly.
> So, if China has decided not to relinquish control of domestic markets to foreign companies, why shouldn't the US respond in kind?
Yeah, the US should mind its own business, leave China AND the rest of the world alone, and not play world police, stop cheating, stop imposing its ideology, and so on.
Huawei could pose a security threat but we already know by now that this is all about the economy and maintaining America's indisputed supremacy at all costs. After China, EU will be the next buggy man.