It may be a bad actor in the sense of an aggressive tech giant employing unconventional means to make profit and take market share. But there is zero evidence in the wiki that Huawei is a national security threat. The only evidence it's a national security threat is that it is a Chinese company.
I know it seems that way; it's a common perception, which is why these posts are so common. But we've learned from long experience that in nearly all cases, it's an optical illusion coming from a cognitive bias, which we almost certainly all share (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...). The trouble is that the resulting accusations poison the community in their own right.
If you read back through some of the posts I linked to you'll see tons of commentary about that.
People assuming that someone with opposing views must be disingenuous, astroturfing, a shill, or bad-faith actor, is so common on the internet, including HN, that it is probably a cognitive bias we all suffer from. I've written about this a ton, and we do everything we can to counteract the toxic effect this bias has on discussion. But that doesn't make it ok to lash back at someone.
I'd appreciate staying away from personal attacks on HN. If you have a case to make, then flagging the user is the best way to do it. Emotions are clearly running high on US - China relations and it's pretty hard to find the signal through all the noise. Calling people out in public doesn't help things.
I just realize what you're implying here. You think only China state-controlled "bots", or some China govt sponsored actors would be posting comments like what I posted here, right? OMG, if that's what you think, you really need to get out to other part of the world and ask people what they think of this whole Huawei attack. You'd be surprised how many people think the bad actor here is the US govt.
I'm so glad you ask. I certainly have an "agenda". That agenda is to give a balanced view on what currently is a completely one-sided criticism of Huawei. Since Trump started the trade war on China, every piece of US media coverage of Huawei is negative, portraying it as the greatest evil on earth. That sounds very coincidental and suspicious, does it?
If Huawei has been such a bad actor, how come there were hardly much coverage before Trump trade war. It's been around during the Obama administration, during the G W Bush administration, it was already a rising tech startup during the Clinton admin. How come no one noticed it's spying on its customers and other "terrible" behavior? and no one took issue with it?
So, answering your question, having follow HN for a short while, I actually feel there is a hidden agenda in the many of the comments here in HN, and that agenda seems suspicious aligned with the Trump administration foreign policy.
lol just guessing. Chinese immigrants are likely to comment on China related issues and hold dramatically different viewpoints from most westerners, who are blind-sided by the misinformation spread by their media
The fact it is a Chinese company is all the evidence needed. Huawei is subject to China's 2015 National Security Law, which grants the Chinese government the power to force Chinese companies to provide assistance in matters of national security. In other words, if Chinese intelligence wanted Huawei to secretly introduce a backdoor, it would be a legal order and unlawful for Huawei to resist. What makes you think the US needs to have evidence beyond that when this impacts critical infrastructure and national security? Why take the risk?
That would be an argument for not allowing Huawei to supply equipment for the US 5G network.* It is not, however, an argument for banning American companies from doing business with Huawei.
As the American head of the US-China Business Council said, it's one thing to ban Huawei from the US, but banning American companies from selling equipment to Huawei is more like "murder": https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/06/11/trump-trying-to-murder...
* An analogous argument could be used, of course, by other countries to justify banning American hardware in their own critical systems.
I am curious. Would the same be true for CSIRO? Considering that Austalia has introduced laws requiring any company to provide them with a backdoor that does not notify the user and the developer is essentially under a gag-order?
