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Comment by jbverschoor | Hacker News Reader

The problem isn’t smartphones right? Bc then we should ban almost all phones.

I thought the problem is that basically all the cell networks run on huawei

The Chinese government can order Huawei to do basically whatever it wants, and the former has so far shown no qualms about doing as much espionage, corporate or otherwise, as it can get away with. Infrastructure is one threat, smartphones are another.

In all fairness, I have still to see any tangible evidence of this actually having happened. NSA-Backdoored Cisco Routers, on the other hand, are well-documented.

There's plenty of evidence of hacking and corporate espionage; that was what prompted the trade war in the first place. I don't know what public evidence there is about Huawei specifically, but I think it's naive to assume they're an exception.

The trade war started as a mercantilist-spat[1] and the targeted attack on Huawei for perceived "economic loss" as the biggest global south smartphone manufacturer that was due to surpass Apple is clear as day. Additionally any critical US infrastructure was already barred from acquiring ZTE/Huawei cell towers/5G access points.

[1]: https://reason.com/2019/05/15/trumps-malignant-mercantilism/

It appears now that the US government can order Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and even non-US companies like ARM to do basically whatever it wants, and has shown no qualms in the past about spying on their European allies. From the a non-American POV the US does not have a clear moral high ground.

No villain wants to be the victim of another villain.

Every government can order any company in their country to do whatever it wants. That's fundamentally how government works.

You're assuming the US government cares if a non-American thinks it has the moral high ground. I would be shocked if any decision maker ever considered that before making a decision.

...non-American...

You don't need this qualifier. Our leaders don't care about the opinions of us, their subjects, either.

Huh?

As far as we know, apple has very much not built the decryption tech the govt wants. And we are reasonably sure this is true because of the persistence of vendors selling cracks.

I'm sure there are other examples too.

So I don't really see Huawei and apple/Google/Intel as at all the same.

So can U.S. government to U.S. companies. In the end, it boils down to the question in whom you have less distrust. Most people(in the world) will still side with U.S. no matter how they appear to be anti-american.

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