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Comment by heraldgeezer | Hacker News Reader

Government has a mandate. That's how it can function. They have evidence, why reveal it to the public (and thus china)? I grew out of my Ron Paul phase at 15.

You trust China over your own government? Move then.

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Whoa there, kiddo! I deeply, deeply resent being called 15! The tone of your comment is just wild.

I am old enough to have seen several instances where organizations had internal reasons for their decisions and chose to argue something completely different in their outward communication. Given that an exclusion of Huawei had the obvious side effect of protecting domestic markets, this leaves quite some room for doubt around this specific instance. You say it yourself that governments have mandates.

It isn't a question of trusting China more, it is about the determination of whether China or a different government is the bigger threat. If my communication gets me in trouble it is much more likely to be with my local government than the Chinese. That and the Chinese equipment probably being cheaper and better casts a lot of doubt on whether conclusions from 5-Eyes countries are in my interests.

From that perspective it makes a big difference whether the Chinese have mostly secure back-doors or their software is just generally insecure.

Due to way the Chinese government operates in other countries, if you happen to be ethnically Chinese living in the West, the Chinese government is still probably more of a threat to you than Western governments.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/rcmp-chinese-police-st...

It is difficult to assess - we could say similar things about the US network set up for extraordinary renditions. It is unclear whether the US or Chinese network is "worse". Although what worse means is very debatable, it raises questions of size, activity, goals and targets. We're comparing one clandestine thing to another and we don't have good data on either.

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