Comment by infecto
4 days ago
I cannot argue on the TikTok as strongly but I can see strong arguments on why Huawei and DJI are national security risks. Some of this is more educated guesses so not defensible with numbers. We know most major companies in the Chinese market have extremely close ties to the CCP. No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms but I believe the CCP takes it to a next level. We know for a fact that the CCP and chinese entities play extremely hardball when it comes to corporate espionage. Some of the stories we have seen almost read like a spy novel. Certainly Huawei and DJI make some incredible products but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure, I do believe it warrants major concern for national security.
I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy compared to the easier explanation, China is a fairly crafty bad actor in a lot of cases. 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked, just the ones that have very significant national security risks.
> 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked
because it's impossible.
the US offloaded low-added-value manufacturing to China, exchanging paper dollars for cheap industrial goods. When China tries to upgrade to high-added-value industries, like chips, guess what? National security risks!
just enjoy cheap goods and nature resources from 3rd world...
I am not sure I follow your point. There have been both National Security risks as well as protectionist economic policy enforced against china that benefits domestic players. In a lot of those protectionist cases, there is either a case of China flooding the market or there are cases where the government makes a choice that its beneficial to keep domestic manufacturers alive.
In the above provided examples its quite clear that there are possible national security risks involved with China being involved in US infrastructure and technology. If DJI was from the EU there would not even be a discussion.
If you have better example beyond hyperbole I am all ears.
> If DJI was from the EU there would not even be a discussion.
1. of course there'll be no 'national security risks' because EU is an ally, and the US is spying on it
2. even though, troubles come to US's allies sometimes, like what Alstom and ASML met
3. EU products are mostly less compatible, overall, it cannot challenge the position where the US holds in the global value chain, so pose less of threat
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> If DJI was from the EU there would not even be a discussion.
If DJI was from the EU, the US would manage to buy it.
Read some of the many stories out there about the NSA, please. They have backdoors into internet infrastructure. If any country is a threat to information security, it’s the USA.
Did you read my comment? I explicitly called out backdoors, you should read comments closer. It most definitely happens within the US but the ties between the US government and corporate entities are no where as perversely intertwined as they are in China.
So you would say for sure that the NSA has definitely never been used to give advantages to US companies? I could totally imagine Boeing receiving information in order to win a contract against Airbus.
After all, we know for a fact that the US have been spying on European politicians.
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I think you’re biased if you don’t believe the USA is also doing domestic corporate espionage. Cisco probably has multiple NSA sleeper agents silently inserting backdoors into their routers.
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> I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy
I am not proposing a conspiracy, I am merely noting some irony in the fact that the US are doing protectionism here.
> No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms
Well, most of the Western Internet goes through the US, and we know for a fact that the US try to extract as much as they can from whatever they can (remember Snowden?). Also the US are very fine with US companies owning all the data of a big part of the world, and they would be really pissed if some country started banning them "for national security reasons".
> but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure
You don't need to connect the drone to the Internet. Technical solutions would most definitely exist, I am convinced of that. The reason DJI is being banned is because DJI is 7 years ahead of anyone else, and the gap is getting bigger every year. It really, really sounds like the US drone companies have been lobbying a ton because they just can't compete.