Comment by palmotea
8 hours ago
> I can feel the scores of messages being sent to the federal government from lobbyists saying what a threat Chinese hardware is to national security.
The motivation for such messages may be greedy, but it doesn't mean the facts aren't wrong:
1. As a practical matter, no one can audit systems so thoroughly to determine a system built by an adversary won't act adversarially.
2. Free market incentives work counter to national security all the time, in many ways (e.g. causing domestic capabilities to wither and die).
Can we audit American corporations?
Also, who decides which entities are adversaries? I don't personally consider "China" my adversary. As an American who has to deal with US companies, many of them are far more antagonistic to me than a foreign country 10K km away.
If "China" decides it doesn't like me, my life really isn't going to change much. If my electric company decides it doesn't like me, I'm in big trouble.
Yeah, I don't want China as an adversary. It appears to me that it is a country full of fun, smart and interesting people. And their manufacturing prowess is incredible.
I'm into funny electric vehicles and China makes some beauties!
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What about Russia and Ukraine?
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You don't consider them your adversary, while they strong-arm your corporations to invest in China [1] instead of your own country (this becomes "we have to manufacture in China, we don't have the capability here!"), destroy your corporations through espionage [2,3], or through subsidy-enabled dumping prices and preferential treatment [4,5], extract groveling apologies from your firms [6], operate literal police stations on your soil [7], turn your countries into subordinate receivers of orders [8,9], bribe your politicians [10], censor your media [11], universities [12,13,14], advertising and corporations in general [15,16], and even books [17].
While they plan 50 years ahead, we are stuck re-litigating the most basic "united we stand, divided we fall" logic, even while the consequences are all around us. But congratulations on your enlightened individualism.
[1] Apple CEO Tim Cook "secretly" signed an agreement worth more than $275 billion with Chinese officials, promising that Apple would help to develop China's economy and technological capabilities - https://www.dw.com/en/china-gets-german-childrens-book-about...
Edit as reply ("posting too fast", thanks HN) to all the "but the US also does bad things" "counterarguments":
> Seriously, Americans can do this chickenshit nonsense, but you are the worldwide problem.
I'm European, and not stupid enough to believe that because the US is acting poorly or even in some cases hostile to Europe (to say nothing of the Middle East or South America), that we should roll over and allow China to subjugate us instead. Neither should the US. This is "you are not pure and innocent enough for self-defense" logic. Please don't drag the rest of us down in some deluded attempt at atonement.
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> I don't personally consider "China" my adversary
They're not an adversary in the same way that a guy demanding your wallet at knifepoint is, or a company able to cut off your electricity is.
China is an adversary in the sense that they're a totalitarian government, who, by the nature of that system, cannot brook any sort of opposition to their ideology, plans, or desires. All within the state, none without. That sort of system cannot exist in harmony with other systems for any extended length of time because doing so will suggest that the powers-that-be in China might not have all of the answers to the human condition. Either you fall in line, or you have to be eliminated.
If you're an American used to calling other Americans antagonistic, that's not going to work out well for you over the long run.
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> Also, who decides which entities are adversaries? I don't personally consider "China" my adversary. As an American who has to deal with US companies, many of them are far more antagonistic to me than a foreign country 10K km away.
I could see a dude in Ukraine having exactly the same perspective vis-a-vis Russia in 2013, and look how that turned out.
Myopically individualistic perspectives, focused on your individual wants and day-to-day experiences, miss a lot of stuff.
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If you are an American company US backdoors are annoying but hard to avoid given the government will find ways to compell access anyway. Adding potential avoidable foreign back doors does not improve your security.
I wouldn't tell a Chinese company to buy from Cisco. I wouldn't tell an American one to buy from Huawei.
Exactly. This is not a question of whether you get spied on, it is a question of who gets the monopoly for spying on you. Between extortion groups, cybercrime syndicates, foreign governments and last but not least my own government, there's not much room for real privacy online these days.
>> 1. As a practical matter, no one can audit systems so thoroughly to determine a system built by an adversary won't act adversarially.
> Can we audit American corporations?
What's your point? Did you even read what I wrote? The five words of your comment seem to be pretty sloppy:
1. If you're taking about their products, which is probably what you meant: if you think they're your adversary, then the answer is no, it's pointless.
2. But your comment as written reads as if you're talking about auditing the corporations themselves, which does in fact happen (for tax and financial reporting purposes).
This is essentially asking every country in the world to be subservient to US tech in perpetuity. They didn't sign up for that.
To make conversation productive, please define "national security" in this case.
For example, if China can't install its hardware in Pentagon, why is it a threat to national security.
On the other hand, if you say, Intel will be in trouble because of these chips, then I would say, so what? Wasn't this a dream of MBAs, educated by the top US schools, to outsource everything in business to cheaper service providers (e.g. manufacturing to China, software development to India and etc,.)
Where is the threat and what is the threat?
"To make conversation productive, please explain how outsourcing your strategic industry and know-how to geopolitical rivals and enemies is a threat."
You have a funny definition of "productive".
In the 1980s, when Japanese firms were 7 of top-10 in world market cap, the trade magazines were screaming about Japanese fifth gen computers, silicon prowess, etc. and cyberpunk SF mandatorily had Japanese locales thrown in ...
3. China was not stupid enough to rely solely on the free market to develop strategic industries. A few deliberately old sources to show this is not a sudden new development:
Back in 2014, the central government set up the China National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund. - https://www.scmp.com/tech/enterprises/article/2145422/how-ch...
Over the next decade, China plans to invest up to RMB 1 trillion (US$161 billion) into its domestic semiconductor industry as it seeks to become a global power in the sector. In recent years, Beijing has repeatedly stated that developing its own integrated circuit (IC) industry is of integral national strategic concern. - https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chips-all-in-investing-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Integrated_Circuit_Indus...
> 3. China was not stupid enough to rely solely on the free market to develop strategic industries. A few deliberately old sources:
Yeah, I agree. The US and its allies took the wrong lessons from the economic aspect of the cold war. They saw Western capitalism out-perform Soviet central planning, then let capitalist ideologues run amok.
China has the advantage: since it's not run by capitalist ideologues it better able to correct the deficiencies of capitalism AND it can exploit predictable capitalist behavior for strategic advantage.
> Over the next decade
That was a 2016 article.
We're at the other end of that investment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZSvDYDfd78 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBhQrz9EJ40 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KrdcTsScKk
It did not quite turn out like china wanted.
This isn't to be dismissive of what they ARE delivering - china has the potential to be very big in RAM, and Storage in the comming decades. But I'm not sure that they met their industrial and geopolitical goals with these efforts.
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OH, BUT we have fable! We have AI! of course we can answer these questions? can't we? which is true: America's AI is a super powerful defense against our enemies or America's AI is too stupid to defend against such a threat, and only sactions and import controls will suffice.
Just seems like you're inventing things to be scared of.
it's a hardware problem, you run into engineering, materials, and physics issues. we're not talking about reverse engineering software