Be less naive when it comes to China.
But don't kid yourselves that the US intelligence would never pass on trade secrets or confidential information to benefit American competitors. Especially if you consider that they've actually sabotaged foreign companies because of business relations to countries the US doesn't like.
FWIW: I would never put confidential information on Chinese infra. But as a non-American I'm only slightly less worried about doing the same with American infra. It's not so much about whether someone will access your confidential information, it's more about who they are.
Airbus to sue over US-German spying row
Heh, you're using a throw away account just to go full whataboutism on this comment thread. So brave.
Are Wumao into Hacker News now?
Sure, China might be more blatant about that and do it on a higher level, but the US lost all rights to be on the moral high ground with things like that. The US got zero protection for user data. They do read your personal mail and they listen and watch via your webcam silently into your home. Does not get much worse than that.
If they did this, which company benefited? Did all domestic companies in the same business get the same deal or only that one single lucky one?
In 2013 some Snowden papers showed how the CIA spied on the Brazilian oil company Petrobras: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-bra...
The same papers included a 2009 proposal that the CIA move into industrial espionage: https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use.... The CIA says it was never acted on.
And there is the Airbus issues too (which were purely to benefit Boeing - there was no military or defense issues with that)
However, the official position is that the US spy agencies don't do industrial espionage: https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-did-doj-indict-chinese-milit...
One has to say their actions don't make this particularly clear though.
Are there known instances of this happening? How do you know they would "absolutely do that"?
I'm neither Chinese nor American. While it's obvious why China is not trustworthy (i.e. rampant product piracy) the bar is not so high that it matters whether the Americans or the Chinese are abusing my customers' data as long as there's a third option. Granted, even when hosting locally it's known that American agencies might be able to access that data and it would be prudent to assume China (or Russia, seeing how they're the more trendy Big Bad these days) couldn't do the same. But at least I'm not wrapping everything up with a ribbon and leaving it at their doorstep.
What kind of piracy? Patents and copyrights are managed and enforced at the state level.
I'm less concerned about Chinese knock-offs sold locally but Chinese companies have a deserved reputation for trying to sell illegal knock-offs internationally with little regard for the IP they're violating in those countries.
Also China has a reputation for not just having companies copy successful designs but actively going out and exfiltrating information to clone them (e.g. companies producing parts in China for Western companies turning around and producing knock-offs of those parts themselves, sometimes even branding them identically).
Regardless of the case by case legality, it's obvious why this behavior is likely undesirable for most Western companies seeking a cloud provider rather than specifically a Chinese cloud provider.
[0]: Obvious caveat: it's not strictly international, but most countries have agreed on cooperating under the terms of the Berne Convention and the UCC. So for most intents and purposes as long as you're only dealing with signatory states, copyright is as international as laws can be without the UN literally being able to come in and put you in UN jail (which isn't really a thing either).
This holds neither for the USA nor china.
My company will never trust any chinese company with anything especially our data.