Because this is mostly not about security, but about trade war and protectionism.

Actually it's about security as well.

There is a reason that countries like Australia, NZ, UK etc have either banned the company outright or had to take measures to ring fence their products.

As an Australian can I share the opinion that our leadership would literally jump off a bridge if the US government said it was a good idea.

We have a long and storied history of making bad decisions to appease greater powers.

The UK feel so strongly about Huawei that they're getting them to help expand their 5G network.

That's not true; they're at least going to be ring-fenced and there's no evidence yet that they will be allowed to supply 5G at all. All the UK has said is that they believe the risks can be managed for some equipment.

The leak said they could help build infrastructure like antennas and base stations. That's far from being banned.

Care to share those reasons?

Because Australia, for example, decided to ban Huawei in a closed door national security meeting.

> Actually it's about security as well.

Since you name the "five eyes" countries. Is it because Huawei's products make it harder to spy on the population?

> Because this is mostly not about security

In my view, it is absolutely about security, and much more broad than "spying."

China is absolutely an adversary of the USA. If you give your adversary control of a national asset such as the entire wireless network, then you are a fool. I am no fan of Trump, but holy crap did we allow our security interests to get dominated by business interests in the past.

One great example is that for unknown reasons, we allow Chinese POPs in Canada, however there is certainly no western POPs allowed in China. Here is a story about Canada-to-Canada data being routed through China via a Chinese POP. [0] I remember it being discuss on HN, but now I can't find it.

[0]https://toronto.citynews.ca/2019/01/31/israeli-cyberexpert-d...

China is an adversary? Tell me this when Apple packs up and leaves China for good. And Google stops seeing China as a market. And ...

Multi-national corporations are what they are because they have no loyalty to any country. Profit is the god they worship. Giving our national assets to any multi-national corporation is foolishness.

Well I guess its a good thing that Apple is selling less and less phones anyways before this trade war™ mess, might make it easier to leave, their new product is selling credit!

> China is an adversary? Tell me this when Apple packs up and leaves China for good.

Are you not able to separate a nation's business interests from its national security interests? Can you not imagine how the two could easily be in conflict? I am truly dumbfounded by this view. I don't even know where to begin.

If I support your opinion, I should also support China gov had done before for Google and others.

Because it's really about destroying China's growing influence.

I won't agreed with this a few months ago, but more and more Chinese companies is receiving this kind of treatment. The reason maybe not the same, but the results are, Hikvision is a clear example, even DJI got their name mentioned (I mean, DJI, a toy maker, really?).

So yeah, I guess everything is eventually boil down to that.

Because thats not enough. Huawei has been stealing IP, is a part of the party and has been caught spying for them, for example in thr Netherlands.

They do not play by the rules, which is why they became a big competitor in the market. Treat them like a normal company, and you will have a chinese state company monopolist eventually.

See Boeing and Airbus, where state intervention was a fraction of what Huawei gets.

Finally, foreign companies are not free to do business in China, why should chinese companies be free to do so here?

Edit: to give an example. Firms in China rarely license correctly for domestic sales, merely for export. No other nominally developed country with so many manufacturers would get away with that. Imagine Germany not licensing for cars they sell in Europe.

So what now? Huawei has lost access to many licenses, such as cpu, memory, sd cards and whatnot. Do you think they will stop making phones? No. They will ignore it, and grt backed by the CCP. In China, this will have no impact.

What SHOULD happen as a reaction is to ban Huawei entirely, and come after other Chinese ccp backed companies next. Because if you ignore the rules of the market, you should not participate in it.

Allegations not proven yet. Watch out for your media and information sources

WSJ article today: “Along the way, Huawei has been dogged by al­le­ga­tions that its gains came on the back of copy­ing and theft. A re­view of 10 cases in U.S. fed­eral courts, and dozens of in­ter­views with U.S. of­fi­cials, for­mer em­ploy­ees, com­peti­tors, and col­lab­o­ra­tors sug­gest Huawei had a cor­po­rate cul­ture that blurred the bound­ary be­tween com­pet­i­tive achieve­ment and eth­i­cally du­bi­ous meth­ods of pur­su­ing it.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is-litte....

My point is different.

We are and always will be uncertain who is spying. Further, we can not even say whether Huawei is a sincere market participant (although here the case is much clearer against it).

If you wait for certainty, you will lose. Its a political decision you can agree or disagree with.

But if it has been made, and for good reason in this case, then you will not fight ip theft and chinese protectionism and anti competitive behavior with small measures.

Op asked why ban Huawei instead of not buying from them. Because it is ineffective.

They have not been caught spying for the party and they are not part of government. These are outright lies.

Please don't fall for the transparent disinformation spread by some media, and unfortunately by some commenters on HN.

Is it? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-huawei-tech-i...

Also, board members and execs are CCP members, and functionally the company is controlled and supported by the CCP.

Alleged backdoor. There are a lot of allegations against Huawei but not a lot (if any) concrete evidence.

The issue is that we have to make a decision under uncertainty. And fast.

Context matters as well. Look how China treats its citizens, and those abroad who critique the CCP. Look how it has no ethical issue to control and spy upon every Chinese person within its borders. It has no state philosophy that would forbid it. Why would you think they would not spy abroad? And again, CCP members controlling Huawei is a fact.

Look how the doctrine of ip theft has been pushed even in past plans like china 2020, and how often unlicensed and nearly identical products and tech showed up after being stolen by someone. And Chinese politicians masterfully promising betterment and market access to EU politicians and giving nothing in the end.

There will never be a smoking gun. But to say its based on lies without evidence is, i think, misleading.

For years all this has been happening. And the damage to non Chinese tech and industry has been huge.

That is why it needs to be up to every country to choose whether to make deals with Huawei and the CCP or not. Judge the evidence, and circumstances.

If you wait too long, the consequences are clear. The US has decided it has seen enough, and Huawei is not a sincere market participant.

THEN, you have to take strong measures. If there is ip theft. If there even is spying, THEN you can not fight it by half measures. It doesnt work. Huawei denies and goes their merry way until it is untouchable.

Its a game of chance, not certainty.

> The issue is that we have to make a decision under uncertainty. And fast.

I'm sorry, this sounds like "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.

> For years all this has been happening. And the damage to non Chinese tech and industry has been huge.

Not really, it was a conscious decision by most Western companies to go and produce in China. Fully aware that they will (voluntarily and via ip theft) transfer knowledge, they still chose to do it because the profit margins were so enormous. The Chinese actually hacking and siphoning off IP is relatively new, something that previously was the NSA's monopoly.

> If there even is spying, THEN you can not fight it by half measures.

Are you suggesting the EU should go into a full out trade war with the US to convince them to stop the spying?

Thank you for making clear that your previous claims were bogus.

Google CEO told trump that Google works for USA military. Trump bragged about it on Twitter. Other US companies are on PRISM project as well.

> "and has been caught spying for them" (GP) //

Hmm, recently on BBC a representative for UK's GCHQ said there was no evidence of that.

>"The report comes a day after U.S. President Donald Trump banned Huawei from buying vital U.S. technology without special approval and effectively barring its equipment from U.S. telecoms networks on national security grounds." (from article GP linked) //

There you have it, I think: Netherlands bought some deal from USA and supported their Huawei story with a "key finding" the following day. Smacks of propaganda.

>"The Volkskrant story did not contain any details" (GP's article, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-huawei-tech-i..., again) //

Ha, ha. No shit they didn't provide details that could be used to show it was entirely made up.

So a well known Dutch newspaper being bought or strongarmed by the Cia/Trump/Whoever.

Or a company whose execs are literally CCP party members, spying for the party.

I am going to go with story 2 here. Occams razot.

> So a well known Dutch newspaper being bought or strongarmed by the Cia/Trump/Whoever.

"Allegations" aren't "strongarming". It's just telling somebody "off the record" that you heard something. Bloomberg recently claimed that Huawei had installed secret backdoors in equipment sold to Vodafone for use in Italy. Vodafone all but laughed in their face, saying it was a standard, obvious and not at all hidden telnet maintenance terminal that hadn't been deactivated.

>So a well known Dutch newspaper being bought //

It's possible I'm too cynical but I think here you're being too naive. De Volkskrant are cited as relying on "unidentified intelligence sources" which to me means their intelligence service contacted them and said "run this" (or some logical equivalent of that).

Occams razor is not truth producing, it's not capable of finding the truth. That said, either UK's or Netherlands intelligence are lying here as De Volkskrant refer to their being "evidence" and GCHQ (see my post history) said there wasn't (but were lots of holes that appear to be just bad coding).

The GCHQ spokesperson was a person interviewed on TV in a BBC interview, a noted rare occurrence.

The De Volkskrant source is anonymous with no evidence provided.

I guess you take your pick. Does GCHQ have cause to lie to promote Chinese intelligence activities that are proven to be actively operating in the EU? Or does USA have enough hold on Netherlands to get an "anonymous source says there's evidence but we won't show you what it is" pushed out by their intelligence service?

So, the day after Trump starts a propaganda war against Huawei just happened to be when Netherlands decided to make an anonymous no evidence comment?!?

I know which side I'm finding more believable.

This is probably the worst username you could have chosen in trying to blend in “NotPaidToPost”.

You post an awful lot in support of China, "NotPaidToPost".

They have been caught stealing IP and using stolen IP for a while now.

Huawei Mate X being a classic example.

That's not evidence of spying for the party, it's evidence of others spying for them...

I'm not sure whether someone in the Chinese intelligence services could easily get Huawei to assist with espionage if doing so might hurt the profits of someone higher up in the hierarchy.