> Huawei has grown because it has been able to offer similar or better networking equipment as competitors for lower prices.

You mean flat out copy Cisco and then undercut them in developing markets? In the early 2000s i remember seeing a Huawei manual that was a legit photo copy of a Cisco IOS manual with just the names blocked out.

They "flat-out copied" an implementation of strcmp. Not exactly Earth-shattering. Not as serious as copying, say, the entire Java API.

Any evidence they copied Cisco hardware? Did they copy anything substantial?

You've accepted they've copied Cisco's manuals for one of their products yet question if they've copied Cisco's hardware... ?

Huawei's infamous approach to "acquiring technology" is undisputed. Literally ask anyone in the industry. Look at how they've ruined Nortel. See their behaviour at trade shows, taking apart competitors equipment to take pictures of their schematics. The evidence is out there, why don't you sift through? You might find a pattern.

I'm curious to know why this is all so hard for you to believe.

In the same way that I accept Google copied Oracle's max function. If that's the worst that anyone can pin on a multi-billion-dollar-revenue company, it's pretty squeaky clean.

The Nortel accusations are completely evidence-free. Nortel collapsed because of the bursting of the tech bubble, mixed in with a fair dose of "creative accounting."

> I'm curious to know why this is all so hard for you to believe.

Because there's zero evidence for any of it. There's a general impression that's been created by American media about Huawei being a spying operation, but no evidence.

I've read your other responses and while the points you make are reasonable, it's "obvious" to many that a certain threshold of belief has been crossed, most notably by industry insiders. There are far too many accounts of Huawei's behaviour that leads one to suspicion. You don't need mass media for this. Read the countless first hand experiences here and elsewhere. Unless of course you believe they're astroturfing.

I haven't read any such accounts, although I constantly hear people saying that Huawei is a shady company. The media campaign has worked, and everyone just knows Huawei to be shady - just nobody is quite sure why. That's why I ask for specific cases, but all I ever get in response are the same two or three minor incidents from a long time ago. This is in contrast to other major tech companies that people generally find respectable (Samsung, Apple, Google, Microsoft), which have engaged in far more serious documented cases of IP theft over their histories.

> Because there's zero evidence for any of it.

There's all the evidence in the world if you want to see it. I you don't, there is none.

This isn't really incompatible with GP's point. It's really hard to be a global telecom spy network when you're nobody wants to buy your equipment because it's overpriced and low-quality...

In fact, that would give the beneficiary government a lot of incentive to advance your interests with something like a state-sponsored IP theft program and massive subsidies

If you make things up, anything is possible. How about this possibility, which is actually supported by real, known facts?

Huawei began with simple equipment they could manufacture cheaply, made money, and have invested in R&D to move up the value chain. Recognizing that Huawei is an important Chinese tech company, the Trump administration is holding it hostage in the trade negotiations. Americans are now being bombarded with piece after piece of vague innuendo about the company, insinuating (without any evidence, of course) that it's secretly a state-owned spying operation.

That's another possibility.

I honestly haven't seen conclusive evidence that Huawei has spied or been asked to in the past. Alas, imo, that's irrelevant because I'm aware that Huawei would not be able to turn down a spying request and continue to exist as a company.

That Huawei has engaged company-spondored IP theft has been widely reported, as well as the fact that the Chinese government widely disseminates the IP it obtains via forced technology transfers that are required to do business in the country.

Actually, it is seriously disputed, because there's no evidence that Huawei has engaged in more serious IP theft than most other major tech companies.

The same examples are always trotted out. Huawei copied some extremely minor Cisco code over 15 years ago, and the two companies privately settled the issue, and Huawei engineers took pictures of the "Tappy" robot and took some of its fingertips a few years ago. If you compare these relatively minor incidents to the types of disputes other major tech companies have had, they're nothing. Google wholesale copied the Java API, and internal emails showed that senior executives knew this was potentially a legal problem. Samsung copied the design of the iPhone. Microsoft Windows' UI was largely cloned from Macintosh. The list goes on. Yet Huawei, which hasn't had any major IP disputes of this sort, is somehow the problem.

> the Chinese government widely disseminates the IP it obtains via forced technology transfers that are required to do business in the country.

This is not how things work in China. First of all, technology transfer is not required in most industries. Second of all, the companies that transfer technology do so willingly, because they believe access to the Chinese market is worth it. The Chinese government didn't put a gun to their head and tell them they had to open a factory in China. They benefit from cheap labor in China, and in return, China benefits from technology transfer. Companies wouldn't agree to this if they didn't regard it as a fair trade, and I don't see why it's unreasonable for a developing country to set these conditions on foreign investment. But again, these regulations don't cover most economic sectors.

However, I haven't seen anything to suggest that Huawei has benefitted from this sort of technology transfer. Again, claiming that Huawei has just looks like baseless innuendo, like so many of the accusations against the company.