That national security concerns about Huawei equipment has nothing to do with the quality of the equipment. The issue is whether the vendor can be trusted in hypothetical scenarios in the future.

If the US implements all Huawei equipment, and China sanctions the US from receiving support/updates/parts from Huawei (or worse, go to war and use it as a weapon), then the US telecommunication infrastructure is at risk.

I have first hand knowledge of IP theft by Huawei dating back more than 15 years. It's not surprising they can outclass competitors on price over the long term. Perhaps this behavior should not be rewarded?

Nortel?

We don't have jurisdiction over China. There is no such thing as IP theft across state lines without both states agreeing to recognize it as such. Even among countries that do recognize it, it's an insane kludge of treaty and the independent operation of fundamentally incompatible legal systems which can only reach within states themselves and tend to bump into serious obstacles whenever they try to reach across state lines.

Most major corporations deal with this by just registering IP in multiple jurisdictions simultaneously and litigating internationally, which can also be done in China just as you would do it in France or the UK. Redundancy is easier to manage than cross-border cooperation with foreign court orders.

>There is no such thing as IP theft across state lines

That may be true in the strictest legal sense when a Chinese company is the one doing the stealing from a Western corporation. But in reality, that's so laughably incorrect that it makes me question why you said it.

Exactly. And to put it in clearer terms, they have been continuously hacking into Western companies for 20 years and stealing design schematics and counterfeiting them. I'm sure you'd be cool with a Chinese APT rooting your servers and stealing all that you have in your company?

It's a simple statement of fact that the United States has no jurisdictional authority over the actions Chinese citizens take in China against American citizens and vice versa. This is a serious problem for reasons such as this, but you cannot refute it as a basic statement of reality.

Put simply, American courts have no authority over Chinese in China, Chinese courts have no authority over Americans in the US, and our courts do not cooperate reciprocally as they do in other countries with alternative diplomatic and legal relations.

> Put simply, American courts have no authority over Chinese in China

Fortunately, this is of no significant barrier.

It is not a barrier because we, in the US, can ban their hardware anyways, and cause serious economic damage to them anyway.

So it doesn't particularly matter if we use IP law itself, in the courts, against china, when we have other options, such as simply banning their products in this other way.

To do this the US would have to reset its entire diplomatic and trade posture with China. Despite all the rhetoric this isn't happening; the diplobureaucrats will be kicking that can for as long as they possibly can.

> To do this the US would have to reset its entire diplomatic and trade posture with China

No we wouldn't. Literally we are commenting in an article, about what I am suggesting is happening.

So the stuff that the article says is already happening, is what I suggested.

Could it go faster? Maybe. But like I said, we are literally commenting on an article, about how US telecoms are being required to replace certain equipment.

The US has jurisdiction over things imported to the US, and apparently over network equipment used in exchanges.

To my knowledge this has not previously been used as punishment for theft of trade secrets (Hwawei was sanctioned for doing business in Iran), but the legal mechanism is there.

In essence, it's not theft because they can get away with it.

My understanding is that many Western firms had willingly entered into business agreements with Chinese firms, primarily for manufacturing but also for access to the Chinese market. It was always understood that such agreements included technology transfer, even if that wasn't always communicated to e.g. shareholders of Western firms. Not all Western firms entered such agreements, but those who did can't very well start crying about "hacking" now. When you tell someone a way to make money, they're going to remember that.

Because the two countries do not share definitions on what that even means. They both have to agree and both need a set procedure for adjudicating such disputes for it to be real. If the US says it's "IP theft" and China disagrees, there is a dispute on the legality of the act in question.

So for example, in France, there are many acts which are trademark infringement in France that are not trademark infringement in the US. A Frenchman can accuse an American of trademark infringement for an act that is not trademark infringement in the United States, but is infringement in France. They can bring a lawsuit in France, win, and potentially enforce that judgment on assets in the US with the cooperation of an American court despite the fact that the American did not, by the definitions of American law, infringe on anyone's intellectual property.

There are no such cooperative arrangements between the US and China despite recent attempts to set them up. There are also only limited agreements on what is and what isn't permitted.

So if it is true that this is economics not security, what was offered or threatened to coordinate action across all the countries sending Huawei away?

Mass population is moved by fear, but is that how concordance is manufactured across the executives of a set of countries: a few terrifying top-secret presentations, and IC has successfully reputation-assassinated a foreign company? Why would these countries agree if there was no breach and a cheaper price? What offer or threat besides a more expensive but more secure infra? I suppose if you view telcoinfra as defense assets then it's a no-brainer, but was this the calculus? Blackmail/Mafioso-tactics would be a good one, maybe: You have to buy from us, or we will reveal/do such-and-such horrible thing.

But if it's true this is economic, not security, and also that Huawei has superior value for money, then is it not just these countries accelerating their already decaying infrastructure, for the sake of pride?

"The phones are down." "Yeah, whaddayagonnado? At least we're not paying the Chinese to make them work."

Replace phones with other critical things China makes better for a better price, and the future of these countries may look like the past of the former-Soviet ones: a whole bunch of weird anachronistic tech resulting from an (in this case self-imposed) embargo. But at least it will be 100% built by subjects of approved countries. I suppose that is one strategy to fight back against the dominance of Chinese industry: just outlaw it.

The hilarious thing is, probably all these "approved suppliers" will have to purchase significant inventory from what is essentially Huawei's supply chain anyway. Seems much more like the tail wagging the dog, with corporate dishonesty dictating so-called natsec policy. Could it really be so twisted?

> coordinate action across all the countries sending Huawei away?

It should be noted that up until early 2020, US campaign against Huawei had spanned 10+ years long, and only secured a few committments to ban Huawei, not even all of FVEYS. It was a spectacular failure. It wasn't until successive US sanctions against Huawei access to semiconductors that countries relented, not due to security concerns but Huawei's ability to supply hardware long term due to sanctions.

> Mass population is moved by fear, but is that how concordance is manufactured across the executives of a set of countries: a few terrifying top-secret presentations, and IC has successfully reputation-assassinated a foreign company? Why would these countries agree if there was no breach and a cheaper price? What offer or threat besides a more expensive but more secure infra? I suppose if you view telcoinfra as defense assets then it's a no-brainer, but was this the calculus? Blackmail/Mafioso-tactics would be a good one, maybe: You have to buy from us, or we will reveal/do such-and-such horrible thing.

Governments don't operate exclusively through sticks. The US has plenty of carrots to give out.