I recall the times when this was being discussed and from an European perspective it seemed curious that the US tech crowd was so eager to ban Huawei products — especially after there being multiple cases of back-/bugdoors in the gear of american vendors, while at that point there was none with Huawei gear that we knew of.

I don't trust chinese gear. But I also don't trust the gear built in a nation where the patriot act is active.

The answer is to use a propper vendor mix and to think carefully what is used where.

Additionally it isn't that we have a clean slate in Germany (as an example) ourselves [1].

We can't trust any vendors. Be it soft- or hardware. Be it cloud. At least not when thinking about state level actors.

Nations need to think, as you said, about propper vendor mix and risk assessment.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG?wprov=sfla1

Crypto AG was Swiss, not German.

It was mainly operated by BND, a german intelligence agency. GCHQ and NSA were also involved.

Well, you've stumbled on the real reason for panic and dubious stories about Chinese spying -- the actual problem is it presents a possible hindrance to our own spying because the Chinese won't play ball.

The discussion about "strategic autonomy", "digital sovereignty", whatever you might call it, is led fundamentally different in various countries. Here in Europe (on the EU level), the discussion is led on how Europe is caught between the US and China, both sides trying to exploit our data. [1] Here in Germany, the discourse is usually more focused on our state trying to exploit our data and disturb our privacy, or on american companies. In the french discussion some people go so far as to call the US dominance in software a kind of "digital colonization". [2] Of course there is danger in China's products, and there are a lot of serious efforts to minimize the risks, but the US hasn't really been any help, it is just the pot calling the kettle.

> Did we not see this already with H&M stores in China? I can't believe there are still (smart) people here on HN who pretend like there's no danger involved.

That comparison doesn't really hit the mark: A consumer-led boycott within China, dubious as the reasons may be, is in no way an attack on our sovereignty. Apart from pretty wack but minor diplomatic incidents, there hasn't really been much actual damage done by China towards the EU. I agree with you that 5G infrastructure should probably fall in large parts under any strategic autonomy policy, but buying Xiaomi phones seems pretty inconsequential.

[1] https://ecfr.eu/special/independence_play_europes_pursuit_of...

[2] https://sur.conectas.org/en/digital-sovereignty-or-digital-c...

H&M was not a "consumer-led boycott" - it was an effort by the owners of the digital infrastructure (major ecommerce platforms in this case) to actively hide the existence of H&M stores in China.

The US vs China argument is detrimental in any case. The discussion should evolve into achieving digital sovereignity as a whole, not argue about whether player x or y in the current rotten system is better.

This will most certainly not be solved on an EU level. The only outcome that they could produce would be replacing US & China with EU-controlled narrative and again, it's just repeating the same problem, albeit in lesser severity.

[2] is right.

It's just that we (mostly) don't know it any different (anymore).

And probably lost the ability to do it different. At least for now. May change. Slowly.

But any time I'm reading something about Industry 4.0, Smart City, Internet of things, I have to supress a hysterical laughing fit :-)

These are not smart people, these are agents doing narative control on this forum.

A lot of it for different subjects. Sometimes 3-4 people chain comments creating a narative that supports whatever crazy stuff of the day is.

I'd suggest reading OP's comment history before flinging such accusations.

Who cares if the list is there or not. They can always just beam an update to the phone, if the argument is that I should be scared of something they theoretically might do at some time in the future.

Xiaomi brings money into China. China isn't dumb enough to slay a golden goose. H&M retail stores take money out of China. The CCP would wait for any excuse to start a nationalist boycott. It's like a free, one-sided trade war. They're still happy to let their factories sell to H&M though.

They've slain AliBaba though.