This war on Huawei is not about F/OSS but about depending on US suppliers. Intel and AMD have to stop supplying processors to Huawei and there are no viable F/OSS processors. Qualcomm will stop supplying SoCs. What does the US think this will achieve? What exactly does the US want Huawei to actually do to get rid of these bans? Do they think it will really hurt Huawei so much that they will give in to US pressure? I don't think so. What will happen is that Huawei and China in general will look to even more get rid of US dependencies. They will double down on efforts to make their own processors. They will get rid of Google and Microsoft proprietary software and if there is a proprietary chinese alternative then that would be also on the table. ARM is looking even more enticing now for notebooks. And once Huawei has replaced Intel/AMD, others will do so too.
Huawei will hurt in the immediate future but after a few years they might come out even stronger and the losers will be the US companies because their government created an artificial situation that forces non-US companies to really look into alternatives.
> What exactly does the US want Huawei to actually do to get rid of these bans? Do they think it will really hurt Huawei so much that they will give in to US pressure?
Don't just look at Huawei, ZTE also faced similar treatment last year. As result:
> ZTE will employ a compliance team at its expense for 10 years and hold two compliance forums in China as part of US settlement for violating export controls[0]
The U.S. maybe just trying to do the same to Huawei. But, if U.S. do this too much (maybe already), "Get rid of U.S. dependencies as much as possible" will be China's next goal.
There was a lots of people in China believes "The 'China CPU' is waste of money, Intel/ARM is good enough". Today, I don't see anybody can still say that out loud comfortably.
The potential good thing is, if China's investment on RISC-V[1] can eventually pays off, then maybe we will have some free and open ISA CPUs.
A corporation is the prostitute of its controlling government. Similarly, corporate staff are the prostitutes of their corporation. Therefore, why not encourage these corporations to destroy each other?
I first thought you were going to point out that corporations are are powerless to resist pressure from spy agencies to compromise their products to gain economic/military leverage over other nations.
Your point about unfriendly nations not merely treating these corporations as non-combatant tools, but instead as legitimate targets, was very interesting.
In China thr impact will be non-existant since android phones are shipped without gapps.
The main impact will be in Europe where Huawei has a strong presence.
I guess that, in the worse case scenario, they will ship sone alternatives services and app store, like in China.
If they would do that with a smooth transition out of google services, I can see this working, as a lot of people don't care about google, as long as the phone works.
Realistically speaking most Google apps I use as my daily driver could work equally well as PWAs instead of native apps and the lack of "integrations" is probably more data protection compliant anyway (because most of them seem to only exist so Google can generate more data from users).
They are majority because they offer a good price/quality ratio, where quality includes being integrated with Google services. I would bet if they try to go non-google, it's rather their market share will shrink than users would follow them.
That's very short sighted. Is there a natural law that prohibits non Americans from making software? In fact cutting the Chinese off will only encourage them to make an alternative to Android.
If Trump really cares about the trade deficit blocking US companies from access to China won't help.
Right now in the US there is an anti free trade sentiment coming up. Capitalism is about making products where its cheapest and most efficient. The chance that companies will move their production to the US willingly is very low. The chance that the rest of the world is willing to pay a premium for products made in the US is very low.
There is a reason why economists don't like tariffs very much.
They're subject to the US government sure, in the same way that Huawei is subject to the Chinese government, which is why the US is so nervous about allowing it's equipment into their critical network infrastructure. It doesn't even matter if Huawei doesn't want to do it, if the Chinese government says jump they will ask how high, as with Google in this case. As with any company issued a lawful instruction by their government, for which there is no clear legal challenge.
Bear in mind the US and China are currently engaged in an espionage war[1]. The US has an active network of informants in the Chinese government, while the Chinese are actively conducting espionage and counter-espionage in the US including stealing commercial secrets and suborning US intelligence operatives to undermine the CIA's Chinese network. Google and Huawei are being caught in a crush between the spy war and the trade war.
EU companies are no different. If Google was a German company and Germany decided to impose trade sanctions on a non-EU country, they would have to comply.
Security considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the Huawei ban. The US has provided no evidence, and has refused the offer by Huawei to collaborate in any investigation.
This is part of the trade war, and the fact that the US is openly lying about the motives of the ban shows how risky the position of US customers have become: there is absolutely no recourse.
And even if the security claims were true (they are not), so what? Why I, an European customer, must be affected by security concerns of a far away country? Why is Huawei in a position to be forced to let down its customers?
Non-US companies must rethink the way they rely on an increasingly isolated and belicose US.
> Security considerations have absolutely nothing to do with the Huawei ban. The US has provided no evidence, and has refused the offer by Huawei to collaborate in any investigation.
I'm not sure we (the general public) have enough information to know either way. There are legitimate reasons for not releasing supporting evidence about counter-espionage operations. It's also entirely believable that the U.S. executive branch (POTUS, CIA, etc.) would lie as you suggest.
The private researchers and companies around the globe could find the backdoors and make them public. But we only see each month more and more issues with US equipment (routers with default passwords set and remote access enabled by mistake or convenience)
Indeed. UK intelligence is certainly twitchy about Huawei involvement in 5G - and the UK is not marching in lock-step with the US over the chinese trade war.
After the Snowden story about the CISCO routers there's really no reason to assume any given piece of technology from any country isn't potentially manipulated by a government agency.
The idea that Chinese hardware is somehow more troubling in this regard only holds true if you're in the US (and fully trust your government).
>Bear in mind the US and China are currently engaged in an espionage war[1].
But US has spies in all countries, so why is in China an espionage war?
Any idea if US wants a concrete thing? Like if China does X all is fine or is just an economic war and US is trying to weaken China and fix the trading balance ?
Because there are casualties. Dozens of CIA contacts in China have disappeared and a handful of US citizens and even CIA employees have been convicted of spying for China.
I mean if China found some traitors and detained or execute them why is this an espionage war? I am not convinced that this is related with the Huawei sanctions, it must be some economic or political strategy but I don't know what and why now and why with such a pathetic of excuse.
I think the point is it doesn't matter where the company is located or what it's involved in, if it's proprietary you have no control of being left in the dust or not.
The point is that we have allowed US companies to have absolute control of the technology stack. There is no competition (at most between US companies).
There are several ways to mitigate this:
- Open Source. Android itself falls into this category, and it can not be taken away. This is the best way, but let's be realistic here: it is not for everybody.
- Multiple suppliers, from multiple countries, so that we have real competition.
Even if is open source, like a Risc-v CPU manufacturer, you can't just instantly spin a new fac in your country, this takes billions and experts. Open source is good to have but is still not a solution when we are talking about hardware.
Using technology that might do something you don't want for any reason (government, company decisioms) and that includes any government involvement.... US, China... anyone.
Here we have an article about FOSS and folks still play these weird games where they only mention a specific government.
That could very well be the case. But I don't care: Huawei has no power over me. Neither has the Chinese Government.
The US is equally eager (or more) to tamper with the free market, with the small difference that they are in a position to actually do it. From my point of view, the US is a huge problem, and is making my life difficult, but the Chinese are just another producer of cheap and good quality goods.
I do not care what happens in the US. I am not in the US. I am not a US citizen. But I am affected by the decisions of what I consider an adversary, that is removing me the option of buying a perfectly functioning product.
I understand why this is happening. I understand the motivations.
What I am saying is that we outside the US should plan accordingly, and reduce our dependency to US technology.
I welcome this event, since I consider it a wake up call. I am convinced the Chinese will lead in making the technology stack a free market again.
> US companies have now been shown for what they really are: an extension of the US government.
Not just with US companies. ZTE, Huawei and others are extensions of the Chinese government, Gazprom and the Kreml are interchangeable and the IMF is finance weaponized by the Western economies as a whole.
> Caveat emptor: using US technology has big risks.
Using and especially depending on any technology from a foreign power, especially one that may turn to an adverse power or outright enemy, is a risk. The Western countries have all, over the last decades, shifted most of their production to China - and now are surprised that China has them by the balls, literally, as many countries don't even have people with the skillset required for low level manufacturing.
Hmm. To me, this isn't about US-vs-CN or other polarizing clickbait. Rather it's about the role that open source and open standards could or should play. Which immediately brings us to: how have we come into this situation that Android is based on Linux, yet it's the largest spyware on the planet? The US decision is entirely based on info warfare and spionage arguments AFAICS. It's silently assumed, even goes without saying, that the Android user base is seen as powerless kettle, and mind slave to whoever controls the tech stack. It's only the question who is in control. Unsettling questions for naive F/OSS zealotry.
> You may also no longer have access to the proprietary Google applications and services such as Gmail and Google Play
Hmmm. These are among applications that I just can't seem to remove from my Sony Xperia. Perhaps, I should have a look at one of these Huawei spyware free phones :-)
Yes. And couple that with the latest Nord Stream stuff. Fair to say that the Germans are pissed of with the Americans at the moment.
And what will come of this?
A highly capable purely non-US produced phone using a set of cloud services running in Europe on under european law. That is my guess.
Why do people assume that the Chinese military wants to spy on random european citizens? If they can just prevent the US from their systematic data collection, I am sure that they will see that as a major strategic win.
The "Nord Stream stuff" is also pissing off some of the Europeans, especially those from Central and Eastern Europe who are geographically close to Russia and wouldn't want Germany to be even more dependent on Russian gas than it already is.
Because it has become tiring to always rely on the United States, half a world away, whenever Russia feels like playing the imperialist card, instead of just keeping them in check with the help of the Germans. And as long as the Germans depend on Russian gas they will have no incentives of seriously saying no to Russia. Source: me, living in an Eastern European country that is geographically close to Russia.
Sure you can find europeans who are concerned about Nord Stream just as you can find europeans who are against the use of Chinese technology. The question is who gets to decide? Us or the americans.
It's not "us vs the americans", it's us vs the Americans vs the Russians. And I'd say that our best bet is to choose the Americans over the Russians, as history has proved us that that was the best available choice for Europe in the last 100 years or so.
There are some Europeans who would prefer we chose the Russians (including a recent German chancellor who is now employed by Gazprom), I think that that would be a disastrous option. Going at it alone is also not a very good decision, as proven by the fact that the mighty French and British were not even capable of bombing almost defenseless Libya all by themselves, they needed the help os US tanker aircrafts.
The problem that EU international politics has been boiling down to two options so far:
1) (Reluctantly) do what U.S. tells.
2) (Eagerly) subvert to whoever offers a good deal.
I'd really love EU having a consistent stance on human rights, democracy, international law and free trade worldwide, and there are even some steps in that direction (like European army project), but until we're not there, I'd rather prefer option 1) to being corrupted by Chinese or Russian regime.
>US companies have now been shown for what they really are: an extension of the US government.
This is true, and the world has just seen a great demonstration of the risks involved in using US companies.
As pointed out by others other countries could do this as well but none of them could have such an immense impact as the US doing it.
Sure China is being targetted now, but other countries will wonder who is next, especially with a president who acts as fast and arbitrarily as Trump
The most positive outcome of this mess would be if enough countries get scared of being cut off that they work together to create alternatives. Or less so they work independently to create local alternatives.
When it comes to CPUs though I am not so sure.
The x86 line is a complicated beast with lots of patents,
and it would take a long time to build a fab to create them.
It would be interesting to see if Chinese companies would even be interested in leading something like an Android fork....and follow the licensing rules.
It's not like they have to...
Meanwhile all these articles and folks play the game of "X country bad"...
>It would be interesting to see if Chinese companies would even be interested in leading something like an Android fork....and follow the licensing rules.
There are plenty open source projects from China, so I do not see why you think they do not know the benefits of the open source. The problem with Android is that there is a large part that is closed source so they can't fork that, if they reimploement it then they are not forced by any license to make it open source.
You are impaling that the companies would ignore the GPL but you had not mention why do you suspect this, do you have a case in mind where this happened?
Why would the mobile OS be different? If you sell hardware you don't want to make money from selling licenses and handling the support for a mobile OS. As a hardware company I would prefer the OS to be open source and have the patches mainlined into the kernel if possible.
What I dislike in this topics is the fact US people will assume the worst about a thing if is somehow related to China, there is nothing suggesting that Huawei would not respect GPL.
I think they'll be more careful to comply with open-source licenses in the future, but there's precedent to show that they don't care all that much if they can get away with it.
Huawei will hurt in the immediate future but after a few years they might come out even stronger and the losers will be the US companies because their government created an artificial situation that forces non-US companies to really look into alternatives.