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Tech Companies Worried Over China's New Rules For Selling To Banks
An anonymous reader writes: China is putting into place a new set of regulations for how banks interact with technology, and it has many companies worried. While the rules might enhance security for the Chinese government, they devastate it for everyone else. For example, not only will China require that companies turn over source code for any software sold to banks, the companies building the software (and hardware) must also build back doors into their systems. The bad news for us is that most companies can't afford to simply refuse the rules and write China off. Tech industry spending is estimated to reach $465 billion in 2015, and it's projected for a huge amount of growth.
US banks say "there is no backdoor" while waving their Jedi arms over our heads.
They want the source code and backdoors written in? Why not write your own backdoors?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
doing business with the PRC is a One-Way street, they'll absorb your technology, your techniques and your skills and will saturate your markets to kill off your own industries. We're in a war folks, it's time people woke up to that fact and stopped treating the Chinese Government as friendly.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
OSS stuff like Linux and xBSD is already out there, and they can build their own back doors. Microsoft already gives companies and governments access to the source code for its products. I guess the mainframe providers (IBM, Fujitsu, etc.) are the only ones left that this would affect. That, and the network device manufacturers...I could definitely see Huawei getting a boost by being the only network device manufacturer allowed to sell to Chinese banks.
I guess the question is why -- every country on earth spies on every other country and its own citizens. So, it's probably being done to boost domestic companies. One of the things that's really going to make China come out on top this century is their ability to do stuff like this...it's one of their greatest strengths. If they decide they want to do something, it's done with zero debate. Their big overarching project right now is a massive urbanization project -- just picking up millions of rural peasants and physically moving them to cities. Can you imagine the US or a European country trying something like that? It would never work, look how much people complain when a local government uses eminent domain to build a road or public works project.
The summary is right though - companies can't ignore China. There are billions of people and a huge growing middle class, all with the full will of their government pushing through whatever is needed. There are always possible bumps in the road, but I'm assuming China will be the dominant superpower in a couple of decades just because they can make stuff happen that we can't/won't.
...until the point where that one company has its software totally pwned, all source code released to the public, and an overproportionate number of security holes and backdoors found.
Suddenly, they're an industry pariah, not just because they were a scab, but because nobody can trust their prioduct anymore. The short term profit is not sustainable.
Hey not all globalization is bad. I personally like German cars, Swiss mechanical watch movement, French cheese and digestifs, Indian silk rugs, British TV, Swedish tools, Japanese and Korean electronics, Dutch toys, large Nepali knives, and Canadian winter boots. What I don't like is the race to the bottom type of globalization that seems to be happening with cheap crap products made to increase profits and would prefer globalization where it is a race to the top in quality.
I don't like what I have seen with the quality going down on what once were great things because someone thought they could save a few cents per item by shipping manufacturing overseas. For example when I looked at small wire feed welders there were a bunch of highly questionable cut every corner ones around the $100 price point and in researching them they might work out of the box for some definitions of work and would likely fail in fairly short order all of which were made in China. From there to the one I got there was nothing but I ended up getting the smallest Hobart that while they cut corners (no thermal switch for the fan so it run all the time and the gas kit was separate but could be added if you didn't want to use flux core wire) it cost ~$270 on sale but came with a great warranty, was made in the US, is heavy as hell, and worked out of the box flawlessly for years.
Time to offend someone