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US Lawmakers Urge AT&T To Cut Commercial Ties With Huawei and Oppose China Mobile Citing National Security Concerns (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the no-thank-you dept.

U.S. lawmakers are urging AT&T, the No. 2 wireless carrier, to cut commercial ties to Chinese phone maker Huawei Technologies and oppose plans by telecom operator China Mobile to enter the U.S. market because of national security concerns, two congressional aides told Reuters. From the report: The warning comes after the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump took a harder line on policies initiated by his predecessor Barack Obama on issues ranging from Beijing's role in restraining North Korea to Chinese efforts to acquire U.S. strategic industries. Earlier this month, AT&T was forced to scrap a plan to offer its customers Huawei handsets after some members of Congress lobbied against the idea with federal regulators, sources told Reuters. The U.S. government has also blocked a string of Chinese acquisitions over national security concerns, including Ant Financial's proposed purchase of U.S. money transfer company MoneyGram International.

60 comments

  1. national security? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Doesn't China own most of American debt? How's that NOT a national security issue?

    1. Re:national security? by magarity · · Score: 3, Informative

      The only thing you can do with federal debt instruments is sell them at a discount (take a loss) or not buy any more. Its not on-demand debt and the Treasury has a schedule when it pays out so who owns existing debt doesn't really matter in terms of security.
      The US's political inability to live within its means is a "national security" problem caused 100% by our congresscritters, not the Chinese or anyone else external.

    2. Re:national security? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Doesn't China own most of American debt? How's that NOT a national security issue?

      When you owe the bank a few thousand dollars and don't pay, you have a problem.

      When you owe the bank a few trillion dollars and don't pay, the BANK has a problem.

    3. Re:national security? by bv728 · · Score: 1

      Assuming you mean Federal Debt, no. They're the largest single holder at about 19% of foreign held debt, which only makes up 47% of the total debt. It's worth keeping an eye on it, but they owe us about 0.85 cents for every $1 dollar we owe them - they can't play hardball with us unless they want us to screw them over.

    4. Re:national security? by EvilSS · · Score: 3, Informative

      Doesn't China own most of American debt? How's that NOT a national security issue?

      No, this is a myth. They only own about 5.5% of it and only 19% ($1.2 of $6.3 trillion) of the overall foreign-owned debt. To put it into perspective Japan also owns about 5.4%.

      --
      I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
    5. Re:national security? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, my micropenis is about to take you down, once and for all! Ungh! Unggh! Ungghh!

  2. Uneducated Racists Vote for Traitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Silent Jared Kushner was just warned that his mistress, Rupert Murdoch's Chinese ex-wife is a Chinese spy.

    These traitors are so mixed up with foreign spies that only a low class racist would be sleazy enough to vote for them.

    1. Re:Uneducated Racists Vote for Traitors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get it right, retard. We didn't vote for Hillary because we're misogynists. If she were black or hispanic, you could play the race card with some level of credibility.

  3. the hypocrisy is breathtaking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So these people are simultaneously upset because Apple phones cannot be broken into, and Huawei phones can be broken into.

    1. Re:the hypocrisy is breathtaking by Narcocide · · Score: 2

      No, what they're afraid of is that Huawei phones can be broken into by someone else.

    2. Re:the hypocrisy is breathtaking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, what they're afraid of is that Huawei phones can be broken into by someone else.

      and yet the idiots don't fear apple phones being broken into by someone else

    3. Re:the hypocrisy is breathtaking by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "No, what they're afraid of is that "

      The NSA and GCHQ just expected US brands to keep giving them global collect it all products without users knowing.
      The PRISM access. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      DROPOUTJEEP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      Junk encryption, global tracking for 5 eye nations.

      With new brands from China the people who get into the cell phones in an export nation are city, state, national police.
      The NSA and GCHQ got total access with the US brands.
      Now police forces are getting the same way in and lawyers, human rights lawyers, FOIA groups will see what police do when they look at a cell phone.
      The decades of telco secrecy is gone and the NSA wants its global tracking back without police around the world getting the same functions.
      Once police get law enforcement friendly networks they can do what the NSA, CIA, CGHQ, mil, special forces can do globally. The interesting people get arrested and their lawyers, criminals in the police force, cult/faith/community members with telco clearance tell the criminals what was done to their new big US brand cell phone.
      Interesting people stop using the cell phone as the US brand trust in encryption has gone.
      The NSA wants their secrecy and big US brand trust back or the interesting cell phone networks go dark. Digital collection is all the NSA has to offer and if that goes dark its new funding, political/mil standing goes back to the FBI, CIA.
      The CIA, FBI have humans to spy on humans and can still get results in closed faith based communities.
      The US monopoly on tech is gone and now everyone with a police force can try been the NSA.
      The only way out is to not allow the cell products in and so secure the US big brand/NSA working relationships again.
      Security now needs protectionism to stay a secret.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  4. All the phones are made in China anyway. by banbeans · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All the phones are made in China anyway so what is the difference whose name is on it?

    1. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and therein lies the problem.

    2. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      This is what I've been saying for years. Why trust any of the chips, period? There's absolutely no way to audit them post-manufacture.

    3. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Just crack one open and see if it matches. You don't just add a feature without it taking up surface area.
      The only way to sneak something would be to replace something else.

    4. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, except China has been well known for knock off parts, whose to say that RAM chip or CPU in the phone is the legitimate part, and not some Chinese rip off with the equivalent of Intel's IME built in and made to look like the legitimate part, giving China root access to everything on the phone?

      China isn't some 3rd world hell hole, they have more sophisticated manufacturing capabilities than we do at this point

    5. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by tbuddy · · Score: 1

      X-Ray the chip would be a good starting point. Since the article is about Huawei I wouldn't be worried so much about a knockoff chip since they do the CPUs in house, so not really a sense in worrying about other parts being knockoffs parts when they can do it first party.

    6. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      China isn't some 3rd world shithole, they have more sophisticated manufacturing capabilities than we do at this point

      FTFY

    7. Re:All the phones are made in China anyway. by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      So AC is China running another line of US brand products and sneaking them into the USA with less encryption?
      The US consumer takes the US brand cell phone with them to their mil, gov work, contractor with mil job and all the US secrets flow out?
      A new phone that looks like the US brand but its very different on the inside?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  5. So this basically translates to... by ewhenn · · Score: 4, Funny

    So this basically translates to: "The Chinese are spying on American citizens?!? THAT'S OUR FUCKING JOB!"

    1. Re:So this basically translates to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pretty much.

      The thing they reasonable can do is to make a law that people dealing with sensitive information have to use whitelisted phones.
      Banning all people from buying Chinese phones will just lead to a similar response towards US and it is likely other countries will be scared and jump on the train.
      You do not want EU to ban US made phones.

      Or who cares? It is not like Apple pays taxes anyway.

    2. Re:So this basically translates to... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      At least the sentiment towards immigrant labor is consistent...

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    3. Re:So this basically translates to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So this basically translates to: "The Chinese are spying on American citizens?!? THAT'S OUR FUCKING JOB!"

      Cue Trumpettes: "They're taking our jobs!"

    4. Re: So this basically translates to... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Deyyyyyy tewwwwwkkkkkk arreeeeeee jerrrrbzzzzz

  6. and yet by WindBourne · · Score: 1

    This same CONgress/WH, allowed CHina to buy California Pass with massive amounts of rare earth and thorium.
    The GOP and this admin are at best schizophrenic.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
  7. pick one or the other, or neither. by nimbius · · Score: 2

    This is the classic example of americans insisting they can have guns, and butter, at an equal rate. Schrodingers China has existed in this country for forty years now. Its simultaneously a valued and trusted trade partner in american consumer capitalism, and the scourge of modern capitalism in its communist defiance of the almighty dollar.

    Nikita Khrushchev once said: "Communism will dance on the grave of the capitalist and we will sell you the rope you use to hang yourself." These days China has become more of a capitalist dictatorship. It still goes through the party motions of communism and allegiance but the unions are meaningless banners and the equality is a dream long since dead by the sino soviet split. American recognizes this, but its political apparatus after decades of deregulation and acuiescence to powerful multinational businesses like AT&T --which owe no allegiance to a single nation anymore-- is toothless to do anything more than sternly plead with the company to alter its course of business.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
    1. Re:pick one or the other, or neither. by Megol · · Score: 1

      Khrushchev said "We will bury you", that the USSR would survive longer. The rope thing was Stalin.

      This seems (together with other tendencies) to be another phase with USA only ideas A.K.A. isolationism. But one can't have the cookie while loudly chewing on it - reducing reliance of foreign powers will mean they reduce reliance on you. Taken to the extreme that could mean actual war but even in a much milder form the world may seem strange to us in a few decades, wonderfully strange for some and scaringly so for others.

    2. Re:pick one or the other, or neither. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Khrushchev said "We will bury you"

      I don't subscribe to that point of view.

    3. Re:pick one or the other, or neither. by HiThere · · Score: 1

      I believe that he even said it in English. In fact I think it was in the bombastic/dramatic speech in which he pulled off his shoe and pounded it on the UN podium.

      OTOH, I think that like about "capitalists will sell you the rope you use to hang them" comes from Lenin...and was originally in Russian.

      (I suppose I ought to google those things before asserting them, but it doesn't seem important enough.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    4. Re:pick one or the other, or neither. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ivan Drago said "I must break you." To which Rocky Balboa replied "Go for it."

    5. Re: pick one or the other, or neither. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The person you're replying to was quoting a lyric from a song called "Russians" by a musician named Sting, that came out in the 1980s. It was on an album called "The Dream of the Blue Turtles", one of his better ones IMO.

  8. Re:Chicken little BS by Narcocide · · Score: 1

    Sorry to have to break it to you, but nobody here is gonna shed a single tear over AT&T's discomfort.

  9. More like "national profit" concerns by gweihir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    US national security in the IT space is shot to hell, and most of it is the NSA's fault, with Intel a close second. China just needs to stand back and watch...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    1. Re:More like "national profit" concerns by EndlessNameless · · Score: 1

      US national security in the IT space is shot to hell, and most of it is the NSA's fault, with Intel a close second.

      Way too short-sighted there.

      1. Heartbleed was remotely exploitable. The Spectre vulnerabilities require local code or else a second exploit to allow remote execution. Heartbleed posed a far greater risk to internet as a whole.

      2. The NSA didn't create any of the vulnerabilities they exploited. The fault lies with the respective developers such as Cisco, Microsoft, etc. The NSA essentially provided a full disclosure with POC for those vulnerabilities, but all of those problems existed regardless.

      3. These zero-days wouldn't be such a huge problem if people did defense-in-depth properly. I.e., at all.

      From the often-blamed-on-the-NSA pile:

      WannaCry spread by exploiting a vulnerability in SMB. FFS. Who is exposing SMB to the internet in the first place? There are much better choices when it comes to secure file transfer protocols; and there is hardly anything worse.

      This was not even the first SMB exploit. Sometimes you can disclaim responsibility by saying "no has ever thought of that before". But in this case, we have not only warned about it---we have seen it firsthand.

      --

      ---
      According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
  10. Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Time for the "net neutrality" muppets to put up or shut up.

  11. Few factories outside China by DrYak · · Score: 1

    There is manufacturing capacity outside of China
    (I might be wrong, but I think that Sony Mobile still has some manufacturing capability in Japan.
    India has significant manufacturing capability - used among other by Intex, if I'm not wrong.
    Samsung is obviously manufacturing partly in South Korea)

    Though to be honest most of these use chipsets - e.g. Qualcomm - with dubious ogranisation (Seriously ? The *modem* functionning as the SoC's Northbridge? If that doesn't smell like potential backdooring).
    So even if China happens to not be installing backdoors, that doesn't save you from all the other bad actors.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  12. Even US capitalism is a fake by lucasnate1 · · Score: 0

    Gradually, the right winger "capitalist" republicans of the US are taking power from the states and the corporates and concentrating it under state control. Too bad they're still against welfare though.

    --
    Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
  13. National Security Concerns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    When they say "National Security Concerns" I think what they really mean is they've been asleep at the switch and have only just come to the realization that China is about to plow over the US economy and are like oh crap. I've got one thing to say to them

    Young fool. Only now at the end do you understand

    Republicans vs Democrats? I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords.

    1. Re:National Security Concerns by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Republicans vs Democrats? I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords.

      I *don't* welcome them. But I sort of expect them. The "sort of" is because it's a timing thing whether the "Chinese overlords" arrive first or the "AI overlords" arrive first. By my estimate there's a better than even chance that the "AI overlords" will arrive first...of course, if the "AI overlords" arrive in China first, then they may be the same thing.

      The good thing is if things happen that way it's quite likely that war will not result. The Chinese certainly don't want that, it's bad for profits. And no well designed AI will want war. So there's a good chance this will be another (relatively) peaceful transition of power, as was that between Britain and the US. (Well, WWII wasn't exactly peaceful, but it also wasn't Britain vs. the US. So I'm not counting that, even though it certainly hastened the transition.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
  14. What about jobs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What about outsourcing jobs to India? When it comes to $ than natural security means squat.

  15. bad by micahraleigh · · Score: 1

    Why is the federal government trying to tell companies who they can do business with?

    China is NOT a state sponsor of terror.

    The GOP needs to figure out if they believe in freedom or not.

    1. Re:bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The GOP needs to figure out if they believe in freedom or not.

      their stated agenda is to build a fucking wall, you figure it out

    2. Re: bad by HiThere · · Score: 2

      I'm not at all sure that all your assertions are correct. It's possible, however, but partially because China has a larger population than anyone else. But it's worth remembering that the US imprisons a greater percentage of it's population than anyone else.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    3. Re: bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chinks imprison people for speaking their views.
      Chinks imprison people for holding political views.

      Why don't you post with your real name rather than anonymous coward then? (assuming you're not in China...)
      Trust me anon, you're not going to get thrown into prison for speaking your view or politics...trust me, I'm here for you.

    4. Re: bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The US actually has more people in prison than China despite China having more than 4X the population.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared...

    5. Re: bad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ALL I HEAR IS USA #1

  16. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  17. AT&T to US Lawmakers, Everyone else by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Let me get my checkbook.... On second that, go fuck yourselves. We have profits, and conglomeration to consider in our portfolo." /click

  18. even if they sell phones from by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    other companies based in japan or south korea what are the chances that the chips in them are from china,
    reminds me of harley davidson bragging about being american made when over 35% of the bike was assembled from imported parts that come from china
    its a global economy, better get global or be left behind, dont blame me i did not make it that way, all the corporate elite and wallstreet did it is who to point the finger at

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  19. Re: Chicken little BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your cuntry's laws are arbitrary and dont apply to your "team" you say? Enjoy that corporate slavery pleb!

  20. Flip side is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We all know that the US spies on the rest of the world.

    So the 96% of the worlds population that does not live in the USA should not buy US products..... for security reasons.

  21. Obama called Africa a shithole too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And no one batted an eye!

    1. Re:Obama called Africa a shithole too! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obama fucked my wife and forced me to watch. Then after he splooged his load into her pussy, he forced me to eat the combined sperm and vaginal secretions! That's why I voted Trump.

  22. Words of warning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you people in the US, make enough stuff to not need Chinese phones, Russian AV products, and so many other evil foreigner items? What's next? And more importantly, what will be left after you're done?

    1. Re:Words of warning by green1 · · Score: 2

      what will be left after you're done?

      The rest of the world will be left.

    2. Re:Words of warning by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cry all you want, Ivan. We're not buying your spyware anymore.