Slashdot Mirror
US Tells Germany To Stop Using Huawei Equipment Or Lose Some Intelligence Access (theverge.com)
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the United States has told Germany to drop Huawei from its future plans or risk losing access to some U.S. intelligence. The U.S. says the Chinese company's equipment could be used for espionage -- a concern that Huawei says is unfounded. "The Trump administration has been pressing allies to end their relationships with Huawei, but Germany, moving ahead with its plans, has not moved to ban the company from its networks," reports The Verge. From the report: According to the Journal, a letter sent from the U.S. Ambassador to Germany warns the country that the U.S. will stop sharing some secrets if it allows Huawei to work on its next-generation 5G infrastructure. The letter, according to the Journal, argues that network security can't be effectively managed by audits of equipment or software. While the U.S. plans to continue sharing intelligence with Germany regardless, the Journal reports, officials plan to curtail the scope of that information if Huawei equipment is used in German infrastructure.
Nice country you've got there, would be a shame if something were to happen to it...
What else? Maybe Cisco? https://www.tomshardware.com/n...
Come on. You just stated that WE are not stupid. So I'm going to assume that you include yourself.
Just because the US does not want us to use Huawei for their own selfish reasons, does not mean that we should just trust China and Huwawei out of spite. Turn our backs on one big power that has pissed us off in the recent past, just to become dependent on another big power who? What kind of stupid reasoning is that?
Even if there's no evidence of spying so far, we should still demand from them to let us review all their hardware and code. Get the CCC involved. It's in our own best interest to do this.
US Tells Germany To Stop Using Huawei Equipment Or Lose Some Intelligence Access
"Your terms are acceptable. Let us know when you're going to be withdrawing your (snort) intelligence from us".
This is obviously true. We shouldn't be naive about the Chinese.
And I agree. Let's get the CCC involved. Let's use reproducible builds for the source code. Let's put the SoCs and chips under an electron microscope. Let's let the EU institutions fund such analysis and research in foreign hardware.
We have plenty of money and if not we can let the ECB print the money for this.
However. Let's not let the Americans tell us with whom we do business and with whom we don't.
We will do business with China.
Full stop.
Yes yes. It's going really well for the Brits. You can see that.
Poor people living there. It must have been great listening to the populist propaganda back then, though. Is costing them and will cost them their welfare state.
But whatever. If you look at the stock market in the EU, you notice that we've mostly passed the pain already. The UK has not, though. The EU country's economy is going fine and continuing. As expected.
Why do I speak English? Well, because you don't speak any other language. And I'm communicating to people like you. It's kinda a tradition in Europe to try to speak the language of the person in front of you. It's a form of politeness. Usually if the person in front of you notices that you have difficulties speaking their language, they'll try to make a friendly and social compromise with you on a language you both know.
Very often that is English. That's because internationally English is the current lingua Romana. When that lingua Romana switches to some other language, you bet that we will switch too. And that this website wont be dominantly in English.
But English is a relatively simple language. So why not? I'm fine with it.
You seem to be to only one who wants to turn that into a sign of superiority for the US. Well, actually, the US got English as their mother tongue from foreign invasions from Europe in the past. You do know that, don't you?
Why doesn't anyone talk about the NSA's known actions to install physical and software backdoors in American hardware, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., and that Huawei has never been shown to do that?
This looks like a Trump MAGA Tamtrum to protect Cisco, etc, and wage a useless trade ware.
Use of Huawei by Germany should be discontinued because it would be a threat to US intelligence for sharing secret information with Germany.
Since everybody is forced to use VPN to access Google and such.
Please don't save us and stay home. Spend your American tax dollars on bridges and education.
Like we do.
You need it.
Of course we should consider that Huawai may be forced to include backdoors.
On the other hand, with Cisco, we know it.
And if the US wants to start the blackmailing game, I'm sure they can call Cisco and make sure that their prices are.... compareable. Or if you have anything that may hint that Huawai indeed build in backdoors: Come up with some proof. Or at least an effing hint. Or clue. Or inkling... anything that is better than mere claim.
I'd even go as far and say that we'd be willing to believe any actual evidence (better to be spied on by the US than China) but as long there isn't anything like that the only sensible way to go is to put any possible vendor through a strict security check.
bickerdyke
Germany doesn't want Russia to get a hold of their intel.
That means that it is better to let China snoop in than to let the US snoop in.
Ok so the US is concerned that Huawei gear could be used to spy.
The question I have is, why the hell is data (government or otherwise) being sent over cellular networks in a way that compromised gear (regardless of manufacturer) could steal it?
What data (intelligence or otherwise) are the US scared the Chinese might steal and why would it be sent over any networks without encryption?
But we'll go with the batshit crazy stupid version you prefer, then: USA tells germany that if they move to 5G that the USA will stop sharing anything with them from their intel (though they will still demand that Germany hand over stuff to them, even if it is via a proxy state like the UK).
And it's Germany's right to not share information with the USA if they don't find the relationship beneficial to them.
Look, I get why the USA is saying this. It's not about pushing USA build equipment, it's about preserving security on the networks that carry the terabytes of secret information passing between the countries. The USA doesn't want one specific manufacturer's equipment in that network. I get why.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Iraq coms was disabled "remotely" by some well placed smart bombs. The USA knew where the critical infrastructure was and how to effectively disable the parts of it they wanted.
IF you stop and think about how all this stuff works, you will realize that it's easier than you might imagine to disrupt networks with weapons that go boom, and certainly easier than trying to disrupt systems from within. How many ways can you disable a switch center reliably?
In my opinion it's harder to do it using cyber attacks. The USA has all sorts of weapon systems for pinpoint hits on such targets. Hits that can be rigorously timed and nearly unstoppable. We don't need cyber to do this kind of thing in cyberspace, we can disable such networks, or at least deny the adversaries of their communications quite handily without it.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Actually the issue with this story is that it was the German spy agencies that spied on the chancellor, then sent all the information to the NSA.
The comments are always full of whattaboutism with Cisco. That's a red herring to the discussion. And to the arrogant Europeans who think they can live without US intelligence because Orange Man Bad. Enjoy losing access to all of those satellites, drones, ELINT platforms and more. Its a hard pill to swallow but Europe's military is tiny and you simply haven't invested in those platforms. Without access to US assets you have little to no intelligence gathering capability on your own. I also don't think there is anything unreasonable about the requirements. Would you have said the same thing in the 60's if the US refused to share intel over Russian built radios? Why do you think Chinese built hardware is acceptable for official purposes. You have your own tech companies, buy their hardware.
And, of course, you have proof of this?
The NSA project is called Tailored Access Operations: http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
Cisco got so pissed about it they went to visit the president to complain: https://www.techdirt.com/artic...
Warning of an erosion of confidence in the products of the U.S. technology industry, John Chambers, the CEO of networking giant Cisco Systems, has asked President Obama to intervene to curtail the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.
What's next - invade Germany?
Oh, no need. Immigrants have already done that.
Enjoy the shit show.
Americans moaning about immigration like their country isn't based off the fucking concept.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
You think a 5G network is just the 5G sites themselves? Talk about naive! They all route back to switching equipment. That switching equipment is Cisco in many networks, but Huawei also makes the switch gear, at lower prices, for better quality, and with no NSA spyware. The US wants to prevent ALL Huawei equipment in the network, they know full well that the de-facto replacement is Cisco for everything in the network except the actual cell sites.
The US couldn't care less about the cell sites at the end. As you point out, the US doesn't have a horse in that race. This is about the transport network where the US wants to keep Cisco (and all their own back doors) dominant.
Americans moaning about immigration like their country isn't based off the fucking concept.
The world moaning about ancient history as if it's fucking relevant anymore. Those that migrated to the US hundreds of years ago weren't.....
BZZT.
Immigration peak was actually in 1930. That's not 'hundreds of years ago'.
it's about preserving security on the networks that carry the terabytes of secret information passing between the countries.
By preserve security you of course mean maintain the US ability to slurp it all up.
Um, you do have to realize that the Chinese government are not the good guys. Saying "well, what about NSA spying??" is a whataboutism argument. Yes, the NSA is a spy agency, but that doesn't mean that Chinese spying is something we shouldn't worry about.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whataboutism-origin-meaning
Actually, the countries in Europe who have the most recent direct experience with Russia/USSR (and have borders with Russia) very much do want the Americans to stay and increase their local presence. Just last year Poland made a direct request for a US base on its territory.
https://www.euractiv.com/secti...
and
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/22...
You'd "cope" by learning Russian though.
You wouldn't look back on it as "coping," either.
China doesn't loan us money, they buy US Treasury Bonds.
The bonds have a certain repayment value. If a major buyer stops buying, that actually means the other buyers will get more profit. The higher the demand for bonds, the lower the profit.
If China stops buying them, non-China demand goes up.
In fact, most of them would be bought by Americans if the international demand was low enough that it could compete with other investments we have available. But large investors like nation states can't really find other investments that large; the money would just sit in a giant Scrooge McDuck vault otherwise, sitting there shrinking due to inflation.