Report: Chinese Tech Firms Should Be Viewed With Suspicion, Barred From U.S. Networks

Industrial Espionage with Nation-State ties is nothing new - and the Chinese aren't even the best at it. What the Chinese had was the most "headroom" to grow into the stuff they were stealing. (Back to this shortly.)

What bothers me about the China-China-China cry in Cyber, telecom, IT, etc. is that it's totally counterproductive to fixing the problem. The China cries get louder and it leads people to believe they need Government to step in an "fix" the problem - except Government has little chance of solving any of the associated problems. Being industrial espionage or State-Sponsored spying. Every time DC puts out another China story there are C-levels all over that step back from doing ~anything~ to wait for Government. Waiting for Government is a losing proposition.

And underlying the whole mess is that when the Russians, French, Japanese, Israelis, etc. were (are) doing the same thing we fought back a better way - COMPETE. With China this pervasive growing lethargy and self-loathing has turned into a bizarre additional form of b*tching and protectionism.

A term that was coined in the recent past was "IP Obesity" - as in Intellectual Property Obesity - this belief that Copyright and Patent portfolios would somehow protect your future development. That may have worked in the legacy world where agility wasn't an issue and asymmetric business might (read: Lawyers) was achievable. That's jut not the case today.

It's just a bloody mess..

Ironically about every second-tier Nation-State is really anxious to get in on the Chinese model of IP theft. And China now is in the position where they are the easy pickings/target so they are increasingly interesting in pursuing WTO type International pressure and bilateral agreements along w/ their financing.

The lesser irony is that China knew they couldn't compete with the West's State apparatus for technical espionage and surveillance (and still can't today) so they went for economic development instead. All the while the "secrets" the West were going for were becoming less and less valuable. China chose the right side of the equation - like a younger US did once.

*sigh* I wish the US was pushing for more competitive innovation and business practice domestically. I try to find US made products, by US owned companies, that don't use union labor - and it's bloody well difficult if not impossible for most products. -Mags

If the Chinese are repairing and actually making replacement electronic boards for US military cargo planes, fighter jets, vehicle systems and those parts are going through to Canada and being sold to the US as military parts.....and Congress has known this for years......

What's the threat in having them buy Networks?? They made all the circuit boards the US firms are using. Only difference is the Chinese would be paying our workers.

Ok, so they have a problem with Chinese companies doing business in the US, selling and installing Chinese made and designed Network / Telecomms equipment. But, isn't most of the network and Telecomms equipment in general use already made outside of the US in foreign factories, and already a potential security threat via in-built backdoors introduced at the manufacturing level?

Another unintended consequence I guess from all the outsourcing of the manufacturing overseas.
Hey, at least the big investors (Wall St. / Banks) in those Telecomms corporations who outsourced, and their board members, got a bonus for the bigger profits they created!

First thing I did was research these two companies to see what they made. ZTE Corp makes cellphones.

Huawei Technologies Co makes: Software for making, managing and receiving telephone calls; software for reviewing, managing and playing electronic voice, Software for computing, counting and managing network statistics, Software for integrating social network services, namely, software to connect mobile devices and social networking websites, Software for organizing and managing music, videos and multimedia files, and for viewing videos, Software for managing wireless networks.

trademarks.justia.com...

These two companies together could bring competition to a lot of business - they could put the IPhone and the Blackberry, Microsoft Windows Phone and other smart phones out of business. I'd say that would be Great if they could deliver a better product at a fraction of the cost for hardware and services that we pay now.

I buy Chinese a lot. I have to. The items I need parts for my Electric Bike and parts for my Electric Cigarettes are not made in the USA. These are two examples of how the Chinese have helped bring Freedom to Americans through free enterprise. Thanks to the Chinese, I am free from harmful tobacco smoke and free from gas prices, high insurance costs and high prices of having to repair a vehicle.

Is that a vote for these two companies to stay and do business in the US? Not really. Both the Electronic Cigarette and Electric Bike making companies have had to grow up to produce quality merchandise. This was driven by buyers world wide and their demands for more quality parts. Over the past 10 years those industries have learned to run a tight ship and for the most part, consumers are pleased. These companies had to self regulate because there is very little Chinese Government regulation for product quality - we won't talk about workers in these industries or if they are being mistreated - I would hope to god they were not but I cannot get these products anywhere else so I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't.

The thing is you can never be sure what type of company these people are going to turn out to be. Will the product be quality? Will the customer service be quality? Will the company maintain a reputation of being honest and forthcoming with the consumers? You just never know until enough time has passed and by then it may be too late.

Yeah, not to re-iterate what's probably already been said, but in some cases this could be like BUYING a trojan horse.

More egotistical than rome or babylon? Dumber than Troy?

It's really starting to look that way....

Originally posted by iwilliam
Yeah, not to re-iterate what's probably already been said, but in some cases this could be like BUYING a trojan horse.

More egotistical than rome or babylon? Dumber than Troy?

It's really starting to look that way....

I agree. WHO is really testing, Chinese made products, in the way of actually looking for "backdoor" programs, or chips?

The backdoor threats are the overstated ones - simply because they're entirely an unnecessary investment and risk for the Nation-State adversaries in this space. The existing supply chain and software security risks leave a large enough threat surface.

These "natural" backdoors of insecure designs and practice provide additional attribution troubles and keep it all at a finger-pointing level too.

Basically I'm saying the problem is much worse, has nothing to do with China really, and we're entirely going about it the wrong way overall. You build a house of cards this big by depending on the idea that no participant would want to knock it down. Once that mutual agreement starts to fade - you don't really try to "fix" it by saying that one particular party is disagreeable. You stop building a house of cards and build better structures to begin with. The Cyber "China China China!" (think Marsha Marsha Marsha!) is entirely a distraction from fixing the actual problems. -Mags