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Exclusive: U.S. lawmakers urge AT&T to cut commercial ties with Huawei - sources
U.S. lawmakers are urging AT&T Inc, the No. 2 wireless carrier, to cut commercial ties to Chinese phone maker Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and oppose plans by telecom operator China Mobile Ltd to enter the U.S. market because of national security concerns, two congressional aides said.
[...] 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 Inc.
The lawmakers are also advising U.S. firms that if they have ties to Huawei or China Mobile, it could hamper their ability to do business with the U.S. government, one aide said, requesting anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:04PM (1 child)
AT&T vs Huawei vs. Congress bugs...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:08AM
The New AT&T is formerly Southwestern Bell and in reality Confederate Telephone.
Trust those southern confederate rebels to be in cahoots with Chinese.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:12PM (4 children)
It makes news when the US government blocks foreign control. That should tell you something: it isn't the norm.
Mostly, all of our stuff is up for sale. We sell ownership of companies. Our companies think they are moving into China when they get 49% ownership of a joint venture being operated by patriotic Chinese citizens, and then they turn over all the trade secrets to that joint venture. We welcome foreign nationals into our corporate networks, VPNed past the firewall, to save a dime on IT costs. We welcome foreign nationals physically into our companies, under many kinds of visa, and strangely assume that none will be patriotic to their country of origin.
Our law even prohibits a normal company from refusing to hire an IT worker or engineer due to foreign connections. This is exactly backwards. We let the fox guard the hens. The only way out is to become a defense contractor and find some excuse to require security clearances for everybody.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:52PM
> strangely assume that none will be patriotic to their country of origin.
When given the amazing opportunity to live and work in the Greatest Country On Earth (TM), why would anyone do anything against it? Don't be silly ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:33AM
Check your collectivism.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @07:53AM (1 child)
A trustworthy person trusts people. An untrustworthy person trusts no one. Likewise, people with no loyalty cannot comprehend that other people might be loyal, or value loyalty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:43PM
This is a case where loyalty can be split. Only a fool would make assumptions about the winning loyalty.
Also, the fact that trusting people tend to be trustworthy does not imply that trustworthy people are trusting. Your assumption is damn broken with lots of people, myself included. The normal behavior of an ordinary (not politician) conservative individual is to be pretty paranoid, yet honor-bound and duty-bound.
China commonly uses leverage over families. A person working at a US tech company might find that their uncle in China got arrested, or that their mom in China is facing some sort of audit. Word goes out that things could get resolved... but maybe not... and maybe handing over company secrets could help smooth things along. China also isn't above delivering violent beatings, even to family members in the USA. It happens. So, do you really think a person will be more loyal to your company than to their own family?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @01:09AM
Sounds like a number of palms are about to be greased.
So it goes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:37AM (4 children)
The US isn't in the best place to be shining a spotlight on "hey, foreign-made software and hardware could in theory be deliberately compromised by their governments to secretly do bad stuff!"
I mean, the NSA is still in business, and more than a few of their tricks are out of the bag recently. [wikipedia.org] The exact same arguments could be used by foreign governments to exclude Apple handsets, Cisco and Juniper routing gear, or any primarily-US telecoms from expanding overseas. With the exception that it's provable that the US DOES do some of the things we currently only SUSPECT China would do...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:57AM (1 child)
Intel, cough
Facebook, cough
So if Huawei cannot come through the door, there are plenty of windows. "Allies" in the 5-Eyes... here in New Zealand almost ALL the fibre kit is Huawei, so 99.996% of our stuff (including this) is most likely echoed via somewhere in China. They practically OWN NZ already.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:26PM
When you realize NZ is a 5 eyes companion, and 5 eyes now has eyes over most of europe, the us, canada, australia, nz, etc.
It's a huge clusterfuck of literally 'big brother' proportions.
(Score: 2) by lx on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:36PM
My guess is that they couldn't persuade Huawei to put in an NSA backdoor.
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:21PM
Are you saying that we should let Huawei stuff in and use it because it would be unfair to do otherwise? i.e. "We might have given them some compromised stuff, so we have to accept their compromised stuff. It's only fair." Do you think this is a game?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:16AM (1 child)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor-state_dispute_settlement [wikipedia.org]
Don't you just love "free trade"?
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:15AM
ISDS isn't a "standard" thing - it's relatively new, and it only exists where it's been specifically negotiated. The Trans Pacific Partnership (which did contain an ISDS provision, which is one of the things that made it so controversial) wasn't ratified by the US. And China doesn't (to my knowledge) have a bilateral trade agreement with the US that included ISDS. So your suggested approach won't work.
What you should be talking about is a World Trade Organization [wikipedia.org] case, which is would have to be brought by China (i.e. the WTO member nation), not Huawei directly. China would need to claim that the US is not allowing China access to the US market on equal footing with other nations. That said, the WTO moves slowly, and there would be a number of challenges to getting a claim settled in China's favor, especially if (as would be the case here) the US would assert some level of national security concern, which the WTO may not want to get in the middle of.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:01PM (1 child)
US to C, we won't buy your stuff because it may have intelligence gathering feature that will harm us.
Expected result will be C telling US they feel the same way.
Sounds like a good way to start a trade war.
Not a good plan.
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:26PM
Yeah, that'd be awful. We'd have to start buying American again. Might have to start making stuff here again.