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from the year-of-the-linux-desktop-in-China-by-2023 dept.
The Guardian is reporting that the tech war just got hot.
China will be replacing all hardware and software with Chinese equivalents. This is the latest escalation in the US-China tech trade war in response to the US ban on Huawei equipment.
China has ordered that all foreign computer equipment and software be removed from government offices and public institutions within three years, the Financial Times reports.
The government directive is likely to be a blow to US multinational companies like HP, Dell and Microsoft and mirrors attempts by Washington to limit the use of Chinese technology, as the trade war between the countries turns into a tech cold war.
The Trump administration banned US companies from doing business with Chinese Chinese[sic] telecommunications company Huawei earlier this year and in May, Google, Intel and Qualcomm announced they would freeze cooperation with Huawei.
By excluding China from western know-how, the Trump administration has made it clear that the real battle is about which of the two economic superpowers has the technological edge for the next two decades.
China already leads in patents
China's 2016 patent application total is greater than the combined total of patent applications filed in 2016 in the United States (605,571), Japan (318,381), South Korea (208,830) and Europe (159,358). These five jurisdictions accounted for 84 percent of all patent applications filed during 2016.
China has been preparing for an all-out IT war.
In May, Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times newspaper in China, said the withdrawal of sharing by US tech companies with Huawei would not be fatal for the company because the Chinese firm has been planning for this conflict "for years" and would prompt the company to develop its own microchip industry to rival America's.
"Cutting off technical services to Huawei will be a real turning point in China's overall research and development and use of domestic chips," he said in a social media post. "Chinese people will no longer have any illusions about the steady use of US technology."
US trade policy may have been meant to pressure China, but that move looks to have just forced an acceleration of the loss of software and hardware orders from American suppliers to China.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by EvilSS on Monday December 09 2019, @03:46PM (10 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 09 2019, @03:50PM (3 children)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Monday December 09 2019, @04:02PM (2 children)
They have more hardware and software expertise now, and more reasons to be paranoid.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Monday December 09 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
So the only thing is tariffs - and it's US citizens who pay them.
China probably figures that any loss of exports will be more than made up for by increased domestic demand. As this works it's way through the world economy, expect the US stock market to fall. And China is well aware of this as well - they're playing hard ball.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @08:40PM
"and it's US citizens who pay them. "
ohh, those poor traitors!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @04:19PM (2 children)
It's not just hardware level bugs. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, and many more companies are all a part of at least one major global (and domestic) surveillance program - PRISM [wikipedia.org]. In modern times using US sourced hardware or software is consenting to being spied on by the US government.
What I don't understand is why other nations have been so relatively accepting of this relationship. Look at the phones other world leaders use to see this isn't a secret, nor are they okay with US snooping. Blackberries and non-apple / non-google choices are ubiquitous. Yet these same leaders seem to have little concern with the US snooping on the rest of their population which is functionally identical to what our spooks probably garner from the top-down snooping anyhow.
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday December 10 2019, @05:55AM (1 child)
There are several other programs similar to PRISM yet each far worse. I forget which one that Snowden said to focus on but it was not PRISM. I wonder if the noise about PRISM is supposed to steer attention away from MUSCULAR, TEMPORA, and the others. Probably not, though, it is enought that the public's very limited attention span is easily overwhelmed.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @01:38AM
"nothing to hide...." Probably the same folks who shut the bathroom door when taking a dump.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Monday December 09 2019, @06:56PM
More to the point, given recent history it's foolish to depend on the US to maintain any critical or important systems. The US govt. has repeatedly demonstrated that it's willing to cut off trade in items to injure it's trading partners. (Sabotage has also happened, but more rarely.)
It used to be common practice to avoid sole-source contracts for this reason (though at that time the US was a relatively reliable partner). This was true even at the commercial level, much less the governmental one. There are excellent reasons for avoiding sole-source contracts, and few reasons to accept them. It's often better to say "Well, then I guess we can't do that." than to accept a sole-source contract.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Tuesday December 10 2019, @03:42PM
Intel exec 1 : I have an idea for short term profits, lets obviously back door all of our products
Intel exec: 2 : think of the short term mind reading potential on a global scale
intel exec 3: wait, won't think make everyone distrust us and never buy any of our things again? we would lose the entire china market?
intel exec 1-3 in unison: we are physically impaired from seeing that far into the future, and we can always rebrand. will always rebrand, we mean.
which is to say, these people clearly must have known this in advance that they couldn't keep their 'management engine' secrets and they would lose the entire china market and maybe start a war.
They must have really thought mind reading and backdoors were very, very valuable in the short term.
Makes you wonder.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @02:44AM
Yep it's insanity that any country would rely on Intel chips for their national security. It's not so much the backdoors as the front doors with welcome mats and warm cups of cocoa.
Hopefully they're cheaper and faster and they'll steal my shitty programs that I can't even give away.