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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 Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @03:51PM (18 children)
And I mean it. This is one of the coolest things that could possibly happen. I think everybody would agree that one of the biggest problems in the tech industry at large is monopolization. This move stands to effectively turn the monopolists into small market players which is going to radically shift the dynamic of the entire world market.
The space race is how we from nowhere to putting a man on the moon in less than a decade. Where will the tech race take us? It's something that's damn long overdue and this defacto announcement of such is, again, just awesome.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday December 09 2019, @03:53PM (5 children)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 09 2019, @04:44PM (3 children)
It's not really destroying competition, just limiting the geographic scope of it in two specific instances. It's highly likely it will cause the domestic creation of what was formerly outsourced by each nation. That will effectively double the suppliers to the rest of the world and increase domestic industry for the primaries. Also, forcing both nations to lose out on a huge market necessarily lowers the market share and shrinks the pockets of the entrenched players, thus lowering the bar for new competitors to enter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 09 2019, @07:04PM (2 children)
Possible, but I wouldn't bet on it. I suspect that the "local" Chinese products will include software that has GPL licenses, and so be subject to suit in most countries outside of China. That's the only quick way to get a huge number of software products up and running. But it limits the ability to use them where you don't control the courts.
That said, they could offer GPL versions that would compete with the commercial versions offered by vendors, and those wouldn't have that problem. So they could selectively keep commercial industries from being successful.
However, I suspect the current main purpose is to prevent foreign companies from having control over any important local systems. This doesn't mean it will continue to be the purpose, however, once the projects are up and running.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 09 2019, @11:29PM (1 child)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 09 2019, @11:53PM
Sorry. You don't know what you need until you start doing the conversion. They've probably got a lot ready, but not enough.
OTOH, after reading a bit more this turns out to be a staged conversion of government computers, so maybe you're right. They could have been running test systems for awhile.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday December 09 2019, @11:17PM
You mean like the competition that Microsoft itself has destroyed?
Oh well, it's worked for Microsoft before.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday December 09 2019, @04:35PM
Competition FTW, yep.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Monday December 09 2019, @05:09PM (9 children)
It's of limited use, we wouldn't be able to benefit as much from the competition in the United States since we won't be able to trust Chinese made software enough in most cases to use it.
Case in point: every agent I have that goes to China, I have to format their computer on the return trip and reinstall everything. They install malware on it whenever they inspect it, coming in and going back out, every time. Every piece of software the agents use while in China has something or other infecting it too. I've tried to examine the samples but all I can tell is it calls home and sends data (I'm not a software engineer and don't have all day to do this).
I'm supposed to assume that software I buy and download from China won't end up with this kind of malware infecting it as well? If not initially, then in an update, perhaps? No way.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday December 09 2019, @05:16PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @05:17PM
US based software doesn't do this?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @05:38PM (5 children)
Check out PRISM [wikipedia.org]. We've convinced and/or coerced all major software companies (including Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft) to effectively work as government spies. There's a really interesting document [cjfe.org] demonstrating what agents see (including screenshots) when using PRISM to spy on Skype communications. Whatever your computer sends on a Skype connection gets sent out and then directed straight to the NSA. Initial reporting [spiegel.de] on that leak, if you prefer media coverage.
In the FAQ it even has things like agents being confused about why some data is sent multiple times. What happens there is when a spy target uses skype on multiple machines the machine connects to Microsoft's servers to sync their latest conversations, since Microsoft routes everything they send on over to the NSA as well, it ends up in the NSA spook getting multiple copies of the same conversations during the syncing process.
No idea who started this nonsense first, but it's pretty safe to assume than any software from a big company is probably riddled with government backdoors and surveillance mechanisms. IMO this is one of the real issues with the Huawei nonsense. Huawei would probably not respond positively to the NSA asking them to spy up. For that matter the NSA probably wouldn't even want representatives of a Chinese company, and by proxy their government, privy to exactly what we're doing and demanding of companies.
So ultimately you have a choice. Do you want a foreign government half way around the world spying on you, or your local government spying on you. And that's not a rhetorical choice. I think there are good arguments to be made for both sides and ultimately it's something that will be up to the individual to decide. But suffice to say I think there will be a more than sufficient market for domestic usage, unless the government tries to make it impractical or unlawful to use Chinese software - which is a very real possibility.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Monday December 09 2019, @06:17PM
It's not only about the spying in this case, actually. The problem was I don't see why I should abide the spying running locally, on my machine, wasting my resources.
Additionally, as a local software, it can potentially see what other things the computer is doing, and I'd rather not have them able to scan EVERY account we are managing with other vendors. It's one thing if the government has a hook into Skype chats - it's another thing if Skype is handing them bank credentials it snooped from the browser, which the malware would be positioned to do.
As such we have a rule of only managing Chinese accounts on computers with Chinese software to try to limit the scope of this.
Because of needing to take such a measure, I don't think I could safely mix Chinese Office and Microsoft Office, if that makes sense. I'd have to assume I have this problem with everything ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @06:59PM (1 child)
To access the American market? I think they absolutely would be creaming themselves to provide intercept ability for the NSA.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 09 2019, @07:08PM
No, but the Chinese government would probably look quite favorably on such an opportunity.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday December 09 2019, @10:18PM
No idea who started this nonsense first...
Truman?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 11 2019, @03:35PM
In my case both are foreign governments. But the USA does more "rendition" of non-citizen non-residents than China (who seem to focus more on their citizens and ex-citizens).
Since I don't plan to ever visit China, and don't really conduct much business with China, China spying on me seems to be safer than the USA.
This of course could change if China becomes more powerful...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday December 09 2019, @06:52PM
While it is a PITA having "an enemy" out there, there are evolutionary advantages to real competition vs the sham competition among the global virtual monopolies that have been operating in the IT world for decades. With real isolation between the players, they are more likely to explore unique development branches and discover more distinctive competitive advantages, rather than just playing the "oh, we do that too" game of a homogenous global marketplace.
Back in the US-USSR cold war, the Russians developed analog computers to a far higher level than the US - didn't work out for them in the end, though in a shooting war their vacuum tube based control systems would have handled EMP much better than anything with Intel inside.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09 2019, @05:16PM
Economies of scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale [wikipedia.org]
"small market players" -> higher price x unit
Well, not at all a bad thing: you pay your CPU a lot, so you feel the need to change it much later: good for the environment :D
OTOH, your small player sell less and less frequently, so they need less workers and less sellers, so less and less employees on the long run? :D
IDK. Jim, I'm not an economist... ^_^;;;
CYA