State Department Announces That Great Firewall For The US; Blocks Chinese Apps & Equipment
from the this-is-not-good dept
Forget banning TikTok, the Trump State Department just suggested it wants to basically ban China from the internet. Rather than promoting an open internet and the concept of openness, it appears that under this administration we’re slamming the gates shut and setting up the Great American Firewall for the internet. Under the guise of what it calls the Clean Network to Safeguard America, last night Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a program that is full of vague statements, that could, in practice, fragment the internet.
This is incredibly disappointing on multiple levels. While other countries — especially China, but also Iran and Russia — have created their own fragmented internet, the US used to stand for an open internet across the globe. Indeed, for whatever complaints we had about the State Department during the Obama administration (and we had many complaints), its commitment to an open internet was very strong and meaningful. That’s clearly now gone. The “Clean Network to Safeguard America” consists of five programs that can be summed up as “fuck you China.”
- Clean Carrier: To ensure untrusted People?s Republic of China (PRC) carriers are not connected with U.S. telecommunications networks. Such companies pose a danger to U.S. national security and should not provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States.
- Clean Store: To remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores. PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation. American?s most sensitive personal and business information must be protected on their mobile phones from exploitation and theft for the CCP?s benefit.
- Clean Apps: To prevent untrusted PRC smartphone manufacturers from pre-installing ?or otherwise making available for download ? trusted apps on their apps store. Huawei, an arm of the PRC surveillance state, is trading on the innovations and reputations of leading U.S. and foreign companies. These companies should remove their apps from Huawei?s app store to ensure they are not partnering with a human rights abuser.
- Clean Cloud: To prevent U.S. citizens? most sensitive personal information and our businesses? most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.
- Clean Cable: To ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at hyper scale. We will also work with foreign partners to ensure that undersea cables around the world aren?t similarly subject to compromise.
So, take the talk of banning Huawei and ZTE on the networking side, and the rumblings about banning TikTok on the app side, and multiply by everything.
I certainly understand the arguments that certain Chinese companies and technologies may be conducting surveillance on Americans (even though investigations into both Huawei and TikTok haven’t shown anything out of the ordinary), but this approach is incredibly short-sighted. First of all, it goes against the basic American stance on openness, especially regarding the internet. That just damages what little moral high ground we had left to stand on regarding the internet.
Second, all this does is justify the Chinese approach. Make no mistake about it, China will turn around and use this to justify its (much worse) practices, by saying “look, even the Americans filter out “foreign” apps and services.” Giving the Chinese ammo like that is so incredibly short-sighted.
Third, so much of American technology is still made in China — including pretty much every electronic gadget and IOT and “smart” device that fills everyone’s homes these days. This is going to backfire in so many ways. The trade war and tariffs have already hit parts of the technology industry hard, and this move will certainly lead to retaliation in all sorts of ways — potentially having a massive impact on American firms being able to make use of factories and technology from China. That will have ripple effects throughout the economy and will likely limit certain innovation possibilities. Indeed, this may even allow Chinese firms to justify abusing technology to do the kinds of surveillance people are now freaked out about.
Fourth, it will allow China to expand its influence elsewhere in the world, showing how the US can’t be trusted and plays favorites with its own companies through protectionism.
In short, this is the kind of short-sighted policy that we’re all too familiar with from the Trump Administration, but which will do significant damage to the US in the process.
Filed Under: apps, censorship, china, clean network, great firewall, mike pompeo, networking equipment, technology, us
Companies: huawei, tiktok
Comments on “State Department Announces That Great Firewall For The US; Blocks Chinese Apps & Equipment”
Snowden says Hi
Exchange every “China” with “US” (and “adversary” with “partner/bully”) and you would be in our European (rest-of-the-world-ian) shoes. I don’t like my privacy/business secrets invaded by China, obviously. But it seems the US forgot they’re doing pretty much the same thing with everyone on the planet, adversary or ally. Don’t buy Huawei rings quite hollow when the alternative is equally compromised.
Re: Snowden says Hi
I suspect that the only real point of contention is that china’s spies refuse to share what they get; if they were willing to hand the NSA and other USG agencies a copy of that information the protests against their nefarious actions would likely mostly dry right up(not entirely mind, got to have a Big Bad to act as a scapegoat/distraction after all).
Re: Re: Zero evidence
No, the difference is that there is absolutely NO evidence that China is spying, while there is MASSIVE amounts of evidence that the USA is spying!
Re: Re: Re: Zero evidence
A major power like china not engaging in spying against other countries? Yeah, that’s simply not believable in the slightest.
Re: Re: Re: Zero evidence
Taiwan says hi.
Re: Snowden says Hi
Everyone spies on everyone else, that’s a given.
It doesn’t mean you should make it easy for them to spy on you though.
Re: Re: No need to go in the back door when the front is wide open
Well no, but that’s the thing, this isn’t actually doing anything about that. As this article and others in the past have noted if the concern really is ‘the chinese government is spying on the public’ then there are much better targets of concern than a few large companies that just so happen to be Trump’s current punching bags/distractions.
Third, so much of American technology is still made in China — including pretty much every electronic gadget and IOT and "smart" device that fills everyone’s homes these days.
Re: Snowden says Hi
Don’t buy Huawei rings quite hollow when the alternative is equally compromised.
And about three times the price
Re: Snowden says Hi
anomaly six.. so what’s everyone so worried about the chinese for? story at slashdot.
'Stop trying to save lives damnit, we have profits to make!'
Clean Cloud: To prevent U.S. citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.
That’s a rather damning inclusion there, lumping in ‘vaccination research related to a global pandemic‘ as ‘valuable intellectual property’, as though the money to be made from it it matters more than the lives that it could save, but I suppose it’s also entirely consistent so…
As for the general order this is going to blow up in their faces spectacularly, as given how much tech and other products the US gets from china the administration just handed the country a huge bargaining lever, as they can simply point out that if america doesn’t want anything to do with china then great, china will look elsewhere and the US can figure out what to do without them.
Trump’s pissing match with china, indifference to anything that doesn’t impact him personally and his need to have some great big boogie-man to scare his cultists into line just screwed the country yet again it looks like.
Re: 'Stop trying to save lives damnit, we have profits to make!'
BINGO. We got a winner folks! The USA could careless if most of it’s own citizens died from COVID-19. Let alone the citizens of other countries. Money is all the USA cares about. Anyone telling you different is either a complete idiot or one of the USA’s owner class. In case the message hasn’t rung home yet: The rest of the world can die as far as the USA is concerned. The rest of the world’s concepts of morality, decency, and ethics do not apply in the USA. There is no limit to the greed of the USA and any objection to it is viewed as a mental defect by it’s citizens. Corruption is the name of their ideology and greed, lust, envy, gluttony, sloth, and pride are their pillars of support. With wrath quickly becoming the seventh. Quit assuming otherwise.
China could do that, but it would provide no benefit to them. If anything China has more to gain by pointing out such hypocrisy to the world, claiming it’s doing "better" despite the US’ actions, and that others should take precautions around US products now because of it.
Agreed, China doesn’t need the US, but dropping the US over something trivial like this would make China look worse by comparison. For example, all of those belt and road countries would very quickly find out just how much of a risky debt they’ve taken on really is. Piss off the lords of China in a shouting match and get cut off completely? Pretty hard to pay back that debt now isn’t it? Might even keep a few deals from going through….
The worse thing is the huge loophole he’s trying to make for government censorship / bullying. If this were to go through, it would be ridiculously easy to ban / takedown any app the government had issue with. (Oh. That’s not a trusted encryption app. It’s a PRC app in disguise! Better get rid of it Apple. smirk) Of course it also allows the government to rip products off of store shelves. (Because how else do you prevent a manufacturer from installing anything on a device they manufactured????) This will be abused as well.
The good news is that it has no chance of surviving a first amendment challenge. The bad news is that it could require a first amendment challenge in the first place. Land of the enslaved, and home of the fearful indeed.
Re: Re: 'Stop trying to save lives damnit, we have profits to ma
Your post sounds a little like child psychology aimed at china. Too bad you couldn’t work that into some other minds.. that need it a whole lot worse.
Why not a clean tax bill as well
If a company has paid 100% of the applicable United States taxes it should be given more protection and be immune from foreign countries trying to tie it up in bogus legal cases. Facebook, Google and others will be out of luck due to their love of hiding tax money from our government.
Re: 'Our profits went down and so do your 'donations'.'
Facebook, Google and others will be out of luck due to their love of hiding tax money from our government.
Along with a good number of republican supporting companies I’m sure, which would make that a huge no-no for the administration.
Snowden says Hi
Everyone spies on everyone else, that’s a given.
It doesn’t mean you should make it easy for them to spy on you though.
"Clean Store: To remove untrusted applications from U.S. mobile app stores. PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation. American’s most sensitive personal and business information must be protected on their mobile phones from exploitation and theft for the CCP’s benefit."
But they its okay if the information is exploited and stolen for the benefit of anyone else, including the US government and US businesses?
Re: Re:
The bigger problem with the statement is that any application that "theaten[s] our privacy" is, by definition, trusted.
Internet Balkanization
This is a discussion that started in the 1980s… when the precursor to the modern Internet was funded by the US DoD (ARPAnet) and Education (NSFnet). Anytime someone did something we didn’t like there were always people (and still are) who said "We done built-in. Disconnect those who can’t git along." There were also those who said "We all should learn to communicate… that’s what brings us together."
It IS disappointing the US government under this F.Upped administration is pandering to the isolationists. Nothing new, just now they’re applying it to the Internet.
As Tim said… it’s a bad idea all around. I’m an Internet security consultant, but don’t listen to me… listen to Bruce Schneier, Brian Krebs, and others who have expounded on this in depth
I don’t care if the Chinese government gets a list of what I bought from Target or Walmart or Amazon last week. Yet even so I use 2FA with AMZ, secure all transactions with SSL (HTTPS), and EVERY credit card purchase can be stopped within minutes.
If you have compartmentalized or FOUO or sensitive information, DO NOT PUT IT ON THE PUBLIC INTERNET.
This isn’t a "Chyna" problem or a "Russia" problem or an "Iran" problem. This is a "people failing to take responsibility for securing their data" problem. Not victim blaming… just stating the obvious.
E
Re: Internet Balkanization
It isn’t that the Chinese know what you bought online last week, but they also know what everyone else bought online last week. that makes their economic forecasting much easier, and they don’t have to wait for individual merchants to place orders.
On the other hand. I’d really like to know that actual author of this peice of shit order because while those conditions might be appropriate for the DoD, they aren’t for everyone else.
Re: Internet Balkanization
"As Tim said… it’s a bad idea all around. I’m an Internet security consultant, but don’t listen to me… listen to Bruce Schneier, Brian Krebs, and others who have expounded on this in depth…"
But they’re all experts which means, in the tech/science-hostile environment of today’s american administration, that they simply can’t be trusted. Their verdict usually goes against the "feeling" higher authority (Trump, GWB, or whatever other idiot is the contemporary bannerman of hate and ignorance) has on the matter which is, in itself, borderline treason.
"This is a discussion that started in the 1980s…"
It’s arguably as old as humanity. Way back when in the stone age you’d find hulking rejects of the tribe whining about why the flint-knapper and trap-makers kept making policy while the grunty bear-wrestling strongman – who thought smearing himself with poop was a sign of strength – was ignored and shunned.
In ancient roman times plenty of toga-clad punters wrote anecdotes about oriental potentates ignoring architects and engineers in favor of building what they thought a new palace or war machine should look like, only to watch it disastrously fail, sometimes with the potentate in it (to the good fortune of all).
It’s about reason versus unfounded belief. The cult versus the scientist. Factual reality versus the megalomaniacal belief the world will change itself to fit desire.
This would all violate the first amendment right? so it would be very hard to Great Firewall For The US let alone Internet Balkanization.
Re: Re:
"so it would be very hard to Great Firewall For The US let alone Internet Balkanization."
Well, yes and no. They can certainly try to build it, and depending on how thorough an effort they make, can end up screwing up the US online access completely.
What people keep failing to realize when it comes to China is that their "Great Firewall" is not free. Unless they pull the plug completely to the outside world it takes them an organization tens of thousands of experts strong to maintain it. But that’s all right, Imperial China is able and willing to budget for that ministry to remain in operation for a thousand years.
If the US builds a "great firewall" it will last for about one term of office, if that. After which it will collapse, dragging with it most of the US online capabilities. Rebuilding will be a bit of a pickle given that even AT&T and Comcast are likely to be among the first victims.
The United States used to . . .
stand for a lot of cool, high moral ground stuff. How much of it was real, how much was just good intentions, and how much was plain old nationalist BS is a topic that can be debated at length.
But the government has increasingly been dropping any pretenses, and flat out stating (almost) that we are just another tin-pot dictator, authoritarian, corrupt, oligarchical, police state "banana republic," just like the countries we used to call out for that kind of behavior. The main difference is that we have nukes, killer drones, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers, a global surveillance network, etc, which makes us much more dangerous than most of the other countries like that.
It is a very bad direction to be taking, and, as Mike points out, it is sure to come back and bite us in the collective butt, probably sooner rather than later.
Meanwhile tech company’s can sell software to almost any country to help repressive governments
spy on journalists, activists, protestor or ngo, s.
Banning American company’s from having apps in foreign app stores will only help to splinter the Internet, Many tech company’s avoid China already because they have to host servers in China and give
China acess to its intellectual property.
Many American apps collect data on users and sell it to advertisers.
What’s the definition of a clean app. It’s ok if it collects data as long as it does not send it to china
Banning all Chinese equipment will be expensive for
small company’s whose choice will be limited
to equipment from us or EU companys
What happens if China has a small stake in an American company eg epic games, maker of fortnite
a very popular fps online shooter
Such a firewall might be hard to enforce in the future
If Trump is re elected, California, Oregon and Washimgton aoparently have a pact to secede and make their own nation
Google, the biggest app store, would be in the new country and no longer subject to us laws if this happens
Google and all.the big tech companies in the new country could tell the remaimimg United States to.^$#^## itself and there is nothing the usa could do.
Both Microsoft and Google wouid he in Pacifica and wouid therefore no longer he sunject to usa jurisdiction
Re:
It’s bullshit, but I’m sure you believe it. So how about citing some extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim?
Re: Re: Re:
Nevada will kick CalOreWash’s ass by just emptying their storage of nuclear waste on them!
Re: Re:
But what about the alien dna in those vaccines?
Re: Re: Re:
Yes, that’s right. They are making these vaccines in Antarctica, curiously.
i can’t think of a worse take on this. we tried being open with china from the 90s until trump in the hopes it would encourage openness in their culture. instead it has just lead to the proliferation of a chinese surveillance state and mass industrial espionage against the United States by the Chinese state. They are weaponizing our openness against us.
It’s the height of sophistry to say that us excluding Chinese state-owned enterprises from our networks is the equivalent to China’s great firewall. None of what we are doing is preventing Americans from consuming Chinese state propaganda.
I am sympathetic to the argument that: "Second, all this does is justify the Chinese approach. Make no mistake about it, China will turn around and use this to justify its (much worse) practices, by saying "look, even the Americans filter out "foreign" apps and services." Giving the Chinese ammo like that is so incredibly short-sighted."
If this was 1995, i’d be all-in on this argument. But we can look at what has happened empirically in the last 25 years. The neoliberal hypothesis that opening western markets to China would result in Chinese liberalization has been tested and found to be untrue.
The Chinese state has had no compunction about maintaining their firewall when we haven’t been doing these things, and in fact Chinese state repression has gotten worse. It’s not like they were on the verge of repealing all of their repressive measures until this came along.
So the option left for collapsing Chinese totalitarian is to contain it, and this is a good first step in containment. The sooner we force companies doing business in America to exclude China from their supply chain, the less painful it will be.
Re: Re:
pfff
Re: Re:
"It’s the height of sophistry to say that us excluding Chinese state-owned enterprises from our networks is the equivalent to China’s great firewall. None of what we are doing is preventing Americans from consuming Chinese state propaganda. "
I invite you to re-open that old, old argument about how to magically separate desired information from undesired information. You will find, as everyone else to investigate the issue has found before you, that there is no magical dividing line between full-on information isolationism as practiced by China and the old USSR, or an open information highway.
"So the option left for collapsing Chinese totalitarian is to contain it, and this is a good first step in containment."
It really isn’t. The collateral damage is that the US will have to either go full China on this or watch it’s economy sink like a lead balloon. Which means a US-only app store, a US-only search engine, a US-exclusive intranet, US-only online shopping…etc.
China has the luxury of doing all of that since, to be fair, China is completely self-sufficient in manufacturing.
The US, instead, has most of its factories placed in China. Oops, I guess?
"The sooner we force companies doing business in America to exclude China from their supply chain, the less painful it will be."
According to Tim Cook excluding China from the supply chain, today will make an iPhone cost in excess of 30000 USD. That’s how big a factor the chinese part of the supply chain is. With well over half of every electronics component made in China any attempt by the US to divest itself from Chinese manufacturing and supply is fiscal suicide. Not on the line of "Dow dropping 20%" but along the lines of "1930 was a lark, here, have some 1923 Weimar republic-style economy".
In other words the US state department has presented a plan of keeping the enemy at a distance by strapping a bomb belt around its waist.
Re: Re: Re:
So then can we at least admit that the U.S. and the world depending so heavily on Chinese manufacturing is fucking bad, and that that AC is right about how "The neoliberal hypothesis that opening western markets to China would result in Chinese liberalization has been tested and found to be untrue."? Tying supply chains so heavily to one country to where it would make the cost of anything skyrocket if you tried to make it anywhere else is one of the biggest mistakes that’s ever been made. We should’ve started divesting manufacturing & supply chains from China years ago.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Oh, I actually didn’t notice that they had put a name there and aren’t an AC. My bad.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"So then can we at least admit that the U.S. and the world depending so heavily on Chinese manufacturing is fucking bad, and that that AC is right about how "The neoliberal hypothesis that opening western markets to China would result in Chinese liberalization has been tested and found to be untrue."?"
That we can admit to, but that’s not the argument he was making. He was suggesting that today the US needs to voluntarily bankrupt itself for two generations in order to close out China.
Yes, it was a shit decision to allow US corporations to gradually remove the supply chain from the US and put it on the soil of a foreign power. But it’s been done and trying to go forward as if it hadn’t is an even worse idea.
To compound it the one and only way the US as a nation can prevent this from happening is by…heavily regulating US corporations, in a way even the most left-leaning democrats wouldn’t accept.
You would also have to heavily subsidize higher education incentivizing the citizenry to fill the labor pool required by US industries – and then further subsidize the job market letting the corporations avoid the costly extra entanglements which in China, for instance, are already handled by the state. Health/pension plans, etc.
You might ask yourself, instead, how the hell a (nominally) communist nation such as China can offer capitalist ventures more fertile soil than the US, a (nominally) capitalist nation can.
Until that question is addressed the only thing "drew" is saying is that the cure for the persistent headache must be decapitation.
Re: Hahaha!
Typical racist, xenophobic comment from a typical Trump supporter.
Pretty good.
Lets make a few Facts.
USA BORROWED LOTS of Money from China, for a war thats lasting To long, and Could have ended in 6 months(they were asking to end it).
Trump+Russia, are against the Chinese, and trump Thinks he can get the OLD USA corps that jumped to Asia, Back to the USA. And Show-off, by locking down the imports, into the USA. Doing that is funny, as we are running out of beer, because we Locked Down ALL imports, to Show it is/was balanced, and we were not picking on 1 nation. And we Still owe money to China.
There was a recent article about China, running around the world and Buying Copyrights and such, to HOLD the Rights to allot of tech. We have been Bitching about CR and intellectual property for years, and Now, they have allot more.
Our nation has taken advantage of China, we sell wood to them at HUGE profits, also raising the Price in the USA, then Buying Wood products back, at HUGE savings, to sell to USA customers Who cant afford the prices, for Glue and Wood Pulp.
And this for many other things we send them..Like allot of Old Junk cars they wanted to use as recycling, to make More Metals for Products. We Raised prices Like crazy, for all the car Junk yards around the country. and Our corps are still bitching, because THEY, have raised prices beyond what WE can afford, and they dont see the problems,, So they bitch at the gov, to do something. they Dont want to lower prices, they dont want to create more jobs, they Love those TOP wages, and wont take less.
Our corps have forgotten the basics of how capitalism is Supposed to work, Just as the banks did. They are Hurting and dont want to DO what then NEED to do. If you look around and see all the crap they have Done to themselves, its about time for them to bankrupt or FIX IT. Which means those on top Owners/CEO/managers/… need to take a PAY CUT of at least 1/2 if not more.
All the pushing on Corp value, and stocks in the last 20+ years, that doubled and tripled Top wages. All the Job cuts in the last 35 years.. All the Killing off of Local stores and distribution.. Has hit the END of what can be done to raise TOP wages..
To give you a hint about outlooks.. It want long ago, that when a questionnaire, asked about Wage levels, they started in the 10,000’s.. and now, they start at $40,000. Think of this disparity. They want to know an ave wage for a person, but dont count anything below a $20 per hour 40 hour week, job? Which is a good amount of people NOT counted Properly.
Charts are fun, and all, but reading between the lines makes me laugh.
https://www.epi.org/blog/top-1-0-percent-reaches-highest-wages-ever-up-157-percent-since-1979/
$29k in 1979, was RICH.. Min wage was < $2.. and they Jump from 1979 to 2007 in 1 jump? And only gained $5000 more?
According to Some tables the Jobs of the early 1970’s, ~$2 per hour match those NOW getting $20..
For the Corps..
Its very interesting that they —
Dont have as many employees..
They do everything they can NOT to have excess employees..
You can have a corp with only designers and CEO..
Send all the info you want built to china,
Get it sent here and they just distribute it..
And your taxes are…? Just a few persons in the office, as the 2000 workers and the material costs are spent Over there.
You sell to other nations at the highest price you can.
You buy from other nations at the LOWEST price you can get..
Then Price it like it was American made.
Then Wonder why we cant afford anything?
Good luck and hang on to your pants..this is going to have some bumpy rides. until the CORPS, do the right things, or go broke.
Re: Pretty good.
A good old World War will pull these corporations out of a slump every time. World War Three is just around the corner.
Re: Re: Pretty good.
And hopefully it will wipe both america and china off the face of the earth and rid the world of both infections. By comparison Russia are small potatoes, only a threat to their mid-sized neighbours by virtue of being actually competent in espionage, propaganda, assassination, etc., and the EU will be a lot weaker without any significant external enemy to hold it together, and hopefully the world won’t be idiotic enough to help India the way America and everyone else helped China (and, long before, the way Britain and others helped Germany and America become problems)
This "plan" came up too late in he election cycle.
When Biden wins he can just cancel it outright as "capricious",
and everyone in town knows it.
Trump and his cult intends to use that as a grudge.
They never intended to go through with it; but even
if Trump happens to win they’ll find a way to weasel
out of doing it all and blame Congress for it anyway. ; ]
G.A.F.F.E.
Great American FireWALL For Ever
"These companies should remove their apps from Huawei’s app store to ensure they are not partnering with a human rights abuser."
Oh Good. That should stop China from separating children from parents at the border.
Same old Trump
To me it looks like everything else Trump has done, something to help his re-election. In this case by creating a new Cold War, with China this time, with the proviso that everyone should be scared and only Trump can keep them safe. Everything else is just a side benefit for him.
Give Up His iPhone?
Given he’s addicted to his iPhone, which is probably manufactured in China (and is in fact a known security risk for the POTUS to have), will he be giving that thing up ASAP?
I breathlessly await the news that he’s divested himselfof the iPhone and is now using only a good old Made in the USA device (do those even exist?)…
Or, equally breathlessly, the squirming and lies as he tries to justify why HE can have an iPhone but no-one else can (more likely, probably).
Re: Give Up His iPhone?
"I breathlessly await the news that he’s divested himselfof the iPhone and is now using only a good old Made in the USA device (do those even exist?)…"
Not likely. Half of the world’s electronics manufacturing plants are in China. Tim Cook is on record as stating with confidence that if the iPhone was manufactured exclusively by US factories it would cost 30k per phone.
To my knowledge not a single one. There are smartphones "made in the US" but that basically means they were assembled in the US…from chinese-made components.
The same holds true for just about all the hardware of the US internet, save – possibly – for the cables.
Which, incidentally, makes the US attack on Huawei even more hilarious because Cisco is using the exact same components they are complaining about in Huaweis routers.
Re: Re: Give Up His iPhone?
For sure! And, as others have mentioned, given the USA has actually been caught doing many of the very same things China is accused of (with zero evidence presented so far) I guess this is just BAU for the current Administration.
Also, given that almost everything electronic is now made in China, good luck having any kind of modern platforms. This kind of thinking will likely send the USA back to the stone age, as compared to the rest of the world.
Re: Re: Re: Give Up His iPhone?
"This kind of thinking will likely send the USA back to the stone age, as compared to the rest of the world."
Stone age, not so much. But isolationist examples like Soviet Russia do serve as early litmus tests on what happens to a nation which closes its borders to international business and innovation.
The US had a head start on the rest of the world when it came to industrialization after world war 2, with every possible contenders industrial base being, well, bombed flat. In 1945 the US sat on the only example of a functional industry with the motive of letting it pay for itself. The modern american dream sprang from a concept made possible by having a rather unnatural advantage – in being just about the only guys around with factories and a will to sell stuff.
Around the 80’s that gap had been closed, US industry had acquired lots of sloppy habits, and the party began to end. Numerous last ditch adjustments were made, two of which stood out – outsourcing labor costs and a shift of focus from manufacturing to developing and owning IP. Both of which probably looked good on paper.
In practice it painted the US into a corner where it is well and truly fucked if it no longer owns the advantage in IP development, and thanks to the outsourcing no longer has the option of backing away from the bad deal it made for itself.
And this presents China of today which is currently ovbertaking the US in IP development AND owns all of the manufacturing. The US literally sold its own future for a short period of bonanza.
And Great Britain, Australia, Singapore, and pretty much every African or Muslim country.
It’s hardly unique or new. And as more and more national infrastructures depend on the net, it’s insane not to protect themselves.
You thing Corona-chan is annoying? Most countries would come to a stop if their network backbones went down.
not directly related, but:
you have spent a lot of energy decrying "hate speech" and similar shit that is simply a "think of the children" style encroachment on free speech. i.e. you’re okay with people being silenced as long as the government sock puppets it via monopolistic corporations, and you’d probably be fine with the 1st amendment being dissolved entirely if it meant "le ebil nazis" no longer had any rights.
you think free speech is fine unless it’s something that makes you uncomfortable. you have destroyed your moral authority.
now you’re whining because the president is doing EXACTLY THE SAME THING YOU DO, but in an official capacity instead of through the intermediary of wringing your hands and whining until someone else does your dirty work.
what did you think would happen? the second you uttered the phrase "hate speech" you became the very thing you claim to oppose here.
Firewall
This is a trap. Just another excuse to take away more freedom. Terrorism is used to justify more wars and intrusion of our liberties. Now cyber security is being used to monitor and censor our digital life. How long before this system is used to shut down whatever the government doesn’t like? Would this work on decentralized platforms? I don’t know but even if the reason given is true this will still lead to abuse.