US Considers Requiring 5G Equipment For Domestic Use Be Made Outside China (wsj.com) 92
The Trump administration is examining whether to require that next-generation 5G cellular equipment used in the U.S. be designed and manufactured outside China [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], WSJ reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The move could reshape global manufacturing and further fan tensions between the countries. From the report: A White House executive order last month to restrict some foreign-made networking gear and services due to cybersecurity concerns started a 150-day review of the U.S. telecommunications supply chain. As part of that review, U.S. officials are asking telecom-equipment manufacturers whether they can make and develop U.S.-bound hardware, which includes cellular-tower electronics as well as routers and switches, and software outside of China, the people said. The conversations are in early and informal stages, they said. The executive order calls for a list of proposed rules and regulations by the 150-day deadline, in October; so, any proposals may take months or years to adopt.
The proposals could force the biggest companies that sell equipment to U.S. wireless carriers, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson, to move major operations out of China to service the U.S., which is the biggest market in the $250 billion-a-year global industry for telecom equipment and related services and infrastructure. There is no major U.S. manufacturer of cellular equipment. U.S. officials have long worried that Beijing could order Chinese engineers to insert security holes into technology made in China. They worry those security holes could be exploited for spying, or to remotely control or disable devices.
The proposals could force the biggest companies that sell equipment to U.S. wireless carriers, Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson, to move major operations out of China to service the U.S., which is the biggest market in the $250 billion-a-year global industry for telecom equipment and related services and infrastructure. There is no major U.S. manufacturer of cellular equipment. U.S. officials have long worried that Beijing could order Chinese engineers to insert security holes into technology made in China. They worry those security holes could be exploited for spying, or to remotely control or disable devices.
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Surely the Chinese government hasn't infiltrated factories outside the continent... (Why not say made in the USA rather than NOT made in China?)
Fully agree on this one. Although all foreign countries would necessarily have their factories infiltrated
Good move (Score:1)
Trump doesn't get much right, but they are right on track with this one. 5G technology will be too ubiquitous to trust to Chinese gear. It's not a question of 'if' China will exploit the technology to steal from the US and our allies, it's a question of how much and how often. Fuck them.
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Sounds arrogant, but it's the truth.
If China didn't need the US, they would have destroyed it a long time ago. Trump gets a pass on all that clown bullshit he pulls because China likes US dollars.
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They have a very limited ability to move it around and project that power though.
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You should be careful with that assumption. Many in the UK thought that about the EU, and look how fucked we are now.
So no 5G in the US anytime soon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Somebody has not thought that through...
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Nobody thought anything through. The United States is now excluded from trade deals bringing Europe and Japan into low-tariff, low-barrier trade alliances. Manufacturers are shifting capacity for US-destined goods to their factories outside China--that means Foxconn and so forth can use their existing factories in Malaysia or whatnot to build stuff and send it to the US without facing tariffs. Where the tariffs are effective, they're simply harming the US economy and the consumer.
The US is getting left
Re:So no 5G in the US anytime soon? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not agree with depending on a world economy, if and when it collapses everyone goes down together. Larger countries benefit from the capacity to be self sufficient in times of crisis, smaller countries have little choice.
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You could flip it around and say that creating dependency actually promotes peace and cooperation between nations, as it did in Europe. It also creates wealth, and competition which is good for consumers. What do you think US and British cars would be like it wasn't for competition from Japanese brands?
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Cars would probably be larger and have more powerful engines. I mean the gas crises is what really brought change, not cheap asian cars.
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The US cannot get to self-sufficiency anymore. That is a fantasy.
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"The US cannot get to self-sufficiency anymore. That is a fantasy."
Let me fix that for you:
The US cannot get to self-sufficiency AS CHEAPLY AS CHINA CAN WITH SLAVE WAGES anymore. That is a fantasy.
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And why exactly do you think this childish response is acceptable?
Re: So no 5G in the US anytime soon? (Score:2)
Because it's obviously true?
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Not really.
China engages in trade largely because it can obtain more through trade than alone. The labor invested in producing what they now consume would be higher than the labor they have available. We do take advantage of a difference in purchasing power, largely encouraged by the Chinese government due to a misunderstanding of how trade economics works (exports are the cost and imports are the benefit of trade).
That means the Chinese workers would have to work the same and receive less without trad
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And you get that certainty where? Just personal arrogance and bad education, or do you have some actual facts?
Note: "obviously true" = "false, and the one making the claim is a moron", at least in most cases.
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Like breaking your dependency on food and air.
I do not agree with depending on a world economy, if and when it collapses everyone goes down together.
That's just technology. A high-tech, wealthy nation will always depend on high-speed communications and transit. When that goes down, it falls apart fast.
The collapse of a global economy is just returning to the wealth level of a local economy. If your wealth is $60,000 per person and a global economic collapse breaks the rest of the world and shoves you way back to $24,000 per person, that indicates that your wealth would have been $24,000 per person had
Taiwan would be good (Score:3)
Winnie-The-Pooh will just love it.
Damn authoritarian regimes! (Score:1)
Real security issues or trade negotiations? (Score:1)
How is anybody supposed to know if this is a real security threat of if this is being used to gain leverage in a trade dispute?
Trump has stated publicly he would intervene if he got his better trade deal. At that point, it is impossible to tell the difference between something which is true, and something which Trump is saying as a bargaining tool.
When POTUS says he's intervene to get his trade deal, you can't take at face value that the claims are real.
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How is anybody supposed to know if this is a real security threat of if this is being used to gain leverage in a trade dispute?
It's a real security threat and it is being used to gain leverage in a trade dispute.
Nice. (Score:3)
And then to piss off China, use equipment made in Taiwan. ;)
Re:Nice. (Score:4, Informative)
ABSOLUTELY GOOD IDEA!!! (Score:1)
IMHO, since China stealing commercial & military USA tech well proven w/ overwhelming evidence (from many past incidents reported by mass media outlets), USA should/must not allow any Chinese telecom company or equipment used in USA (nor in its close allies)!!!
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How? (Score:3, Interesting)
How does he think this is doable without huawei selling their 5g patents to those non-chinese companies? Or maybe just jump straight into 6g? Or why not 7g while you're at it? Was anyone taking bets on how quickly all this will just go away, like, for example, venezuela/north korea/eu/canada..?
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Instead of just continuing to steal the IP, like they do already.
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That's what happens when you don't register patents and try to solely maintain trade secrets. You snooze you lose.
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Seems like Huawei they was the first company to develop the technology, but I don't buy it, I still remember the 4G branding stupidity (I still I'm confused if we finially got real 4G or they just lowered the standard with the unfinished half-assed LTE).
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How does he think this is doable without huawei selling their 5g patents to those non-chinese companies?
Already solved, they plan to legislate their way out of that one [slashdot.org].
Re: How? (Score:2)
Ok for us companies, but what about malaysian, viatnamese, taiwanese, korean (I'm assuming that's where us would be seeking to transfer manufacturing to) etc?
Luckily slightly smarter people run the world so we're ok.
And since china, india and eu are MUCH MUCH bigger markets than US I still believe this will quietly go away just like the rest of uneducated attempts at controlling money.
Isn't this why we have QA? (Score:2)
U.S. officials have long worried that Beijing could order Chinese engineers to insert security holes into technology made in China. They worry those security holes could be exploited for spying, or to remotely control or disable devices.
One would hope (maybe even expect) that critical infrastructure was quality-assured as part of the delivery / integration phase.
If so, then it would not be necessary to trust in the good intentions of the supplier. The security of the system could be certified to a high degree of certainty (although in absolute terms, nothing is certain). This sounds, therefore, like an admission that state-sponsored Chinese hackers are too smart for US companies to detect.
But worse! there is no guarantee that a bad act
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One would hope (maybe even expect) that critical infrastructure was quality-assured as part of the delivery / integration phase.
If so, then it would not be necessary to trust in the good intentions of the supplier.
This is pure and utter fantasy. There's no reasonable way to detect a few disabled transistors on single chip inside a huge telecoms router. This is all you need to undetectably compromise the random number generator inside a crypto chip used for management. Interestingly some intel RNGs have been made in such a way that this kind of action would be particularly easy (they whiten the output through a hash algorithm which hides the manipulation).
What a stupid idea (Score:2)
Why does it matter who builds the equipment? (Score:2)
If it matters who builds the equipment, isn't the design of 5G then fundamentally broken from the get-go?
that's worthless (Score:3)
Economic Warfare (Score:3)
If this goes through then Trump has declared economic warfare on China. China needs to keep people employed and having a bunch of factories moving to other countries will harm the economy there. Telecommunications equipment will just be the start. I bet it will be expanded to any infrastructure equipment (power, water, traffic, etc) when the Chinese retaliate. And the Chinese will not be kind the any countries who help with this. Just look at Canada because we're complying with the extradition order. Every now and again another company from Canada finds that there's a "problem" with it's products and that it's no longer able to export to China.