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China Communications United States

Attorney General Says US, Allies Should Consider Nokia, Ericsson Investment To Counter Huawei (reuters.com) 65

mikeebbbd writes: U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday stressed the threat posed by China's Huawei Technologies and said the United States and its allies should consider investing in Finland's Nokia and Sweden's Ericsson, or both firms, to counter Huawei's dominance in next generation 5G telecoms technology.
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Attorney General Says US, Allies Should Consider Nokia, Ericsson Investment To Counter Huawei

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  • Tell me how US is a free market country and not one where government funds corporations.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There's degrees of freedom between "selling AK-47s on the street corner" and "North Korea,"

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is the free market. We want to invest into Nokia and we are free to do that. When Americans say World Championship they actually mean pan-american tournament. So the same is here, globalization works as long as it is American globalization
    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      And foreign companies no less.

      This illustrates why the US hates Huawei so much. It's got nothing to compete with it.

      • by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:37PM (#59699516) Homepage Journal
        And they should hate Huawei. Huawei stole billions in intellectual property from Western countries. Canada alone lost a hundred billion when Huawei robbed Nortel networks and put them out of business.
        • Ya Huawei are some dirt bags! https://www.cbc.ca/news/politi... [www.cbc.ca]
        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          That's all well and good, but let's not forget that the US also turned a blind eye to the criminal way in which Microsoft crippled Nokia in the first place all to try and reduce the threats to Windows phone only for it to be an abject failure regardless.

          Abusive American business on an almost criminal scale is precisely why Nokia isn't as strong anymore, it's handset business supported the rest of it's telecomms business and Microsoft was supported in the US in killing that. It's not surprising therefore tha

          • Elop took over Nokia well after the iPhone & Android came out. When Elop came in, Nokia was still trying to sell dumb phones in a marketplace that was firmly smartphone. The previous CEO had lost huge marketshare and had no acceptable response, which is the reason why the old CEO was fired and a new CEO was hired in the first place.

            The only bad thing you can say about Elop was he was unable to turn around a sinking ship. He came in after the iPhone 4 was released...who in their right mind would buy a

            • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • When Elop came in, Nokia was still trying to sell dumb phones in a marketplace that was firmly smartphone.

              Nokia had been selling smartphones since 1996. And by Q4 2010, their smartphone market share was bigger than Apple and Samsung put together - and growing! [blogs.com]

              If they had just put all their weight behind MeeGo, you can bet your ass it would still be a major platform today, probably ahead of iOS.

        • And they should hate Huawei. Huawei stole billions in intellectual property from Western countries. Canada alone lost a hundred billion when Huawei robbed Nortel networks and put them out of business.

          Citation needed.

          And please say something about Nortel's Cultureof Arrogance [www.cbc.ca] that contributed to its failure.

          It appears, you, like most western pundits, look for someone to blame for failures or incompetency.

          • I will say something about Nortel's culture of arrogance. I worked in telecom for over 25 years. Individual contributors with a Nortel background could be usually be reworked into competent engineers. No manager at any level with a Nortel management position on their resume, whether Canada or NC, was in my experience, anything other than a worthless to actively harmful piece of shit.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          According to Wikipedia that is all speculation and innuendo. There is no proof at all, although I wouldn't be surprised if it was partially true, along with European companies also stealing their trade secrets, and probably US ones as well, and maybe even Japanese and Israeli.

          Industrial espionage is widespread and many state level actors are involved. The Snowden leaks showed that the NSA has active programmes aimed at stealing such information from supposed allies, and that's hard proof unlike the rumours

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • > Tell me how US is a free market country and not one where government funds corporations.

      You do know that the libertarians have been complaining about government interference in the markets for at least seventy years, right? And most of them are against corporations (government-fictions). Go read some Rothbard.

      You're probably thinking about Republicans who love to talk about the "free market". The libertarians either complain about the lack of one (constantly or actually create free markets (e.g. Silk

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      Well, when you work for this alleged administration, suddenly all sorts of endeavors become possible, even if they smack of government control of the means of production. All they need do is promise it is making America stronger since it boxes out the Chinese. The Republicans in Congress, having no principles left, will march in lockstep..."Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war...", "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition".

  • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:09PM (#59699356)

    They should have pushed for this, I don't know... a few years ago, when 5G was still in development?

    • They should have pushed for this, I don't know... a few years ago, when 5G was still in development?

      It is not just 5G.

      Huawei has been infesting all telecoms standards organizations for more than 10 years. There are working groups in the IETF where out of 10 people you have 5-6 Huawei employees, 2-3 people who pretend to be independent, but are actually on the Huawei consulting payroll, one or two Chinese telecoms operators people and at most one person from elsewhere.

      This has been going on for 10 years now. Every single Telecoms technology is stuffed to the gills with Huawei IPR. It is all under RAND

      • 2G was a patent shitfight. 3G was even worse, 4G bad. Look at H265 or Bluray. Previously lots of people guffawed over DDR ram standards morphing to a patent monopoly tax. China then realised it have to pay be be on the game to get mutual licencing relief. Get over so called IP theft, because much of 5G is standards and protocols, which should not be patentable. QAM patents have long expired, being used in the military, and submarining/rebirthed/gifted to USA big players. If you look at 5G is is just a nat
  • And about 20 years too late for Ericsson.

    • Is Sagem still making phones?
    • And about 20 years too late for Ericsson.

      I think they're talking about the network and you can get that from ericsson today https://www.ericsson.com/en/5g [ericsson.com] (with a nice spinning globe that shows their current 5g deployment). Ericsson partnered and later sold their handset business to sony. Nokia also sells 5g networks https://www.nokia.com/networks... [nokia.com] but afaik (and I might be wrong on that) their mobile phones is just re-branded chinese designs.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      As for Nokia, everyone knows MS put that plant in as CEO to cripple Nokia so they could buy it cheap and then Windows anal probe 10 pretty much killed it as a phone company. They were warned again and again about the consequences of off shoring production to China so they could break the backs of Unions in the USA, it would not work like they thought and now well, it';s all to fucking late and don't they dare deny for one second that they were warned over and over again, but choose instead to listen to the

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        I don't think MS put that plant in Nokia. I think he was just a clueless dolt that somehow passed off his Microsoft resume as constituting actual work experience. Nokia's board, having jumped the shark in the preceding years and losing control of their market and their company, decided on a Hail Mary pass. When it failed, and MS came calling, the dolt merely reverted to his previous training. It's all he knew.

    • I was wrong, before the european markets opened it was made clear that the meaning was investment in the publicly traded shares. Currently ericsson is up about 4.5% and nokia 5.5% so at least some people believe it to be true (the us markets hasn't opened yet)

    • How is it too late for Ericsson? They no longer make phones but they make telecom equipment which is what the AG is talking about. Especially these days, the big deployments are 5G equipment which is Huawei’s dominance.
  • The U.S. Attorney has no credibility with me. As far as I can tell everything is says is a lie.
  • Under the Trump administration, the U.S. government has been forbidding consumers from purchasing products from Huawei and preventing companies from selling or licensing technologies to Chinese companies. Both of those activities go against the concept of free markets. Now, they're suggesting U.S. companies should invest or buy other foreign technologies to combat the Chinese technologies. For a right-wing government, they're sure doing a lot to interfere with the markets.
    • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday February 06, 2020 @06:35PM (#59699498) Journal
      Most free marketeers recognise the need for state intervention in the market, to guard against rogue players. Valid reasons for doing so include national security, countering state subsidies or other things that distort the free market.
      • or other things that distort the free market.

        Ironically the the state is universally guilty of the latter when intervening.

        The GP missed something critical: Free marketeers aren't the norm. Rather they are ignorant of the term they use when actually they describe their desire to have a perfect market, not a free market. The former is good, competition, choice, low prices, high efficiency. The latter is bad as its only stable state is a singular monopoly.

        State intervention is a necessity in all "free" markets in order for a perfect market to exist.

    • Trump isn't pure right-wing. He's this weird populist blend of left and right wing politics. He supports many of the things the right does, like religious liberties, less regulation, etc. But he also supports many of the things the left does, like limiting free trade, protecting domestic jobs, etc.

      In this particular case (not that I agree with this idea), his administration is not advocating investing in a foreign company for the sake of propping it up (corporate welfare). It's advocating it as a cou
      • Huawei products are sold for less than production cost. That means that Huawei is not the product of a free market, but if state manipulation. The principles of âoemarket worshipâ do not apply.

      • religious liberties

        You misspelled "Sanctioning of discrimination based on religious beliefs" there.

        • by gtall ( 79522 )

          Bless you, Pence is right proud of their record in showing foreigners the love of Jesus Christ. Hell, they even go so far as to transport the migrants lovingly back to some other country as they are clearly lost and only entered the U.S. because they heard nice things about it and decided it would be a great place to work.

    • by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      "Under the Trump administration, the U.S. government has been forbidding consumers from purchasing products from Huawei ..."

      Funny, how is it that you can go and buy their products right now? Please get your facts straight.

    • by gtall ( 79522 )

      The alleged administration has no right-wing or left-wing "principles" as you indicate they have. They are merely a collection of guys going in 8 different directions at the same time with no game plan. Hell, even the orange pastry acknowledged that if China were to kow-tow to the U.S. on trade, he'd lift restrictions on Huawei. Everything the alleged administration is does is transactional; if it helps the orange pastry in the short term, its a go. This is why they never calculate secondary and ternary eff

  • A = politically communicated technology risk level
    B = actual technology risk level

    If I had any reason to believe that the relationship between A and B was anything other than random, I might be tempted to take what these politicians are saying about technology sourcing seriously.

    I have no reason to believe that A relates in any way to B though. The people communicating don't know what they're talking about on a technical level, and are completely politically motivated. They have zero credibility.
  • Or is it corporate welfare that works? Corporate welfare works. Socialism is, after all, a form of capitalist corporate welfare in which the CEO is a thug politician with zero experience in business who has command over the police.

  • We are marching towards fascism where the government picks and chooses winners and is led by a dictator [merriam-webster.com].

    • The Chinese government subsidizes huawei heavily and engages in massive intellectual property theft. The west needs to aggressively counter this somehow if they want to have stupid things like industry

  • China engages in a modern form of realpolitik- 1. identify what will be critical industries in the future 2. Locate the key players 3. Relentlessly steal from the key players 4. Copy 5. Use state subsidies to make competitors

  • Does this need to be said yet again

    When companies do nothing but chase short term profit at the expense of everything else, this is were you end up. hoping your government will bail you out even though the company pays next to nothing in taxes.

  • ... United States and its allies should consider investing ...

    Translation: The champion of 'winner take all' capitalism is horrified that the winner will be a country it can't bully into obedience. Think of all those computing devices that will have someone else's back-doors.

  • I have tons of stock in Nokia. Go ahead! Make my day.
  • The US will be far better off without this partisan clown. First he defends Trump instead of the country and now he wants to throw taxpayer money into private coffers? Fuck all that. Let the market decide it you moron.
  • The problem with being a serial liar, cheat and fraud is no one believes anything you say. There's always the nagging question of what corrupt practice is backing any statement he makes.

The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the `social sciences' is: some do, some don't. -- Ernest Rutherford

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