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US Blacklists Dozens of Chinese Firms Including SMIC (reuters.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the breaking-news dept.
The United States confirmed on Friday it will add dozens of Chinese companies, including the country's top chipmaker, SMIC, and Chinese drone giant DJI to a trade blacklist. From a report: The move, which was first reported by Reuters, is seen as the latest in President Donald Trump's efforts to cement his tough-on-China legacy. It comes just weeks before Democratic President-elect Joe Biden is set to take office on Jan. 20. The U.S. Commerce Department confirmed the decision early Friday, saying the action "stems from China's military-civil fusion (MCF) doctrine and evidence of activities between SMIC and entities of concern in the Chinese military industrial complex." Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the department would "not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary." Ross said the government would presumptively deny licenses to prevent SMIC from accessing technology to produce semiconductors at advanced technology levels -- 10 nanometers or below.
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US Blacklists Dozens of Chinese Firms Including SMIC More

US Blacklists Dozens of Chinese Firms Including SMIC

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  • Great now add (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @10:50AM (#60844940)
    Russia to the list of harsh sanctions, including piling on the financial sanctions. That Solarwinds attack has compromised US security a thousand times more than anything the Chinese have done in three decades. I say that as a person who, in real life, has said enough publicly about China that I'm not welcome to visit the country aka I'll never get a visa.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by bobby ( 109046 )

      That Solarwinds attack has compromised US security a thousand times more than anything the Chinese have done in three decades.

      Solarwinds' crappy software and indifference to software quality control has compromised US security a thousand times more than anything the Chinese have done in three decades.

      FTFY.

      That, and corporations and governments adopting such software that has huge administrative rights and access to critical servers and systems, without doing enough testing of said software. I know that's hindsight, but we've been down this road before, and I have to wonder how many other attacks are occurring right now due to wi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Manager dude 1: This security stuff is serious business. Everything runs on software we bought from someone else and don't really understand. Who knows how secure it is? If it gets hacked we're screwed. What do we do?

        Manager dude 2: Buy some security software!

        • Re:Great now add (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Inglix the Mad ( 576601 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @01:07PM (#60845426)

          Manager dude 1: This security stuff is serious business. Everything runs on software we bought from someone else and don't really understand. Who knows how secure it is? If it gets hacked we're screwed. What do we do?

          Manager dude 2: Buy some security software!

          To be fair, unless you're going to hire a team of developers to write your own software you're going to have serious vulnerabilities and software (not to mention the hardware!) that you have no clue about, nor remotely understand. Then to be 100% fair, even if you hire a team of developers, you're just creating the vulnerabilities in-house. About the best thing we can do is split things up and limit access, the tried and true model. This is why many companies I know had Solarwinds for monitoring, but were using other tools for actual device management. However, can you say that those tools haven't been compromised as well? Nope. You do your patches, in the hopes that it prevents vulnerabilities ironically enough, and cross fingers. Then you use software / hardware to watch other software/hardware.

          • There is a balance point between "everyone has to roll their own so they all have bad security with easy vulnerabilities" and "everyone runs the same platform so a single vulnerability exploits everyone". We need a variety of well-studied tools, enough to create an ecosystem.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shanen ( 462549 )

              I think you should have followed your own thinking about "everyone runs the same platform" and considered the general and massive vulnerability created by any extremely dominant player. At least it sounds like you were focused on the "well-studied [security] tools" rather than the underlying cancer of Windows.

              My take would be that the design philosophy of Windows is backwards and insane. ONLY install the functions and components that each user needs. It's okay if the mechanism for adding new functionality i

              • You make some reasonable points, but I think you replied to the wrong thread maybe? I honestly have no idea what Windows-v-Linux content youâ(TM)re referencing.

                • To a degree the entire discussion is misplaced, but I took your context to be relatively narrow, focusing on security software (being discussed by network admins) to cover the flaws of the underlying OSes. I preferred to cut to the root of the problem, which is that the widespread use of highly vulnerable OSes creates the extremely attractive targets. Using the old eggs in the basket metaphor, you were talking about watching the basket carefully, while my objection is more along the lines of having too many

                  • I actually think it is interesting that the Chinese have not been more aggressive in cyber-warfare and I often wonder why.

                    WTF? China is a very close second to Russia when it comes to cyber attacks. China is responsible for almost a third of the known attacks every year. How much more aggressive do you want them to be?

                    Given their capabilities, the (known) Chinese attacks seem quite modest.

                    You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. You could probably fix your ignorance on this topic with half an hour of research...is that a possibility? Somehow I don't think it is.

      • While I'm not a huge fan of Solarwinds overall, calling it crappy is a bit much. I mean NetworkAtlas is a pile of dog poop, but the software NPM isn't terrible. The problem is all-in-one (AIO) solutions are uniquely powerful, so when a vulnerability hits them it's powerful. Also the vulnerability level scales to what you have Solarwinds doing, but even saying it's "crappy software" and so on does not mitigate one thing in the slightest:

        The Russians attacked the US directly doing more harm than the Chines

    • I say that as a person who, in real life, has said enough publicly about China that I'm not welcome to visit the country aka I'll never get a visa.

      You don't understand.

      This makes you more likely to be granted a visa.

    • If you can't beat 'em, sue 'em! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shanen ( 462549 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @12:31PM (#60845280) Homepage Journal

      No reason for HWNNNBS (He Whose Name Need Not Be Spoken) to sanction Russia. The positive reason for ignoring Russia is that Russia is not an economic threat to the US. Russia is a kleptocracy and fake empire and fading fast. (But of course the REAL reason HWNNNBS won't touch Russia is that Putin is profitable for him and his "friends". Bribery is such an ugly word. Let's just call it discreet mutual understanding greased with a large amount of dark and dirty money. (The funny part is that the loot was stolen from the communists after they stole it from the Russian people.))

      In contrast, China does pose a true economic threat. Also a real political threat, but not because of any of this "communist" BS. There is basically nothing "communist" in today's China that would be recognized as such by Marx or Lenin. China is closer to a fascist dictatorship, but it isn't really that, either. At least not yet. Depends on how Xi's succession is handled. (Our best hope is to pray that Xi is a secret narcissist?)

      I think it's most illuminating to try to look at it from the Chinese perspective, though that's really hard because (1) the Chinese perspective is long term and we [especially Americans] are bad at long-term thinking, and (2) we [not limited to Americans but rather a rising tide in most of the world] are even worse at understanding other people's perspectives.

      China has been the "best" and the "leading" nation throughout most of history. Pick a metric, and the Chinese have led the world most of the time. The Chinese view is that they're just coming back after a couple of bad centuries. They think it's merely time for things to get back to normal. With China on top.

      A LONG time ago China developed the idea of merit-based bureaucracy administered by the wisest people in the country. They have had competitive national exams going way back, but that was only the first level of screening. The exams could only measure certain kinds of cleverness, but they have always been looking for more than cleverness. The exams gave them a head start because the clever ones were routed into government service and then gradually promoted to more powerful positions based on life-long results. Yes, the "mandate of heaven" was at an even higher level than the bureaucracy, but it was always the results that counted most.

      The Europeans blindsided China a couple of centuries ago. The Chinese view is that they had become too complacent in general and been ignoring science and technology in particular. So now the Chinese have jiggered things differently. America has managed to stay ahead by importing the best minds from around the world, but "He whose name need not be spoken" fixed that for them.

      So now the puppeteers have no better ideas than legal games? The Chinese hordes welcome our legal games. Great distraction while they stay focused on cranking out more engineers and scientists to dominate the rest of this century. And the centuries to come.

      (Relevant reading? Just got some holiday reading that may reveal a lot about America's real problems: Zucked by McNamee, The Semiotics of Emoji by Danesi, and Why We Elect Narcissists and Sociopaths by Eddy. And a tip of the TL;DR to Slashdot 2020, too.)

    • Russia to the list of harsh sanctions, including piling on the financial sanctions. That Solarwinds attack has compromised US security a thousand times more than anything the Chinese have done in three decades.

      Yeah, but you don't initiate sanctions against your boss, it's kinda bad form. In any case this has little do with "being tough on China" and everything to do with making as big a mess for Biden as he possibly can. If Biden continues with the sanctions, the US continues to get hurt (a trade war involving both sides experiencing pain until one side cries uncle, and it sure won't be China that does that). If Biden revokes them, he opens himself up to criticism about being weak on China. No matter what he

  • Actually... (Score:5, Funny)

    by The-Ixian ( 168184 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @11:10AM (#60844998)

    I believe that the term is now "Block List" ;)

  • ...Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the department would "not allow advanced U.S. technology to help build the military of an increasingly belligerent adversary."...

    You see, I sympathize because when the US executed similar "tricks" on China in the early 80s over rocket technology, the Chinese developed their own (with Russia's help though). They have now become so advanced in this field that they do not need the USA anymore.

    The Chinese are not seated still. They are a force that cannot be ignored in AI, High speed train tech and so many other fields now.

    China will prevail here. In short, it's fait accompli...

    • It's not a done deal. In specific areas of tech, sure. But the bigger picture is much murkier.

      Russia matched the US in most technological areas, but look how that great-power contest played out in the end. China's playing a bit smarter than the USSR did, but they are still treading down the same general path. As long as that's the case, the end result is likely to be the same.

      If they stick with their autocratic political system, they'll burn out and stall at the middle-income level. Just like Russi

      • I'm not holding my breath, but it would be an interesting turn of events.

        That'd be very nice, but unfortunately it goes against the bulk of Chinese history, in which any opening was seen as weakness and led to internal strife among parties wanting to become the new strong-armed absolute ruler, with a warlord or another getting the upper hand and driving the opposition away. Alas, if there's one thing Chinese politicians tend to pay a lot of attention to, it's their own history, irrespective of whatever political ideology they may follow (or pretend to follow).

        Therefore, what the

      • Russia matched the US in most technological areas, but look how that great-power contest played out in the end.

        Russia matched or exceeded the US in many pure science and math fields, but technology is the implementation of science, and Russia never came close to matching the US in technology. Much of that is due to structural challenges in the Russian economy.

        China seems to realize the importance of technology and the need for economic pathways toward technological advancement. The US never blocked Russia's market advances because Russia never showed itself to be a competent player in world markets. However, Chin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Despite the focus on the military, the US is a trade empire, and exerts control economically. Thus the emphasis on sanctions. The problem with sanctions is that if they don't work right away they tend to strengthen your enemy's resolve, lower their people's opinion of you, and drive them to become economically independent, weakening your control.

      IIRC the research suggests that if sanctions don't work within 40 days they're not going to, and the longer after that they're in place, the worse it gets.

  • Look, if China placed aggressive technology sanctions on the USA, the US would respond by spending billions to aggressively develop the technology that's being withheld. Sanctions just piss people off and give them something to challenge and defeat. And let's not forget that TSMC's 5nm node plant is located in Taiwan, ROC.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by ChunderDownunder ( 709234 )

      Each country is big enough to ride out the storm.

      Meanwhile, here in Australia we appear collateral damage. China are blacklisting entire industries due to the perception from their government that Canberra picked the wrong side.

  • taking the chinese for granted is foolish, at best !

  • Left of part of quote from TFA (Score:3)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Friday December 18, 2020 @11:56AM (#60845154)

    From TFA:

    “We urge the U.S. to cease its mistaken behavior of unwarranted oppression of foreign companies,” ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news conference in Beijing on Friday.

    "We also urge the U.S. to cease the unwarranted condeming of our warranted internal oppression of minorities" added ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.

  • The pen is mightier than the Trump!

  • Because of ongoing hacking and espionage
    Because of ongoing stealing IP
    Because of Fentanyl
    Because of unfair trade policies
    Because of the Uyghur genocide
    Because of the persecution of Falon Gong, Christians & Jews
    Because of Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan and South China Sea neighbors
    Because of Covid-19

    There are ~370k Chinese student in the US [statista.com]. Trump should expel 30k a month until these problems are dealt with.

    • Trump should expel 30k a month until these problems are dealt with.

      You do realize Trump lost right...
      In your delusion, how many months do you think he has left?

  • How dare the Chinese military industrial complex challenge the Yankee military industrial complex!

  • Why does that matter? Chinese backdoors only work below 10 nm?

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