New administration, same policy about Huawei

This is from zdnet; the forum won’t let me paste the URL, but it’s easily found by search.

US President Biden signs law to ban Huawei and ZTE from receiving FCC licences

The Secure Equipment Act of 2021 received bipartisan support prior to it being signed by Biden.

US President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law bipartisan legislation that will ban companies like Huawei and ZTE from getting approval for network equipment licences in the US.

The legislation, Secure Equipment Act of 2021, will require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt new rules that clarify it will no longer review or approve any authorisation applications for networking equipment that pose national security threats.

Conversation 13 comments

  • Greg Green

    14 November, 2021 - 10:14 am

    <p>More xenophobic unilateralism from Trump. Yep, that’s what it is.</p><p><br></p><p>thurrot is as bad at politics as he is legal decisions. But we still love him, sort of.</p>

    • jchampeau

      Premium Member
      14 November, 2021 - 10:50 am

      <p>Thurrott is neither the past president, current president, nor chair of the FCC. And he didn’t start this thread. So why make this about his politics?</p>

      • yaddamaster

        14 November, 2021 - 12:42 pm

        <p>Because Paul has made comments in the past during the Trump administration about his alleged xenophobia. Paul is obviously entitled to his opinion, it’s his website, and he’s commenting on technology. I personally don’t mind it (even if I disagree) as long as it doesn’t turn into Ars. That site became completely unreadable – especially the comments section.</p><p><br></p><p>I’m guessing the OP here was simply pointing out that despite Trump’s rhetoric frequently being over the top, unfiltered, and often unecessary – his approach is roughly consistent with the Biden administration. Most sane people recognize the Chinese threat – the question is what to do about it.</p>

        • wright_is

          Premium Member
          15 November, 2021 - 2:30 am

          <p>Presidents change, three letter agencies and lobbyists remain the same…</p><p><br></p><p>Politics has little to do with what is right or wrong, just how can you protect your government budget allocations or get more business for their employer.</p><p><br></p><p>It is the same all over the world. Just look at the UK at the moment, multiple scandals about chums of the cabinet getting contracts for COVID testing, masks etc. with no counter bidding, in some cases, they set up new companies with no track record to win those contracts.</p><p><br></p><p>General running down of the water treatment systems, to the point where the water companies are paying out huge bonuses to share holders and board members, but only because they have managed to run the companies so far down, that they pump raw sewage direct into the rivers and onto beaches and, because they are friends with the government, there is no blowback, at least not politically, just a, literal, social media shitstorm.</p>

  • Daishi

    Premium Member
    14 November, 2021 - 4:18 pm

    <p><em>"noting will fundamentally change"</em></p><p><em>-Joe Biden, 2019.</em></p><p><br></p><p>Anyone that actually thought a Biden administration was going to be different really hasn’t been paying attention. For the majority of centrist, MSNBC watching, liberal Democrats the problem with Trump was all about style, not substance, and all the people that make up the party machine today are just Reagan Republicans with some strategically placed dabs of greenwash and performative Wokeness.</p>

    • jchampeau

      Premium Member
      14 November, 2021 - 9:08 pm

      <p>Except when he wouldn’t condemn white supremacy when the guy killed the counter-protestor in Charlottesville, said the thing about "Bad Hombres," and all the other overtly racist things he said when he was president. In those instances, it was very much about substance. I reject both parties and contend that they themselves are part of the problem we have because they perpetuate this culture of contempt, so I don’t really have a dog in this fight (though I was a republican before I switched to independent). My issue with Trump was based largely on the fact that he’s an awful human being; and not much on his policies. I’ve read both of Comey’s recent books, John Bolton’s, Michael Cohen’s, just finished "Peril" by Woodward/Costa, and several others. When that many people all write essentially the same thing about someone, and they all align with what you see that person tweet, say, and write, you get a pretty clear picture. And that picture undeniably includes xenophobia, whether or not it had anything to do with the Huawei ban specifically.</p>

      • Daishi

        Premium Member
        15 November, 2021 - 2:26 am

        <p><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">My issue with Trump was based largely on the fact that he’s an awful human being; and not much on his policies.</em></p><p><br></p><p>So, in other words, a President that did all the same things as Trump, but just wrapped it up in a more professional, presentable package, without the 3am Tweeting, bloviating and inexplicable pomposity and with enough self awareness not to say the quiet parts out loud, would have been just fine by you?</p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> I mean, thanks for making my point for me, I guess. And just proving that it applies to centrist liberals of all colours.</span></p>

        • StevenLayton

          15 November, 2021 - 7:34 am

          <p>Yeah, its human nature though. I’m sure he did some positive and good things during his four years. But the problem is that from the outside (UK), looking in, he was such a fundenntally flawed human being, its very difficult to see past that. A good leader shouldn’t be that divisive. Heck look at our own political situation to highlight that, as has been mentioned already!</p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        15 November, 2021 - 2:58 am

        <p>That is one of the things I like with the German government, it isn’t perfect, by a long shot. But there has never been a majority government, it has always been a coalition. </p><p><br></p><p>The biggest party, Merkel’s CDU/CSU lost so much this time round, that they are not in a position to for a government – their worst result since their founding, I believe.</p><p><br></p><p>But it has always been at least 2, if not more parties that have joined together to form a majority. This time round, it looks like it with the "traffic light" coalition of SPD (party colour red), FDP (party colour yellow) and Green/B90 Bündnis (you got it, green). And the biggest one has something like 26% of the seats.</p><p><br></p><p>This means that no one party has the complete say over the politics, they have to make an agreement for what is best for all parties involved, and therefore, hopefully, a better representation of the people.</p><p><br></p><p>That makes it very hard to get partisan bullshit through, just to damage the another party’s standing, for example. "No, we will undo the good work of the previous government, just because we don’t like them!" Because you need the buy-in from several parties, you have to really define why you think it was a bad decision and mark out exactly how you will remedy the situation.</p><p><br></p><p>That throws out a lot of the capricious pettiness that you often see by government changes in the USA.</p><p><br></p><p>"We are going to revoke this policy!"</p><p>"Why? What is wrong with it?</p><p>"Our predecessors put it through!"</p><p>"Yes, but what is wrong with it?"</p><p>"It wasn’t put through by us!"</p><p><br></p><p>When they can make that sort of argument and get away with it, you know the system is broken.</p><p><br></p><p>(And I deliberately didn’t mention names, because over the last 40 years or so, both sides in the USA have been involved in this sort of pettiness to the detriment of the nation as a whole.)</p>

      • casualadventurer

        14 December, 2021 - 2:15 pm

        <p>Actually, Trump did in fact condemn white supremacy many times, and didn’t equate white supremacists with others in that speech. If you have a chance look it up, listen to the whole context, and stop watching MSNBC who edits audio/video to intentionally mislead its viewers. I understand that all networks have a bias, but MSNBC is on the level of Al Jezera — worthless.</p>

  • geoff

    14 November, 2021 - 6:45 pm

    <p>Like it or not, it’s worth noting that the statement is very clear in what it bans: NETWORK equipment.</p><p><br></p><p>What isn’t clear is why Huawei (and ZTE) HANDSETS are also banned.</p><p><br></p><p>Come on. Do we really think that the US telephony network can be compromised by one rogue handset running a licensed version of Android? Are you sure? (And if you *do* think that, will banning sale of Huawei and ZTE handsets solve the problem?)</p><p><br></p><p>Ban the network equipment if that makes you feel secure. Sure, go ahead. (Because, hey, the Chinese would never hack other brands of equipment, so you’re safe. Riiiiiiight.) Banning Android handsets shows that this is a trade war thing, not a security thing.</p><p><br></p><p>Surely there’s a court somewhere that resolves trade disputes like this one. It’s time they got involved, because this one has been dragging on for too long.</p><p><br></p><p>The USA isn’t ‘winning’. China isn’t ‘winning’. Samsung is probably the only beneficiary of this, and they’re South Korean.</p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      15 November, 2021 - 3:11 am

      <p>Given that most handsets, regardless of manufacturer, are often put together in the same factories, it makes little difference, the Chinese government could perform a supply-chain attack and "infect" any handsets they want, even Apple and Google branded ones.</p><p><br></p><p>It might be harder to get away with, but once in the open market, unless the brand performs random spot checks on devices coming out of the factories and really monitors them down to the n-th degree, it would be hard to spot anyway.</p><p><br></p><p>The problem I have is that the US Government say that Huawei/ZTE etc. are bad and can’t be used, but refuse to give reasons why they are bad. The UK and Europe have studied the source code from Huawei products for well over a decade and have found no backdoors, malware etc. just some security holes, like all other products.</p><p><br></p><p>Europe is also starting to block them from critical infrastructure, but not on the "they are bade, because we say so," but on the grounds that they don’t want to be beholden to a third country, so they are using Nokia and Ericsson for a lot of the infrastructure.</p><p><br></p><p>That sort of argument makes sense and has good reasons why you don’t want to use them for critical infrastructure. The "<em>clarify it will no longer review or approve any authorisation applications for networking equipment that pose national security threats.</em>" is nebulous and doesn’t define what national security threats these companies specifically are displaying, when the rest of the world has minutely examined the equipment and found nothing. </p>

  • lvthunder

    Premium Member
    14 November, 2021 - 8:05 pm

    <p>The government probably knows more then they have released to the public like I said during the Trump Administration.</p>

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