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Huawei swap-out in UK has become a costly and tortuous slog

Huawei have undeniably contributed massively to 5G technology. A lot of very smart people went to work for them. One of their smartest engineers went to work for them because he was denied a US visa. I suppose it's all academic anyway, it's not like any of us has any say in what the government chooses to do. I dislike spying, but spies are gonna spy. I dislike any attempt to destroy our privacy or weaken encryption etc and I don't buy their reasons for wanting to do so. I've got Huawei kit, and i'm fine with it. I think if they were spying on people (which would kinda destroy their business too) then someone in the CyberSec industry would have spotted it. We wasted a lot of money and manhours and are continuing to do so because an orange man said Huawei bad.. with no proof of anything .. Just my 2 pence.
 
I do agree Huawei did some great work, had amazing engineers and made some great innovative projects in their time

But the risk of putting our communications through them doesn’t make sense,
I’m sure their tech teams were devastated by the ruling and I feel bad for them, but we need secure communications and that’s before the supply chain issues that could come from Taiwan
 
I do agree Huawei did some great work, had amazing engineers and made some great innovative projects in their time

But the risk of putting our communications through them doesn’t make sense,
I’m sure their tech teams were devastated by the ruling and I feel bad for them, but we need secure communications and that’s before the supply chain issues that could come from Taiwan
I suppose we could go over this many times, but i'll just leave this thought. The US spied on Angela Merkel's phone calls, and the Americans gave Russians our number of nukes, serial numbers and locations. Does that sound like an ally? I know it's easy to trust Western brands like Nokia for example, or Ericsson. But they could just as easily be bought and paid for by a hostile entity and/or have malware put on their equipment. We shouldn't trust ANY brand. We should verify. Know the layout of the hardware, know the firmware, know the software and at the same time be watching vigilantly. I do agree that we should be careful with national infrastructure. Very much so. But we should be the ones reading the source code and flashing the ROMs etc.
 
A country can't wait until there's a proof that something has happened to take action. By then it's too late.

Everyone knows the risks and so everyone picks what is safer for them.

Right now it's safer for Russia to use Chinese equipment, not because they trust Huawei more, but because if there's a chain of exploits that gives you full access, it's China - a friendly country - that has access, not the "west".

I think many of us look at this from a personal point of view... I want fast 5G and good phones, use a ZTE router, so why ban Huawei? The different institutions that manage a country are worried about other things... among them are the risks of using equipment from a possible enemy. They don't care if a peasant like me uses a Huawei (which I can buy today) instead of an iPhone.

There are no good players here. They all spy, even the Vatican. But being spied by a friendly country is not as bad as being spied by an hostile country and that's how "west aligned countries" end up with Cisco/Nokia/Ericsson and China/Russia aligned countries end up with Huawei and ZTE.
 
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but how do you know Nokia and Ericsson etc are safe?

Nokia and Ericsson are not safe. You don't control any of it so the risk is there, that's why the Chinese don't want to use Nokia and Ericsson and why we don't want to use Huawei and ZTE.

What you seem to be missing is that, from a country's point of view, Nokia and Ericsson are from friendly countries. The UK won't be involved in any wars or trade disputes with Sweden and Finland. They are part of the same organisations we are. They are not doing anything near areas we control. We even design weapons together!

So, and since it's expensive and hard to develop alternatives just by ourselves, we buy their equipment.

This is why we and the Germans use Cisco equipment even though the US spied on Angela Merkel... We're unlikely to be in a conflict against the US.

If things worked the way you expect them to work, no one in Europe would buy UK products because we've spied on EU countries... but for them the UK isn't as bad as Russia or China, so they deal with us and we deal with them, and we all keep spying on each other because that's what countries do.

You look at the US and think they're a terrible choice and that we should use stuff from China because they haven't had leaks yet (unless you think they're special and don't/won't do what everyone does) or develop our alternatives (very expensive). A country on the other hand looks at the US/Finland/Sweden/China and has to decide which option is less risky for them. For the UK, the US/Finland/Sweden are the best choice.

Do you think Taiwan isn't aware about the hardcoded passwords on some American equipment? Or the NSA stuff? Of course they know, but the threat is China, not the US... so they use Cisco and Juniper, not Huawei. Same with Ukraine... they're not securing their networks with Huawei firewalls.
 
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all fair points, many of which I agree with. But the fact is we DID go with Huawei.
then for some reason (Trump) we didn't. There were security teams checking over Huawei's kit and found nothing (unless someone has proof in which case I'd like to read about it - genuinely). I'd also agree that you can look at it from a country point of view and say someone like Sweden is a more trustworthy partner. But again, we DID go with Huawei. And that kit still exists in many cases.

It just seems to me like a knee-jerk reaction based on what one person said, without any proof. If we didn't trust Huawei, why did we pick them for 5G rollout and continue to use them for many years? I think (personal opinion) that the UK gov was desperate to kiss US behind and asked "how high" when told to jump by them.

And my own preference for Huawei kit doesn't have any bearing on my thoughts for using them in Telcos etc. LOTS of Chinese kit is used in many places. I'm quite sure you'd find Chinese kit in say the NHS for example. If we don't trust China because we think their corporate structures are entwined with the CCP, then why Huawei, why not all of it?

But I don't want to step on any toes here, I honestly respect people's opinions and I'm not trying to even defend Huawei here. I just found it odd that there's no proof of any wrongdoing, we chose their kit , and then because bestest ally said they're bad, we now think they're evil.
 
all fair points, many of which I agree with. But the fact is we DID go with Huawei.
then for some reason (Trump) we didn't. There were security teams checking over Huawei's kit and found nothing (unless someone has proof in which case I'd like to read about it - genuinely). I'd also agree that you can look at it from a country point of view and say someone like Sweden is a more trustworthy partner. But again, we DID go with Huawei. And that kit still exists in many cases.

It just seems to me like a knee-jerk reaction based on what one person said, without any proof. If we didn't trust Huawei, why did we pick them for 5G rollout and continue to use them for many years? I think (personal opinion) that the UK gov was desperate to kiss US behind and asked "how high" when told to jump by them.

And my own preference for Huawei kit doesn't have any bearing on my thoughts for using them in Telcos etc. LOTS of Chinese kit is used in many places. I'm quite sure you'd find Chinese kit in say the NHS for example. If we don't trust China because we think their corporate structures are entwined with the CCP, then why Huawei, why not all of it?

But I don't want to step on any toes here, I honestly respect people's opinions and I'm not trying to even defend Huawei here. I just found it odd that there's no proof of any wrongdoing, we chose their kit , and then because bestest ally said they're bad, we now think they're evil.

Not long ago we were welcoming Russian oligarchs, selling them football clubs, newspapers, houses in London, etc. Now we don't, at least not as much. Russia's behaviour changed, they killed a few people in the UK, invaded Ukraine, funneled money to certain parties, and we slowly reacted to that.

China has changed a lot too. This is not the China from the 90's and Xi Jinping isn't like previous leaders, especially in this new stint. Look at their claims in the south China sea, what's already happening with some countries, and then look at their military build-up... independently of what Trump (someone I dislike a lot) says, it does look like there will be trouble in the Pacific. And like any powerful country, they'll use their influence, spy, bribe, use sanctions, wage war, etc. We should prepare for that.

And so we react to this change. Not easy when there's so much money flowing around and we always move slowly, but we have to look at Huawei, Three, the power grid, how much of our debt they own, if we should buy their security cameras and DJI drones, and so on.

The reason I don't need to see a backdoor on Huawei equipment is simple. We know what the Americans are up to, according to leaks we are a bit naughty as well, and it's only natural that the Chinese do the same. All you need is a handful of updates with well-crafted bugs that can only be triggered under very specific conditions and with that chain of small, innocent bugs, you have full access to a firewall or something like that. Essentially, you don't want to use equipment that can be exploited by a potential enemy.

I like to be realistic when it comes to this stuff. The UK is part of the west, part of NATO, we work with mainland Europe and the US. We're not going to join some security pact that Russia or China have. In a new cold war, this will be our block. If sh*t hits the fan, these are going to be our partners. And that's why it's acceptable to us and others in this block to use potentially insecure technology from "friendly" countries like Finland and Sweden, but not from China. Others in other parts of the world will avoid our tech for the same and other reasons.

Anyway, it's just my opinion, probably a bit flawed.

Now, I think it's fair to ask why Huawei, but not OPPO or Xiaomi. Was the network stuff the main problem? And why did everyone go crazy over 5G? Us being behind China on 5G reminded me of Dr. Strangelove's "mine shaft gap" 😂. I guess politicians and journalists were worried about us not having self-driving cars, remote surgeries over 5G, and whatever 5G was going to unlock back then 😂. A lot of people still don't understand what 5G is because of how it was presented a few years ago.
 
It's all about how our interests align more closely with the US than with China. If China invades Taiwan, we will support Taiwan, and the CCP will not be happy about it. Our options will be severely limited if we rely heavily on their equipment for our infrastructure.

We can't depend on Huawei to not doing bad deeds because it would harm its commercial interests. In China, even private companies must establish communist party committees and are bound by stringent regulations that serve the CCP's interests first.
 
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Huawei have undeniably contributed massively to 5G technology. A lot of very smart people went to work for them. One of their smartest engineers went to work for them because he was denied a US visa. I suppose it's all academic anyway, it's not like any of us has any say in what the government chooses to do. I dislike spying, but spies are gonna spy. I dislike any attempt to destroy our privacy or weaken encryption etc and I don't buy their reasons for wanting to do so. I've got Huawei kit, and i'm fine with it. I think if they were spying on people (which would kinda destroy their business too) then someone in the CyberSec industry would have spotted it. We wasted a lot of money and manhours and are continuing to do so because an orange man said Huawei bad.. with no proof of anything .. Just my 2 pence.
Don't think anyone doubts the technical merit, the Chinese have been excellent, but on the background of heightened international tensions, I think it makes sense to remove non-ally technology from critical infrastructure.
 
potentially insecure technology from "friendly" countries like Finland and Sweden
so what then, when Russia potentially attacks and takes over Finland and/or Sweden?

...because if Ukraine hadn't become a 'sticking point' for Russia that's where they was heading, potentially.
 
so what then, when Russia potentially attacks and takes over Finland and/or Sweden?

...because if Ukraine hadn't become a 'sticking point' for Russia that's where they was heading, potentially.
The problem is that Nokia and Ericsson are hardly Swedish or Finnish anymore, or indeed European. You'll find they depend critically on Chinese hardware and Indian staff - also at the very top - (like a lot of other companies) and all sorts of complex supply chains. They are very vulnerable to outside influences.
 
Huawei have stolen a lot of technology and patents, as copyright law doesn't apply in China.

Their founders were members of the Chinese Communist Party and have been involved in internal espionage.

The simple question is, can they be trusted. The answer is obviously, no.

Saying that "we should keep them because the US also spy" is not a defence. And anyway, China is infinitely more dangerous and nefarious than the US will ever been. China has never been an ally.

Somebody said this was like the Cold War. It's much worse than that with the amount of technology and resource China have - and sadly which the UK has supported. Time to shut it all down now.
 
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Saying that "we should keep them because the US also spy" is not a defence. And
literally nobody in this thread said this.
point was there's no evidence of any wrong doing by them. And we went with Huawei and paid a lot of money for the kit then we started to rip it out because of Trump. But im repeating myself. What happens if one day Trump says Ericsson is bad?
 
I'd just like to make a small statement to clear up any potential misunderstandings.
While I have Huawei kit and i'm fine with that, I am not advocating that China / Huawei or anything is totally fine and we should blindly trust them. Far from it. In fact, if you look at my earlier post I suggested we should not trust ANY of them. Huawei, Nokia, Ericsson etc. We should be scruitinising ALL vendors, and we should (and we do) have teams like GCHQ etc who do check over these things.

However, I also think we should not jump when the US wants to sanction someone they don't like without any proof.

We did pay for Huawei.
We did have security teams looking into everything Huawei did.
Those teams found nothing.

BUT I am not shilling for Huawei here. The internet is an inherintly insecure medium, and that's why things like TLS and Encryption exist. We chose a vendor, in this case Huawei, and we ripped it all out on the insistence of one man who said it was bad. Without a single shred of evidence. And it delayed our 5G rollout and cost us, the consumer, a lot of money and the telcos a lot of money to fix it.

I'm not suggesting we just trust China or Huawei. I don't trust the US either, but that's not the concern at the moment nor have I ever made the case that we should or should not keep someone because the US also spies.

Everyone spies.
In the words of the X-Files ... "Trust no one".
 
Know the layout of the hardware, know the firmware, know the software and at the same time be watching vigilantly.
The trouble is that systems these days are so incredibly complex, and have so many dependencies. They are certainly full of flaws (mostly unintentional, maybe some covertly added). There's no way to eliminate them, but plenty of bad actors looking for them and exploiting them.

When I started with 8-bit computers in the late 1970's / early 1980's, the OS was a few kilobytes of ROM and you could understand the whole thing top to bottom. These days, even a "hello world" binary typically takes 1MB+, and an OS is 10GB+

On top of this, you add BIOS software, FPGAs and custom silicon in high-end routing equipment, the management backdoors intentionally installed in CPUs by the likes of Intel, and cache timing attacks.
 
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