UK bans Huawei purchases

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/14/uk-bans-huawei-purchases.html

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Welcome to Global Britain. Failing to project power between rocks and a hard places since 2016.

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Isn’t that the standard business model for up and coming companies these days?

Is Huawei “up and coming”? they were founded in 1987 and overtook Ericsson in 2012

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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china-steal-canada-s-edge-in-5g-from-nortel

Did a Chinese Hack Kill Canada’s Greatest Tech Company?

Nortel was once a world leader in wireless technology. Then came a hack and the rise of Huawei.

The Nortel people I’ve known confirm this. Why we haven’t banned Huawei in Canada is beyond me.

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UK smacks Huawei with banhammer: Buying firm’s 5G gear illegal from year-end, mobile networks ordered to rip out all Huawei next-gen kit by 2027

Confirming the decision, Oliver Dowden MP, the Secretary of State for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), claimed that further US sanctions on Huawei imposed in May had a “significant, material” change on the firm’s ability to supply the UK market.

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For the Tory Brexit Boys “taking back control” always ends up meaning: what does daddy want us to do?

You know what the US will do to reward you boys? It will fuck you over again and again and you have proved you will say “thank you sir, may I have another?”

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Special relationship.

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Trump gloats, telcos weep, and China is furious: How things stand following UK’s decision to rip out Huawei

This pressure has also come from the highest echelon in US politics, with President Donald Trump using the 2019 G7 meeting in France to pressure Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ban Huawei.

It would have been prudent for the US to take a more measured approach. One of the major arguments for the UK leaving the EU was, after all, sovereignty. Being too heavy-handed would prompt many to assume the UK had resumed the “poodle” role it occupied during the Bush-Blair years, with Britain an inferior partner in the transatlantic “special relationship”.

If self awareness of those concerns ever existed in Washington, they’ve clearly gone out the window since the announcement of the ban, with Trump telling reporters at a news conference in the White House Rose Garden yesterday: “I did this myself.”

“I talked many countries out of using it. If they want to do business with us, they can’t use it. Just today, I believe the UK announced they’re not going to be using it.”

In short: Trump did everything except ask “who’s a good boy?” and hand Johnson a Schmacko.

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Canada’s probably going to ban it without officially banning it. Effectively the telcos have already done it for them.

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I don’t think that Chinese telco equipment is something that the U.S. the UK, Canada, or any country should be using. There are other companies that make that kind of equipment that don’t have ties to dictatorships like China that engage in ethnic cleansing. The hemming and hawing and hand wringing I’ve seen around comments sections about what kind of evidence the U.S. and UK and others have for this ban pisses me off because, like… you can just look at China’s track record on various things over the last couple decades. You can look at that and come to the conclusion that, hey, maybe one doesn’t need a 200-page report or whatever to come to the conclusion that using Chinese telco equipment in your 5G networks is a bad idea.

To be clear, the UK government aren’t doing this because of scruples. They’re doing it because they’re playing their self imposed bit-part in order to serve the changing world order, in this case being the US’s puppy dog.

If they had scruples, they’d have banned arms sales to Saudi Arabia as a first action.

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I know that. I’d read the articles about it on Ars and on The Register. None of that has changed my mind. If it serves as a way to keep China from growing its reach and technological soft power, then in this particular instance, I’m fine with the UK being strung along by the U.S. on this.

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