Huawei will likely become the main competition for NSO group and companies like it, but that's the least of the worlds worries.
Governments with resource wealth don't need large public services that would operate a sophisticated intelligence service, so they outsource it. So far these governments have been doing point targeting against dissidents w/ mercenary surveillance companies, but it's possible these companies are about to be steamrolled by one that implements their products as a free feature of their entire infrastructure.
The bargain will be, we'll support your campaign/coup and modernize your infrastructure for your people, while giving you intel we collect on your dissidents and opposition. Then, once Huawei infrastructure is ensconced, no government will get into power who does not have support from China. A very "harmonious," cycle. Want be be elected again? Secure our rights to extract rare earth minerals. Etc.
The company is a projection of Chinese state power, not unlike western telcoms with 5EYES and the ITU has been. The difference is the Party lacks the sentimentality of western countries when it comes to issues of total surveillance and intervention to maintain control. (Albeit, we have never been above supporting butchers either, so YMMV.)
My prediction is that once the Huawei gear is in place, a country's political class will turn to face east on policy and resource questions. It's pure leverage. Western tech companies can't make the same promises to those governments either. It's not like Google can promise to prop up the next Idi Amin, but Huawei doesn't have that constraint. So far, the world has been content to deal with the devil it knows.
Anyway, I'd say this article is an anecdote of a larger geopolitical shift. Containing Huawei should be a national security priority for everyone, but tbh, it's looking more and more like our respective mere leviathans have become oversized, slow moving prey for their hydra.
> It's not like Google can promise to prop up the next Idi Amin
I wish this were the case, but western companies are constantly supplying both software and hardware to repressive regimes. Hell, weapons!
Though the fact that we believe that western tech companies can't make those promises means that there's at least public support for making this a reality
In Serbia it was primarily Israelis who sold all of the surveillance tech to the government, and now China seems to be pushing everyone else out of the market. It really makes a very little difference to common people, one foreign actor or the other, none of the sides is really altruistic in that game...
I think this is the real problem: China/Huawei are pushing their competition out of the "support an (oppressive) regime" business. They become the go-to partner for regimes that historically relied on western or middle-eastern partners maintaining their authority.
Maybe merely a quality choice! If you want to buy a nice car, you go for a German brand, if you want fine wine, go French, if you want software, go American, if you want an orwellian mass surveillance system, you go with the country which speciality it is!
> if you want an orwellian mass surveillance system
I think this misses the point. Countries like US or Israel are perfectly capable [0][1][2] of offering such systems. And they do because it gives them another solid "string" attached to the regime receiving it. Their problem is that now the string (and all the knowledge, power, influence that come with it) could go to China. Hence the campaign to discredit them simply by suggesting this behavior is limited to them. Putting the facts in perspective would undermine this.
Israel is very powerful and ambitious for its size, but at 8 million people they're fundamentally limited in what kind of power they can or would want to project. No matter how advanced your intelligence or military there's just so far you can go when you're so tiny.
China on the other hand has almost 8 million people for every country on Earth. Imagine how many people they could assign to messing with each country around the world if they wanted to.
Israel gets $3.8 billions worth of weapons and other military equipment every year from the US because of its vital strategic importance. If someone messes with them that would be just like messing with an US state abroad; probably nobody would want to test that possibility.
What you said about Huawei is more applicable to Boeing, which sells weapon systems instead of telecom gears. You may want to look at how US companies are involved in arm sales to Saudi.
It’s fair that US wants to contain China’s leverage in Africa and maintain its own, but this is a national security priority for US , not “everyone”.
By you do you mean 'I', or you as in 327 million individuals that make up the population of the United States? Do you think it's easy to convince a nations population to push for change, if it was then issues like climate change could be tackled overnight.
Democracy is a messy and flawed process, but it is the best we have. The fact still remains that no matter how much you bemoan the current state of affairs that there is a framework for changing things.
Sadly it has been shown the United States circa 2019 is not an ally anymore ... it is an alien country to most of us now where you have somehow elected a nativist leader who is a racist.
At this stage for us Africans the Chinese seems like a more dependable and friendlier lot.
It's still an ally, more than the Chinese will ever be.
Just wait and see, the loans you are getting ( not investments) are for Chinese workers. The loans are at 4-6% if the work isn't executed by Chinese workers.
>It's still an ally, more than the Chinese will ever be.
The US has no concept for Africa, because unlike China which uses infrastructure projects and investment as a way to offload its export surplus the US is an overwhelmingly domestic economy.
There will never be an American 'Belt and Road' because it just doesn't make much sense for a country that has so little international economic exposure, whenever the US forms alliances it is towards purely political ends. In that sense one could indeed characterise the relationship with China as more stable. No Chinese leader is suddenly going to go isolationist over the next two decades just because they feel like it.
> There will never be an American 'Belt and Road' because it just doesn't make much sense for a country that has so little international economic exposure
It's not because of a domestic economy. It's because a freight/boat is much more economical than a train and a train doesn't make any sense.
It's only here ( now ), because it's heavy subsidized by China and an excuse for modern colonialism.
PS. A lot of ( sane / healthy) infrastructure works are happening in Africa with Europe / US though. But if it's not feasible, it ain't going to happen. That's where the Chinese come in to burry them in debt.
China is still a country with significant room for industrial expansion with hundreds of millions of people moving from rural to urban areas adding to the manufacturing workforce, the country as a whole has not reached levels of prosperity that would produce a consumer driven economy, and one also needs to account for the heavy influence of export-led sectors on policy-making and the state-led economy which doesn't tend to lend itself well to consumer sectors.
And also quite importantly as China climbs up the value chain it will increasingly seek to outsource to cheaper countries, as it has already started doing in Pakistan, one of the major hubs of the Belt and Road initiative. And given the quite authoritarian system, it will probably do so quite effectively without facing the political backlash that workers in the United States have caused.
Unfortunately the US now mostly has hostages rather than allies. There's always the threat of economic retaliation if the allies don't support US initiatives, no matter how outrageous ("let's start another war, Europe/Middle East/Africa can deal with the humanitarian consequences!"). And as the Snowden leaks have shown, the US is ready to try to cripple the infrastructure of their allies in case this is ever needed (the particular leak was about utilities and power).
This is not excusing China's attitude, and it's by no means (much) better. You wouldn't call someone who keeps slapping you over the face a friend just because they could have punched you.
> The Western world has been giving back colonies from a dark past.
No they won their independence from wars, most of the colonies that where "given back" won their independence through fighting in world war 1 and 2, there are very few exceptions to this rule.
I made an edit, I meant World Bank and USAID as they don't only lend to member countries.
I don't have sources I would quote, but I have enough to be told to look over there and see the cause and effect.
Developing countries are saddled with debt, and further crippled. Recipients of the debt are contractors. Austerity measures are needed to repay the debt, and the citizens are the ones burdened by it to help extract the country's natural resources to pay the debt.
Even IF an indictment of the World Bank is just crackpot conspiracies, it is a really good instruction manual. China's approach is running the same playbook but may even be more completely benign. Their industries have been entering emerging markets that others have decided not to effectively touch, without invading. Are they also running the regime change playbook too like the US did all last century? Time will tell. They are doing a lot for African markets. They don't need to be an "ally", everyone should be skeptical. Lightyears ahead of what the west is doing though.
Isn't this against Hacker News rules to call another user "completely brainwashed"?
Brainwashing is what WSJ does since Murdoch took control over it and what mainstream Western media were doing to motivate the last deadly invasion on Iraq [1,2]. Just look at the reality. The US military killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, while the US public elected and supported its leaders who started this war by brainwashing the global population to believe their lies (and now the story repeats itself with Trump [3]).
"The difference is the Party lacks the sentimentality of western countries when it comes to issues of total surveillance and intervention to maintain control"
No, the difference is hypocrisy, and of course tons of daily propaganda from the Western media / Corporations / Governments / intelligence agencies.
Governments with resource wealth don't need large public services that would operate a sophisticated intelligence service, so they outsource it. So far these governments have been doing point targeting against dissidents w/ mercenary surveillance companies, but it's possible these companies are about to be steamrolled by one that implements their products as a free feature of their entire infrastructure.
The bargain will be, we'll support your campaign/coup and modernize your infrastructure for your people, while giving you intel we collect on your dissidents and opposition. Then, once Huawei infrastructure is ensconced, no government will get into power who does not have support from China. A very "harmonious," cycle. Want be be elected again? Secure our rights to extract rare earth minerals. Etc.
The company is a projection of Chinese state power, not unlike western telcoms with 5EYES and the ITU has been. The difference is the Party lacks the sentimentality of western countries when it comes to issues of total surveillance and intervention to maintain control. (Albeit, we have never been above supporting butchers either, so YMMV.)
My prediction is that once the Huawei gear is in place, a country's political class will turn to face east on policy and resource questions. It's pure leverage. Western tech companies can't make the same promises to those governments either. It's not like Google can promise to prop up the next Idi Amin, but Huawei doesn't have that constraint. So far, the world has been content to deal with the devil it knows.
Anyway, I'd say this article is an anecdote of a larger geopolitical shift. Containing Huawei should be a national security priority for everyone, but tbh, it's looking more and more like our respective mere leviathans have become oversized, slow moving prey for their hydra.