So, the Huawei saga rolls on. The executive arrested, the daughter of the CEO, will probably wind up released, as it’s been made clear this is a political arrest. (Trump has said so, and it’s over Iran sanctions. Breaking Iran sanctions is clearly political, and probably even the ethical thing to do in many cases.)
But something else is more important to note. Huawei genuinely has the most advanced net tech in the world. It’s that simple.
America no longer manufacturers telecom equipment – Cisco got out of the business several years ago – and Huawei’s two Scandinavian competitors are too little, too late, and too expensive…
the Shenzhen firm is spending $20 billion a year on R&D, about four times as much as either Ericsson or Nokia, its only important challengers in the telecommunications equipment market.
Huawei’s internal assessment holds that its technological lead in 5G mobile broadband is so wide that the competition has no effective chance of catching up. In late February, Huawei will introduce its Balong phone, with a chipset that can handle downloads ten times faster than the best 4G LTE speeds, while operating with 4G networks as well.
“China’s largest tech company makes high-quality networking gear that it sells to rural telecommunications operators for 20 percent to 30 percent less than its competitors do, says Joseph Franell, chief executive officer and general manager of Eastern Oregon Telecom in Hermiston…”
This is hopeless. It’s probably true that Huawei stole a lot of technology, especially in the 90s and the 2000’s. One of its victims was Nortel, Canada’s telecom giant, which makes me angry.
So what?
They have the technology. It’s cheaper and more advanced than anyone else’s and, hilariously, the US doesn’t even compete in this type of telecom equipment any more.
If this is a strategic matter, then the US has fallen down completely. If an industry is strategic, a country must make sure it, or a trusted ally, stays in the lead. Not only did the US not do that, but US policies from the 80s onwards effectively off-shored this sort of production and research, as a deliberate policy choice.
Now they cry?
5G is lost. If the US, or the US and its allies, want a shot at 6E they’d better figure out how to do industrial policy. That might, indeed, mean banning Huawei, but only if they’re willing to put up with worse, more expensive internet for a decade or so. (But then US and Canadian internet is already not nearly as good as the best.)
One of the key tenets of neoliberal economic policy is that it doesn’t matter where something is manufactured, or done. Let the cheapest domicile do it, and everyone will benefit.
This is bullshit, and always was. Making and designing new things is where economic strength, the good life and military power all come from.
Nations which forget this wind up in the dustbin. Free trade, as an ideology, is the deathknell of great powers, including Great Britain, and likely to include the US. It does work for smaller powers, and should be the default policy mode for all city states, but great powers are not small powers, let alone city states.
So, if the US wants to ban Huawei, it’d better figure out how it’s going to support Huawei’s competitors enough so that they at least catch up, or even consider making sure the US has its own telecom manufacturers. If it can’t do that, this is a band-aid on a wound.
(Oh, and there’s a reason the US, whose technology is used in most of the older telecom equipment, especially cables, thinks that China might use that to listen in. Mmmmm. What would that be?)
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different clue
” And now they cry?”
Well, its one group of Americans who diddit.
And its another group of Americans who cry.
The Americans who diddit . . . . cry all the way to the bank, if they cry at all.
The only way for America to re-shore any of this technology would be to withdraw from all the Free Trade Agreements going all the way back to GATT Round One, and also repeal all legislation having anything to do with these Free Trade Agreements. Then America would have to restore militant belligerent Protectionism and keep it in place for the 50 years needed to partially replace what the Free Trade Overclass spent the last 50 years working to destroy.
The desired end game would be as nearly autarkic an America as possible, sealed off as much as possible against economic contact with the Outside World. And since China and everyone else would remain “ahead of us” technologically for a long time after that, we would have to focus all our technological advancement research on the kinds of “defense technologies” used for destroying any fleet of “Perry’s Black Ships” which any Trade Aggression government sent against our coast. And we would also need a way to destroy any country which tried to send a second fleet of Perry’s Black Ships after we had destroyed their first fleet of Perry’s Black Ships.
Or we can keep doing what our Free Trade Overclass has us doing now. That will make us into one of China’s many overseas Tibets in the long run. Which is what the Free Trade Overclass wants for us.
r. eliason
The U.S. at least, already has almost the slowest most expensive internet access of any developed country, so, way ahead of you Ian.
Policy in the U.S. is that the telecom sector doles out performance increases with a thimble, and charges the maximum possible for each and every one, over many, many years.
Incidently, Al Gore played a very large role in insuring that the information superhighway never happened in the U.S..
This is exactly what Intel did with their processor performance, excepting when they had real competition from AMD for a few years.
ktron
Everybody likes faster, shinier kit, but the bulk of data is still shifted on non-mobile devices, or mobile-devices locally connected to “static” networks.
5G is a mobile specification. At it’s theoretical best, 5G could be 10 times faster than current 4G connections, so roughly equivalent to a medium-slow wifi connection. But mobile networks get those speeds in optimum situations only – no motion, minimum interference, strict proximity to towers.
Static networks are far, far easier to secure, and it’s far easier to verify their security. Trust in the equipment and software providers becomes paramount. It is important to remember who controls Huawei.
Many of the bleeding edges that Nortel’s research were leading have yet to be put in use, because the paradigm that drives a need for faster mobile data rates is not a need for faster data, rather it’s a need to control future new equipment sales and ensure profits.
How important increased mobile speeds are to actual end use is questionable. Handing over control of your mobile networks to a foreign government is even more questionable.
S Brennan
Excellent Post Ian !!! I firmly agree with this:
“If this is a strategic matter, then the US has fallen down completely. If an industry is strategic, a country must make sure it or a trusted ally stays in the lead. Not only did the US not do that, but US policies from the 80s on effectively off-shored this sort of production and research, as a deliberate policy choice…Now they cry?
If the US, or the US and its allies want a shot at 6E they’d better figure out how to do industrial policy…
One of the key tenets of neoliberal economic policy is that it doesn’t matter where something is manufactured, or done. Let the cheapest domicile do it, and everyone will benefit. This is bullshit, and always was. Making and designing new things is where economic strength, the good life and military power all come from.
Nations which forget this wind up in the dustbin. Free trade, as an ideology, is the deathknell of great powers, including Great Britain, and likely to include the US. It does work for smaller powers, and should be the default policy mode for all city states, but great powers are not small powers, let alone city states.”
Mel
I think the industrial policy that the U.S. has been employing is that the U.S. will be the executive suite for the entire world. They will hand out work assignments and paychecks and make all the big decisions. Everybody else will do the menial work.
No, I don’t think that it will work out for them.
Hugh
It is my understanding that 5G would require many more towers with many more antennas per tower to cover the same area as 4G. As ktron says, this is all about mobile. And I can’t help thinking it will only make sense in high density areas.
Unlike Ian, I have no problem with Huawei being shut out of 5G in the US, because of its past bad behavior, its connections to the Chinese government, and because US companies have been routinely excluded from Chinese markets.
The US has no industrial policy. It has neoliberalism which is anti-industrial, anti-worker and more or less as Mel describes. I think we need one to meet and survive what is coming with overpopulation and climate change. And in this regard we should be looking to depend far less on China and foreign trade because I don’t know where and in what condition China and the rest of the world will be in after 2030.
jonst
Ian wrote, “Nations which forget this wind up in the dustbin.”. No, actually, they don’t. That is threat inflated hyperbole. they might end up 8th or 9th on ‘top ten’ of nations, whatever that implies. But life goes on in Holland, they were an Empire once. It goes on in Portugal, and Spain, and the UK, and in France. And Sweden….And all things considered, it often is not a bad life. We’ll survive, with or without the much hyped G ratings. Perhaps even more serene and humanistic if we give up mad quests to be at the ‘top’.
jonst
Ian wrote, “Nations which forget this wind up in the dustbin.”. No, actually, they don’t. That is threat inflated hyperbole. they might end up 8th or 9th on ‘top ten’ of nations, whatever that implies. But life goes on in Holland, they were an Empire once. It goes on in Portugal, and Spain, and the UK, and in France. And Sweden….And all things considered, it often is not a bad life. We’ll survive, with or without the much hyped G ratings. Perhaps even more serene and humanistic if we give up mad quests to be at the ‘top’.
zot23
Between 5G and figuring out how to grow crops without massive expenditures of oil and CO2 (diesel machines, petroleum fertilizer, roundup), I’d take the crops. Can’t eat wifi when the worldwide dust bowl arrives. That being said, we ain’t do that either so…
Eric Anderson
Hip hip Huawei!
Perhaps this will be the nudge this country needs to actually start considering decisions that have the force to impact our sovereignty.
StewartM
If this is a strategic matter, then the US has fallen down completely. If an industry is strategic, a country must make sure it or a trusted ally stays in the lead. Not only did the US not do that, but US policies from the 80s on effectively off-shored this sort of production and research, as a deliberate policy choice.
I see this everywhere. *Every industry* that produces real things or delivers real services that can’t be outsourced will eventually be wiped out in the US. Everywhere the goal of our business leadership is to cannibalize the long-term future of US companies for the next quarterly profit report. Our so-called ‘great’ business gurus, like Jack
BelchWelch, are usually CEOs who hamstrung or crippled their companies’ long-term future for the sake of short-term profit, and (like Ronald Reagan, politically) were out long of office before the evils they initiated became manifest.When I hired in, my company used to invest about 10 % of its earnings in R&D. Now that’s about 2-2.5 %, and that’s the same across the industry. We run things with the least possible people and hardware. I grimly joke that with some projects I and others are tasked with involve trying to solve a long-standing problem that has previously perplexed some very smart people; and to do it as a side job, as if it were some sort of hobby. It’s ridiculous. It’s made worse in that we have encouraged a lot of old-timers to retire/leave to replace them with cheaper kids, who might be very smart but who know almost nothing about our business knowledge base, and because of this they make mistakes. Nor do we have time to properly document our work for the future.
I see this trend not only in my own company, but in our competitors and vendors and customers. Capitalism makes business run worse, not better.
And, I should add, we make plenty of money. We already know that some of our problems could be mitigated by simply updating our manufacturing plant, to make it newer. But no, we don’t do that either, we spend our hefty profits on stock buybacks and acquisitions, paper “investments” which are materially worthless in terms of real things.
S Brennan
“life goes on in Holland, [i]t goes on in Portugal, Spain, UK, France. And Sweden….not a bad life”
Sweet, how’d life be under Nazi occupation? Better yet, if Europe had been weaker, how’d Mongol occupation suit you, or perhaps being a castrated scribe in the Muslim empire* wouldn’t be a bad life?
Life is good [for you] because long ago and far away some great power withstood some other great power. Had you been on the wrong end of the outcome, you could be like Africa, still paying a large tithe to your colonial masters.
For example; France still collects colonial tax. Life is not sweet for those conquered people, France makes sure of that…don’t believe me, google “does France still collects colonial tax”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Muslim_world#Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
S Brennan
test
S Brennan
still being censored??
S Brennan
“life goes on in Holland, [i]t goes on in Portugal, Spain, UK, France. And Sweden….not a bad life”
Sweet, how’d life be under Nazi occupation? Better yet, if Europe had been weaker, how’d Mongol occupation suit you, or perhaps being a castrated scribe in the Muslim empire* wouldn’t be a bad life?
Life is good [for you] because long ago and far away some great power withstood some other great power. Had you been on the wrong end of the outcome, you could be like Africa, still paying a large tithe to your colonial masters.
For example; France still collects colonial tax. Life is not sweet for those conquered people, France makes sure of that…don’t believe me, google “does France still collects colonial tax”
S Brennan
FYI;
History of slavery in the Muslim world…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery_in_the_Muslim_world#Slavery_in_the_Ottoman_Empire
S Brennan
I guess links are not allowed so Wikipedia
History of slavery in the Muslim world
jonst
S Brennan, you’re breakin me heart with you pedantic cliches. I stand chastised. A “castrated scribe’ you say? The horror…the horror, of it all.
anon y\'mouse
i\’ll cry about the lack of 5G after we figure out how to do clean water and maintain bridges in this country, and not before.
Olivier
Why do we need ever faster networks? This is a serious question.
Moreover there are possible health risks associated with 4G. With every new generation (3G, 4G, 5G) the power of the radio waves increases and we are literally bathing in them. Remember the days when nobody minded breathing car exhaust: what could go wrong?
Tom
@S Brennan
Castration is illegal in Islam. The Castrated Slaves were from Christian Ethiopia which practiced castration. White Eunuchs came from Europe which has a long history of castrations.
That said. Europe under the Ottomans would have been a far more tolerant place than it is today. That and the banks would never have gotten as powerful as they are today.
Any event, US just slapped Sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and froze 7 billion dollars in assets.
Maduro needs to move now on Guiado, and execute him. The time for talk is over.
Willy
The French are trying to tax nations to which production of gilets jaunes was outsourced. Or maybe that’s just Macron.
We “free nations” need to get economics nailed down to a science… at least as well as the communist Chinese seem to have.
different clue
@zot23,
About “That being said, we ain’t do that either so…” . . . . . actually, America have a few people who is do that. And America have a few other people who is learn from those few people.
Here are a few of those people: Gabe Brown —->
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A2KLfSly509ciC8AR2ZXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyMWgwMmFoBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjcwMTNfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=gabe+brown&fr=sfp
And Mark Shepard —->
https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=AwrE19Dn509cHpEAb6JXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyMWgwMmFoBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjcwMTNfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=you+tube+mark+shepard+permaculture&fr=sfp
There are also repositories of knowledge such as Rodale Press and Acres USA.
S Brennan
“Castration is illegal in Islam. Europe under the Ottomans would have been a far more tolerant place than it is today.”
Go argue with wikipedia, not me:
“Black castrated slaves, were tasked to guard the imperial harems, while white castrated slaves filled administrative functions. Janissaries were the elite soldiers of the imperial armies collected in childhood as a “blood tax”, while galley slaves captured in slave raids or as prisoners of war, manned the imperial vessels.”
Apparently, if you did not “convert” to Islam, you’d be taxed in way that “believers” were not, periodically, your “excess” children would be taken away and enslaved…sounds lovely. Yes, I am sure you are right Tom, the Muslim empire, one of the largest in history, was accomplished and maintained through the kumbaya approach…sheesh, the nonsense people put in their head.
I put the link to the quote but it’d would get my reply censored but, I found it under:
“History of slavery in the Muslim world”
S Brennan
Jonst says to me: “you’re breakin me heart with you pedantic cliches.”
Ignoring that he just “pedantically” corrected Ian….by myopically focusing on a narrow time/place. Apparently, he thought it too much that I “pedantically” countered with a couple of examples of the recent and not so recent past. As Jonst said: “The horror…the horror, of it all.”
Tom
@ S. Brennan
Janissaries were not Eunuchs, freed after graduation, received pay, had a retirement plan, and often were appointed to Governing Positions. They became so powerful that the Ottomans had to fight a mini-civil war to disband them.
Also the Ottomans promoted talent regardless of background. Even slaves could gain high government offices.
The thing to remember here is that slavery in Islam was a patronage system, not a servile system like in the West. Where as in Western Slavery, Masters could impregnate a slave and sell her, they could not do so in the Islamic System as the slave could sue for child support and win.
You seriously need to research more S. Brennan.
Synoia
I worked at Nortel in Texas. The chose the wrong technology for 4g LTE, and their only cellular customer became Sprint. Then the was the Tech bust, which was a freeze on Twch capital spending for 3 years after the vendors raped the customers over Y2k.
Nortel had little service revenue to keep the lean ears at bay, a historical focus on Narrow Band technology, and then that was that.
Nortel and BMR had an acrimonious relationship, which drive their past success. John Roth became CEO and fixed relationship by having Nortel manage the BNR skills. Nortel was not as good as BNR in choosing future tech, because of a difference in the view of the future, Nortel next quarter, BNR next technology cycle, and the combination of loss of vision, wicked internal politics, and bad choices killed the company.
DMC
I suggest we take a page from the Chinese playbook and just STEAL the technology in question. What are they going to do, take us before the WTO?
S Brennan
Tom; it’s clear you have a reading comprehension problem, read the Wikileaks quote a few more times, see if you can figure it out.
One of the lessons in life…when you correct people make sure you know what you are talking about.
Another lesson in life, don’t be the idiot who continues to argue long after everybody else in the room knows you’re wrong…quickly admit a mistake and move on.
different clue
Olivier up above raises an important problem which is lost in all the techo-triumphalist hoopla.
All these tower and rad-wave communication systems have us all marinating 24/7 in possibly carcinogenic and otherwise-health-degrading EM radiation baths. And 5G will have us all bathing in more and worse, if 5G is permitted into this country.
Currently the USgov and the Chinagov are contesting over who will dominate the wireless radwave tower-comm systems of the Corporate Globalonial future. But the TrumpAdmin’s security-based suspicion and thefted-from resentment gives America a chance to reject G5 altogether, and keep the carcinogenic G5 RadComm future out of America entirely.
China is poised to lead the World Corporate Globalonial Plantation into Yesterday’s Obsolete Future. America could adopt Archdruid John Michael Greer’s vision of the EcoTechnic Survivalist Future if we can destroy the Power Establishment in this country to keep it from embracing Tomorrow’s EcoTechnic Survivalist Future.
America could be the “control population” ( no 5G permitted) and China could be the “experimental population” ( hyper ultra-mega carcinogenic 5G radiation towers EVERYwhere) in a very interesting mass public health experiment which the Corporate Fascist ChiComs are choosing to run, and which we can still choose to stay out of . . . by banning 5G from within the US.
” Mister Koch: Tear Down This Wall.”
different clue
Hmmm. . . I wrote a comment which either vaporised or went into hiding to re-emerge later. In case it just vaporised, here it is reprised in briefest.
If Olivier’s point is a good one and 5G will be even more mass-carcinogenic than previous G levels of tower-based communications are, then America is better off from a public health standpoint to ban 5G from any part of American territory. Let the Chinagov soak its population down in the 5G cancer-wave death-rays.
China is currently leading the world into Yesterday’s Obsolete Future . . . the Forced Free Trade Corporate Globalonial Plantation. America has a chance, in theory, to adopt the Green EcoTechnic Survivalist Future of Tomorrow as discussed by The Archdruid John Michael Greer.
We would have to destroy the entire current economic-political Ruling Establishment to keep them from stopping us from doing that.
” Mister Koch: Tear Down This Wall!”
Stirling S Newberry
We fighting amongst ourselves, because there is more money to be had here. China does not want foreigners to take that much.
They are playing the long game. We have Trump and Biden.
(Recently watch a commercial by the ex-PM of Canada. Slick and smooth. Wrong, but you have to explain why in detail, and most people will tune out. Basically, rebrand Conservatism as Populism. And to the people who watch, admit it for donations. )
different clue
Maybe I should use a more up-to-date type of hip groovy kewl name in my last sentence up above there.
Mr. Zuckerberg, open this Book!
Mr. Zuckerberg, Tear Down This Wall!
Tom
@ S Brennan
Follow your own advice as the evidence supports my view as I have done the actual research rather than read just a wiki article and never followed up. You really do not have a clue how slavery worked in Islamic Countries vs Christian Countries and the vast differences in how they lived and were treated.
That being said:
Bolton is sure being honest lately, openly admitting American Policy is to steal Venezuela’s oil, talking about direct military intervention if Maduro moves on Guaido, etc.
Maduro must show strength and not back down and move to crush the coup and purge out its supporters in the Government.
S Brennan
Yeah DC…I don’t understand Ian’s current comment policy. I have tried to contact him…and in the past, most times, he responded within a 48 hour window, but lately, not so much. All good things end and perhaps Ian has decided his great attempt to even the political playing field has become too much. I understand.
Whatever Ian decides, I am down with it, for a helluva long time, Ian provided a sanctuary to those few souls for whom truth is more important than superficially gained advantage…
different clue
@ S Brennan,
Then again, it could be mechanical and technological difficulties in the internet itself. That is happening more and more nowadays.
Since recently when a comment was “held”, it would show up to me the typer with a prefatory legend that “this comment is being held for moderation”, when that doesn’t happen, my first assumption would be that something failed in the system or the programming. Which is why if my comment “disappears” I assume the machinery has vaporised it into the ether. And I write a shorter version hoping it will get through.
Perhaps future “seeming disappearances” should just be waited out to see if they appear at Ian Welsh’s end later.
Hugh
Meanwhile after Wisconsin promised $4.1 billion in subsidies to Foxconn, the Taiwanese chip manufacturer for Apple, to locate a $10 billion manufacturing plant in the state, the company reneged and will only build a small R&D facility there, but it will apparently keep the subsidies. This is a different kind of piracy from Huawei’s, but it is still piracy. And it is another case of black hats everywhere: Foxconn, Apple, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, corporate subsidies, etc..
Ian Welsh
If you call someone an idiot, that’s an ad-hominem. I don’t always stop such things, and most moderation is 100% automated, but if you ad-hom and it goes into the filter, I’ll probably delete it.
My favorite was the gentleman (no one who has commented in this thread) who started a comment with “You are all fuckers” then complained that I “censored” his comment.
You cannot imagine the number of complaints I received about ad-homs.
So, if you don’t want to take a chance that your comment is censored attack the argument, not the person.
Also, I had major surgery, though I’m getting better
S Brennan
Ian; pretty much all of my comments on this thread and previous ones were stopped. Most if not all were comments where I agreed with somebody. Extrapolating from one comment is a bit much, particularly since I been commenting here for what[?] a decade, but it’s no biggy. I won’t comment here anymore.
Ian Welsh
Your statement above is incorrect, Brennan.
What happened is that the automatic spam detector put you into the spam queue. I later pulled those comments out. If you read back in the comment threads, you’ll find they are all there.
Of those comments I didn’t release only one, which you called someone an idiot in. (I even released one in which you called someone an idiot, though perhaps I shouldn’t have.)
If a comment doesn’t go thru, all that means is that it has gone into the spam queue. Sometimes I look at those quickly, but other times I don’t. Sometimes it takes a day (or even two) for comments to be released.
IOW, it isn’t about you. Trust me, if this blog didn’t have a spam detector, no one would be happy.