Totally. I find it very interesting that we tend to criticize China for their protectionism, but as soon as something out-competes US companies, it gets banned: Huawei, DJI, TikTok.
Of course it cannot be said like this, because "free speech" and "democracy", so the official reason is "national security".
It's not just that Google or FB can't operate Chinese-specific sites as a business within China, from within China you can't even get to the foreign/international versions of those sites, because they're blocked by China's firewall. Wikipedia has a whole list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_ma...
But we are, there is no irony. China has the great wall and massive corporate espionage games to steal state and corporate secrets. The US and its various federal intelligence agencies have certainly done nefarious things but never quite as documented at the level as China's. They actively monitor all of their Social Media, block most foreign social media. I can easily go to any Chinese social media/website from the US.
In some ways, this is still true, even surrounding this decision.
Do you think there were many people standing outside of government buildings in Beijing protesting the potential ban of Facebook and Google while politicians of different political parties were debating the ban in the country's primary legislative body? Do you think you could launch a campaign for office on repealing said ban in China?
I think they could, and fundamentally won't because they can be accessed via VPN, but ultimately aren't necessary because those companies are not exactly interesting for any purpose but talking to Americans or studying Americans.
> I find it very interesting that we tend to criticize China for their protectionism
The irony I see is that we criticize their protectionism, but we also do some kind of protectionism. More largely, we criticize the fact that they ban US companies, and then we do the same. How in the world is that not ironic?
It would be perfectly fine to admit it and acknowledge that actually, sometimes protectionism makes sense. But if you look at the answers in this thread, it seems like nobody wants to do that. "We are never wrong, it is not ironic, it is obviously national security".
So let's talk about national security. TikTok is a userspace social media app, just like Instagram or Snapchat. If collecting that kind of data is an obvious national security risk, then every single country in the world should ban them. What would the US say if all the western countries banned their social media? Would you say "we understand, it's a national security issue"? My guess is that you would say "but for us it's different: we are the good guys".
What about Huawei? Fair enough, infrastructures like antennas are very sensitive, don't let a Chinese company own them on your soil. But the smartphones? Really? Any government can buy stuff like NSO's Pegasus and get access to any mobile phone (iPhones included). Let's not pretend that someone buying a Huawei phone makes that worse, shall we? And it's still obviously fine to ask sensitive personalities (like politicians) to use a non-Chinese smartphone, but that's very different from banning the brand entirely.
DJI then? The drones don't have an Internet connection: you have to connect them to your WiFi (be it at home or a mobile hotspot from your phone). That means that if you fly above government facilities, the drone is not streaming the video to China. That also means that if it wanted to, it would have to go through your mobile hotspot, through your ISP. Doesn't seem that hard to ask government drone operators to connect through a firewall, does it? Every big company in the world asks all of their employees to do that.
And when did it start being seen as a security issue? Precisely when western companies started lobbying against them because they could not compete. Nobody complained about DJI for years, especially not when the view in western startups was "we are better, we will make a better drone". It took us to realise that DJI was actually a lot better than us to start looking for other ways. Look at who's been lobbying a lot for the ban: western drone companies that have no reason to know about security, but that are struggling because - let's be honest - DJI drones are a lot cheaper and a lot better than anything else.
And now we have US billionaires and owners of the biggest tech companies in the world publicly interfering with politics in allied countries. How the hell is that not ironic?
The criticism is that China has a ton of protectionism. We know the US does it a little.
Btw, Huawei in particular stole a ton of technology over the past couple of decades, from Cisco and others. Not sure if the smartphone ban had the same cause, but at this point I don't really care, the company deserves it.
Mercantalism begets Mercantalism. If their mercantalist policies become successfull then unfortunately we'll need to also assume similar policies to protect ourselves, aka Beggar Thy Neighbour, and everyone loses in an arms race of tariffs and subsidies.
That's exactly why free trade proponets oppose those policies, but the CCP didn't want to reform so we'll go the opposite way.
I cannot argue on the TikTok as strongly but I can see strong arguments on why Huawei and DJI are national security risks. Some of this is more educated guesses so not defensible with numbers. We know most major companies in the Chinese market have extremely close ties to the CCP. No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms but I believe the CCP takes it to a next level. We know for a fact that the CCP and chinese entities play extremely hardball when it comes to corporate espionage. Some of the stories we have seen almost read like a spy novel. Certainly Huawei and DJI make some incredible products but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure, I do believe it warrants major concern for national security.
I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy compared to the easier explanation, China is a fairly crafty bad actor in a lot of cases. 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked, just the ones that have very significant national security risks.
> 99% of the imported products from China are not getting blocked
because it's impossible.
the US offloaded low-added-value manufacturing to China, exchanging paper dollars for cheap industrial goods. When China tries to upgrade to high-added-value industries, like chips, guess what? National security risks!
just enjoy cheap goods and nature resources from 3rd world...
I am not sure I follow your point. There have been both National Security risks as well as protectionist economic policy enforced against china that benefits domestic players. In a lot of those protectionist cases, there is either a case of China flooding the market or there are cases where the government makes a choice that its beneficial to keep domestic manufacturers alive.
In the above provided examples its quite clear that there are possible national security risks involved with China being involved in US infrastructure and technology. If DJI was from the EU there would not even be a discussion.
If you have better example beyond hyperbole I am all ears.
> If DJI was from the EU there would not even be a discussion.
1. of course there'll be no 'national security risks' because EU is an ally, and the US is spying on it
2. even though, troubles come to US's allies sometimes, like what Alstom and ASML met
3. EU products are mostly less compatible, overall, it cannot challenge the position where the US holds in the global value chain, so pose less
of threat
Like the way your irony works? I listed my arguments as why you can make a case that they are national security threats. You are more than welcome to call it a fake pretense but the fact remains that the majority of Chinese imports are not restricted and that includes tech/high-tech related items. If you have nothing more than America is ironic I can see where your endless questions stem from.
The burden of proof lies on the accuser. If you are not able to provide a proof of national security threat from tiktok or dji, then don't treat it like it's a fact. All the "ifs" don't constitute as a proof.
You obviously have a bias here so its going to be impossible to have any real discussion. There are very simple facts that I will restate for you. The CCP has seats at every major mainland corporation. Chinese corporations have in recent years been caught in some very spy like espionage, this is happening globally. China is an adversary to the US and Europe. There is no further burden of proof needed when talking about sensitive industries. You don't need to catch DJI in the act, similar to TikTok, if you cannot sever data/ties with the mainland there are real risks. Geopolitics suck but its a real risk that has to be snipped before it becomes a problem.
Do the five eyes and other countries have national intelligence that are collecting data, absolutely. I cannot recall any recent published articles about overt Western corporate espionage and especially any that were supported by a parent country.
Are any of those corporate espionage? Those seems to fall under government spying which I acknowledged exists for all companies and especially so with the five eyes.
So you justify the ban of TikTok, Huawei and DJI for strong national security reasons, but when we talk about the US spying on the government of allies, you say "spying on a government is okay, the problem is corporate espionage"?
Can you tell me - in your logic - why the hell there is a need to ban DJI if it's okay for the CCP to spy on the US government? Or will you now say "It's not okay because it's not the US"? Or maybe "It's okay to spy on allies, but not on adversaries, except if you are the US because then it's okay to do both"?
I was going to type out my rationale again but came to the thought that it wouldn't matter on you. You are emotional and slightly biased either in an angle that supports China or negatively towards the US. I am honestly not sure where your quotes/thought process is going other than its confusing. Enjoy your weekend bud.
Actually, that's probably the one thing that I would find interesting.
I didn't expect so many people to attack me when I said it was ironic. I find it ironic, period. It doesn't mean that I support China or that I hate the US. It only means precisely what I said: I find it ironic to criticise China's ban on US companies and end up banning Chinese companies for what seems to be protectionism.
Now you've been repeating that it is obviously a strong national security threat, but whenever I asked you to elaborate on that, you avoided it. Would that mean that it's maybe not that obvious?
Read some of the many stories out there about the NSA, please. They have backdoors into internet infrastructure. If any country is a threat to information security, it’s the USA.
Did you read my comment? I explicitly called out backdoors, you should read comments closer. It most definitely happens within the US but the ties between the US government and corporate entities are no where as perversely intertwined as they are in China.
So you would say for sure that the NSA has definitely never been used to give advantages to US companies? I could totally imagine Boeing receiving information in order to win a contract against Airbus.
After all, we know for a fact that the US have been spying on European politicians.
You are making up stories now. We have proven news article of flagrant corporate espionage happening from Chinese actors. We know that CCP upper leadership holds seats at the major mainland corporations. Will I say never has US intelligence participated in corporate espionage? There are documented cases of the US meddling but as far as we have evidence, not at the level of Chinese interference. So nope, I won't say for sure but I am also not fabricating stories.
Sorry I don't follow. What did I make up? That I don't believe that the US are "always fair" either? That I don't need to believe it, because it has been documented many times?
> We know that CCP upper leadership holds seats at the major mainland corporations.
And who holds seats/has major influence in the US government?
Sorry I am not sure what 1) your point is or 2) what you are arguing. This thread is simply DJI poses a real national security threat as there has been demonstrable issues in recent history.
Depends on where you start the thread. Before your comment, this thread was simply "this is US protectionism and not really national security".
After your first comment, this thread was "the USA are an information security risk".
My point is that of course, from the US point of view, China abusing its power is worse than the US abusing their power. But if you take a step back... why should a European citizen consider that what China is doing is worse than what the US are doing?
It has been proven that the US have been targeting European politicians with spying. It has been proven that the NSA was collecting private information about just everything they could (including US citizen BTW). The richest people on Earth control the biggest tech companies on Earth and are getting closer to the US president every day. Some of those people are actively trying to influence politics in Europe (e.g. promoting neo-nazis in Germany, I don't know if you understand what it means there). The US president is talking about invading Greenland, Panama etc. And you talk about links between the Chinese government and Chinese companies?
If TikTok is a strong national security risk for the US, then Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple are all strong security risks for Europe. But what would the US say if Europe banned those companies? Probably more "it's a free market, it's democracy, it's capitalism, you can't do that!" than "fair enough, we do it too, and China does it too", right?
That's where I find it ironic. The US promote free market when it's about having their companies in other countries. But when the roles are inverted, then the US behave a lot more like China than like Europe (by banning companies), don't they?
Lots of ideas but you are missing the simple point. The CCP is partnered with their companies and actively support corporate espionage. Its a fact that the five eyes spy on lots of people including their own citizens. Some of this is certainly based off recent history but the way I frame it is China adulterates almost every piece of data they release. They limit their incoming internet. They aggressively monitor their citizens and will cull information on social media proactively. They participate in corporate espionage that sounds like its from a fiction story. Corporations in China are in some form or another tightly partnered with the government once they reach a massive scale. To find irony is to ignore everything China is doing. Again, absolutely everyone is running foreign intelligence. The difference is I don't believe anyone is as worried of drones made outside of China but its an obvious threat vector that drones made in China have the opportunity to phone home data and with the increased use of drones in industrial settings there are real risks to be thought about.
Feels like your view is "whatever we do is okay, as long as we can point to someone else doing worse". Is that what you are saying?
> its an obvious threat vector that drones made in China have the opportunity to phone home data and with the increased use of drones in industrial settings there are real risks to be thought about.
Okay, let's take drones. Can you articulate concretely one of those "obvious threat vectors"? For instance, a DJI drone does not come with an Internet connection magically embedded into it. So you can be completely offline while you fly your mission.
Are you scared that the drone may save a 4K video in a hidden storage, and then upload GBs of it when you connect it to the Internet without you having a chance to see it? Why not instructing government operators to only connect through a router that filters the network? And that would be on top of the DJI Local Data mode that you don't have to trust.
Or are you scared that the drone may store few bytes of critical information? What would that be, a location? Why wouldn't the CCP just hack the smartphone of the employee, e.g. using something like NSO Pegasus (which is western technology, but I won't call any irony there)?
If it is obvious, please explain the national security threat caused by DJI drones that couldn't be solved with a simple external firewall.
I think you’re biased if you don’t believe the USA is also doing domestic corporate espionage. Cisco probably has multiple NSA sleeper agents silently inserting backdoors into their routers.
> On July 3, 2014, the former Technical Director of the NSA, William Binney, who had become a whistleblower after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, testified to the committee. He said that the NSA has a totalitarian approach that has previously only been known from dictatorships and that there is no longer such a thing as privacy.
But no, there is absolutely no reason to think that the US may be doing corporate espionage /s.
And you don't seem to understand what Binney meant when he said "the NSA can basically access anything anywhere, and they don't have to justify it to anyone other than the US President in person".
> I think you are proposing a much more extreme conspiracy
I am not proposing a conspiracy, I am merely noting some irony in the fact that the US are doing protectionism here.
> No doubt historically the US has gotten companies to put in backdoors or other mechanisms
Well, most of the Western Internet goes through the US, and we know for a fact that the US try to extract as much as they can from whatever they can (remember Snowden?). Also the US are very fine with US companies owning all the data of a big part of the world, and they would be really pissed if some country started banning them "for national security reasons".
> but when you have drones being used to survey the electric grid or other major pieces of infrastructure
You don't need to connect the drone to the Internet. Technical solutions would most definitely exist, I am convinced of that. The reason DJI is being banned is because DJI is 7 years ahead of anyone else, and the gap is getting bigger every year. It really, really sounds like the US drone companies have been lobbying a ton because they just can't compete.
Huawei has been caught stealing more than enough trade secrets to justify a ban. I'd be happy if they banned a lot more Chinese firms for that, or just in response to China's own bans. But TikTok seems to be uniquely about censorship.
Of course it cannot be said like this, because "free speech" and "democracy", so the official reason is "national security".