US lawmakers rage over Intel Meteor Lake-powered Huawei PC
Special export license granted to Intel by President Trump unlikely to be renewed
Systems
15 Apr 2024 | 8
Many layers
I wouldn't be too sure that some local committee somewhere can't unearth a way of looking at it that nobody has found before. After all, this is a very complex issue. There are at least three different groups in the US alone, some of whom have been looking at Huawei for over a decade, and all three are some times at odds with each other.
The first strand is the national security issue backed by various players in the US intelligence community. The report by the Heritage Foundation putting this on the agenda is from 2008.
The second strand is the Iran sanctions evasions issue, backed by the US State Department and the US Department of Justice. A company called Skycom was involved in sending communications tech to Iran, evading sanctions. It's unclear to me at what point these two departments became aware of it but the general public became aware in 2013 that Skycom was in fact a front store for Huawei.
The third strand is an economic one as, when he entered office in 2017, Donald Trump opened a trade war with China. He has made Huawei a pawn in a global trade war and has often hinted that he could relax his stance on Huawei in exchange for some concessions on trade. Much to the chagrin of the people behind Strand 1 and Strand 2.
It seems easy to forget that the first two of these strands of concern about Huawei date from a time when Donald Trump was still just a TV show host and con-man. DT merely added an economic strand to it by making it about trade.
And that is just the US. On a global scale there are other factors at play too. Such as countries that are too small to worry about spying and too small to fully ban Huawei for fear of falling behind on mobile infrastructure (economics) or for fear of upsetting China (politics). The EU, for instance, has tried to walk a tight-rope between its security interests, its economic interests and its political interests and came out with the policy of allowing Huawei but not in the core network. If you're let's say Vietnam or Brazil that is not a luxury that's on offer as they're too small to make a serious impact.
Interestingly enough, the UK for now seems to follow the EU approach, but there are allegedly tensions and divisions running even through the UK cabinet (and the shady figures that operate in its shadow) about which way to go on Huawei.
I don't think anything, or anyone, in Westminster is relevant enough have any decisive impact on this matter on a global scale but it might unearth some new views or facts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
