Trump's ZTE deal challenged by Senate

C'mon, everybody knows that the real theat to nationals security is...

... Canada.

And after meeting Trump North Korea needs a reliable supplier of electronics components.

"a 180 degree turn away from the president’s promise"

No surprise there. The "President" is currently as reliable as a rooster weather vane in a hurricane.

Trumpkims

ZTE were proven to be a threat to national security weren't they?

He's selling out America (and allies) for corporate greed and by extension, making himself even more rich (I don't believe the billionaire claims he seeded in the media, fake news)

But he's missing a trick if he doesn't monetise the Nork meeting hashtag 'Trumpkim' to market a range of pocket money extorting cute toys aimed at six year olds.

Look in the shadows and you will see brown envelopes full of donations/gifts/bribes (make your choice) being passed to senaors from ZTE and Huawei competitors.

"Were they 'proven' to be a threat or was it more that they are close to the Chinese Government and have been busting American imposed sanctions?"

A conspiracy theorist might make a career out of the various warnings surrounding ZTE gear but:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/16/zte_gchq_warning/

Yes, I'd say they were a threat, I'd be similarly suspicious of Huawei, despite GCHQ's oversight.

Unfortunately that kinda leaves good old 'merkin companies and their gear is known to have been compromised by the 'merkin TLAs

Where is Big John? Where is Bom.Bob?

When there's a tricky Trump issue that's hard to argue away as libtards bleating while Trump saves America, our two friends are often very scarce.

Counterproductive

America has been chucking its weight around by trying to control what technology goes where for many decades now. Every time I've come across this its resulted in a loss of business for an American company -- people grudgingly accede to the US government's extra-territorial demands but invariably try to find a way to avoid problems in the future by avoiding American products and technology where possible.

We're now very close to a significant inflection point. Globalization has not only spread manufacturing over the world but also development. There are now relatively few technological choke points where the US government can hold others to ransom, and those are typically not because of technology itself but because of a combination of intellectual property rights and international standards. Just as encryption technology became 'not American' post DES (due primarily to the attempted stranglehold the US attempted to impose on long keyword DES) other technologies are likely to follow suit, if they haven't done so already. The US will continue to be big and powerful but will gradually become a bit of a technological backwater....and there are signs that this is already happening.

Those legislators are fortunately old and so will get replaced soon. While there's no guarantee that we'll get more enlightened representatives in the future (on past form -- doubtful) there's at least a bit of a chance that they won't be so steeped in a 1950's 'merkan mindset that they might at least understand technology. (To give Trump his due on this one -- much as I hate to -- he probably recognizes that killing off ZTE is likely to incite a lot of global blowback -- and it probably won't even kill ZTE because somehow the company will just open up under another name.)(He's a bit of an expert with that sort of thing.)

Who Are We?

oh just the largest manufacturer of telcoms equipment in the world and the backbone of most countries Broadband networks, and the only way normal americans are going to get decent cheap broadband anytime soon ....

but if your wondering where cisco's cash pile just went, i'd be checking Republican Tom Cotton, and Democrat Chris Van Hollen's campaign funds and where they just got new cars/houses/boats from.