back to article US lobby group calls for open standards to fight Huawei 'threat'

A US lobbying group is calling for open standards as a solution to the supposed security threat posed by Huawei. The not-at-all-creepily named Global Cyber Policy Watch (GCPW) is calling for more investment from the US government to fund research to help it catch up. But it believes open, interoperable standards are the only …

  1. John Savard

    Oops...

    Huawei "holds about two-thirds of 5G-related patents"? In that case, I suppose the United States should simply skip 5G and go straight to 6G after it is developed entirely by trustworthy companies well within the Western world. It is rather hard to keep Huawei out of something it basically owns, even if there are restrictions on licensing standards-related patents.

    1. Alister

      Re: Oops...

      Yep, I thought, given that context, this quote was rather hypocritical:

      they said given China's previous willingness to steal technology secrets, allowing Huawei into critical infrastructure was too big a risk

      Seeing as Huawei have the most to lose, I would have thought.

    2. TheVogon

      Re: Oops...

      "to the supposed security threat posed by Huawei."

      But threat is real! We might all be able to use firmware without US government mandated backdoors (see Wikileaks for example). And of course that's a massive threat to say the US sponsored ten trillion dollars a year fossil fuel industry just for instance.

    3. Chris G

      Re: Oops...

      "Two thirds of 5G related patents"

      And there you have it, the main reason why they are trying to throttle Huawei to death.

      Similar reasons apply to the trade warwith China, the US can't remain competitive or innovate as fast as China is, so they are trying to smother the competition.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: Oops...

        Similar reasons apply to the trade warwith China, the US can't remain competitive or innovate as fast as China is, so they are trying to smother the competition. .... Chris G

        That doesn't work, Chris G, ... IT Just Creates SMARTR ComPonEntities Testing the Virtual Nature of Time in Heavenly Spaces for/with Insatiable Satyr and Encapturing Nymph Play .... :-) Almighty Frolics in XSS with Climactic Surges of EMPowering Energy Freely Available to Live Streams into XSSXXXX

        NSFW ... or too public a space either.

        Crikey, that sounds like a porn movie plot/porn empire prospectus for the incredibly wealthy and infinitely wise to ponder and proxy render and AIRealise with Almighty Astute ACTivation Investment. ..... with such delivering remote joint proxy ownership to all parties.

        The East is into Feasting, whilst the West is stuck in Besting and thus Mired in Bankrupt and Bankrupting Conflicts everywhere .

        Where to go is a bit of a no-brainer when faced with all readily available and top secret evidence.

    4. SEPAM

      Re: Oops...

      > In that case, I suppose the United States should simply skip 5G and go straight to 6G after it is developed entirely by trustworthy companies well within the Western world.

      That is in fact more or less what Trump already asked for:

      https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1098581869233344512?lang=en

      Except from back them people just laughed. The question remains, though, was he serious?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Oops...

        We can't just "skip to 6G", cellular standards are built on many of the technologies of the standards that came before. You couldn't have 5G without LTE, you won't have 6G without 5G.

        China created their own 3G and 4G standards (TD-SCDMA and TD-LTE, respectively) to avoid Qualcomm's patent minefield as much as possible and stimulate the development of their own capability) I guess we could do the same and create our own flavor of 5G that tries to work around Huawei IP as much as possible.

        And asking whether Trump was serious is not the right question. Asking whether he had any clue what he was talking about is the right question. And in almost all cases, the answer is no. He heard about 5G from someone and asked "well can we go to 6G right now and take the lead?" and after people tried to explain to him why that wasn't possible he probably decided that was loser talk and that's what led to his tweet. This is what happens when you have an ignoramus as a world leader.

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Oops...

          Just like we could never have had IPv6 without IPv5.

          It's just a frickin' name. We can have 27G right now if we want - just rebrand 4G.

          Personally, my response to the whole kerfluffle will be to ignore 5G. I have no reason to use it anyway. Frankly, for 95% of the things I do with my phone, 3G works just fine; and the other 5% isn't even close to important.

    5. Aitor 1

      Re: Oops...

      So, the Chinese are stealing their own secrets? And they copy their own?

      How evil!

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oops...

      @John Savard

      Well, we can always fall back on the trusty "two tin cans and a string" approach to telephony.

      While I have to say that post-Snowden, it is hard to trust that any major tech company is not witttingly or unwittingly providing what is essentially a backdoor to various spooks, I am a little put off that their are people who really want to largely ban Huawei from the U.S. and other national markets.

  2. Phil Bennett

    Pot, kettle

    "given China's previous willingness to steal technology secrets, allowing Huawei into critical infrastructure was too big a risk"

    Hahaha. This from the people who brought you PRISM etc.

    If you have any evidence at all, bring it out. Otherwise this is just US companies getting pissy that they are losing business to China because they're not as good at R&D any more.

    1. TheVogon

      Re: Pot, kettle

      Quite. Its well documented that the US has been using Echelon and the like to steal IP for decades. They just don't want any competition.

      1. SEPAM

        Re: Pot, kettle

        This made me curious. I already did a Google search but came up blank. Care to share your source?

        1. Michael 43

          Re: Pot, kettle

          You know lots of seatrch entries are censored or removed rght ? giben the fact who sipports Google !

          1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

            Re: Pot, kettle

            So a lack of evidence is itself evidence to support your thesis? Well, that's convenient.

  3. hammarbtyp

    This is the country that chose to go its own route with mobile communications CDMA when the rest of the world went GSM, so fragmenting the mobile phone market for many years.

    Its amazing how when companies or countries start losing dominance they start screaming for open standards, but when they think they are dominant they try and enforce propriety standards on their unwilling customers

    1. TheVogon

      That was because of Qualcomm's patents. Just like they went for HDR instead of DAB or NTSC instead of PAL. Or Never Twice the Same Colour as we used to call it when I was at the BBC...

      The US has long been a regime where money Trumps real democracy. Just consider that the Koch brothers and associated groups alone spent over 400 million dollars just on the last midterms. And if not clear why / how that is possible, watch the documentary "Dark Money".

  4. Gordon 10

    Indeed

    Maybe Huawei should offer a quid pro-quo - sharing of their standards for every 5 of those the big American firms have been hiding for years. Broadcom, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco ..... the list could be endless.

    1. Michael 43

      Re: Indeed

      Haven't they offered that aready ? haven't they offered to license their patents along with the actual source code, so customers can customise how they see fit i terms of security.. This offer wil expose the duplicity of the USA, if they do not take it, it smacks of pure racism on the highest level, the highest form of discrmination by any accounts. The world is changing and the USA is not number one n evrything anymore...

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge
    Devil

    The headline sounded like the Devil quoting scripture. And the article confirms it.

    1. SEPAM

      While the US often appears as completely capitalistic where everything is privatised, it is worth keeping in mind that major infrastructure, such as the US interstate highway system, were federally funded with involvement from the US Army. And the IHS has been an inspiration for a better telecom infrastructure.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    US spooks want to bug Huawei?

    US spooks want to bug Huawei?

  7. sanmigueelbeer

    I have two suggestion:

    1. Can Nokia and Cisco drop the prices down by (at least) 50%? I mean, it's not as if the kit were made in their home countries. For Pete's sake, the kit are made in China.

    2. If Huawei owns 2/3 of the 5G patents, why don't western companies reverse-engineer the software and patents just like any Chinese-owned company would do?

    In other related news, after reading about Nokia and SORM, I now understand why US intelligence is also in this scheme (to ban Huawei).

    1. SEPAM

      How do you reverse engineer a patent? After all it is supposed to describe the invention in sufficient detail for a person skilled int the art to work the invention.

  8. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Top Secret Inventive Operations are Best Left Unpatented with SCI Access on a Need to Know Basis.

    How do you reverse engineer a patent? After all it is supposed to describe the invention in sufficient detail for a person skilled int the art to work the invention. ...... SEPAM

    Carefully and anonymously renders patent office protections a fraudulent scam ‽ .

  9. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

    Ridge joined NSO Group?

    Well, that's certainly enough to make me view anything he says with tremendous suspicion. Joining NSO Group is like joining SPECTRE, except NSO Group is 1) real and 2) more evil than SPECTRE.

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