I think a lot of it is just to pander to people's ego's so that they can be seen to be keeping up with the Jones or beating them. The look at me and what I have, its better than you outlook.
Huawei
- Thread starter rossfrb_1
- Start date
Well, I have a smart kitchen hob and hood. The smart features doesn't have much use or practicality.
That being said, the only smart device that has significant practical usage and is truly transformative is my robot vaccum. It's my third robot vaccum in the past 9 years. Before the robot, our cleaning and mopping interval was once a week. Now, the robot is mopping daily while we are at work.
It is somewhat instructive that the top of the line kit vaccum cleaning robots comes from China these days (Roborock, Dreame, Deebot) and their product cycles are so astonishing that the likes of iRobot, Dyson could not keep pace.
They don't compete with the West, they compete with themselves. The Chinese tech ecosystem is hyper competitive, especially in the consumer space.
That being said, the only smart device that has significant practical usage and is truly transformative is my robot vaccum. It's my third robot vaccum in the past 9 years. Before the robot, our cleaning and mopping interval was once a week. Now, the robot is mopping daily while we are at work.
It is somewhat instructive that the top of the line kit vaccum cleaning robots comes from China these days (Roborock, Dreame, Deebot) and their product cycles are so astonishing that the likes of iRobot, Dyson could not keep pace.
They don't compete with the West, they compete with themselves. The Chinese tech ecosystem is hyper competitive, especially in the consumer space.
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I have a smart vacuum, it is the person who comes in curtsey of veterans affairs and also cleans everything else from bathroom to windows etc, and also provides conversation,
techknowledge still has a way to go to achieve that level of integration. One day it will happen?I am fairly confident we will see humaniod robots working in our homes, within my lifetime at least. A couple of the key challenges (batteries, MEM, chips, software.LLM) have been broken, which is why we are seeing Unitree (China), Boston Robotics (US/Korea/Hyundai), Tesla (US) and a host of other small startups (Figure AI), auto manufacturers investing and starting to deploy them.I have a smart vacuum, it is the person who comes in curtsey of veterans affairs and also cleans everything else from bathroom to windows etc, and also provides conversation,
Re on Huawei, I can provide a deeper insight. I've interviewed with them 10 years ago, and even for someone like me (Chinese descent, three generation removed, with full grasp of the language), I did not feel I could fit with some of their corporate culture.
I had friends who joined them at senior levels (directors). Mgmt teams from foreign countries are required to go to the Shenzhen HQ for on-boarding. For foreigners, it is the usual corporate spiel that you get at MNCs, and you knock off for sight seeing at the end of the day. For PRC citizens, there will be evening classes, conducted by the CCP. The content... well, you can guess (loyalty to Party and China stuff)
Does Huawei kit have spyware? It was my question to them. I think the answer is complicated. They (Huawei) are not stupid. They build very good devices and are affordable and being Chinese, they love making money more than politics. They are also aware of this perception and frankly, as an engineer, it is not easy to get away with such things on a large industrial scale without being detected. So yes, I am reasonable confident that they don't stick a rootkit into their ROM for most part. But what I am not confident is if the Party as them to do it, or asks them to provide confidential information of the clients, they will not say no. This, I think is what security agencies are worried about.
Re working there, even for us oversea born Chinese, we are subjected to double standards. No matter how hard we try to integrate, there's still some level of barrier at the social level. At the corporate level, there are subtle but material discrimination. Slightly better compensation for the same role, little or no need to justify for a more expensive hotel or business class during corperate travel etc.
I had friends who joined them at senior levels (directors). Mgmt teams from foreign countries are required to go to the Shenzhen HQ for on-boarding. For foreigners, it is the usual corporate spiel that you get at MNCs, and you knock off for sight seeing at the end of the day. For PRC citizens, there will be evening classes, conducted by the CCP. The content... well, you can guess (loyalty to Party and China stuff)
Does Huawei kit have spyware? It was my question to them. I think the answer is complicated. They (Huawei) are not stupid. They build very good devices and are affordable and being Chinese, they love making money more than politics. They are also aware of this perception and frankly, as an engineer, it is not easy to get away with such things on a large industrial scale without being detected. So yes, I am reasonable confident that they don't stick a rootkit into their ROM for most part. But what I am not confident is if the Party as them to do it, or asks them to provide confidential information of the clients, they will not say no. This, I think is what security agencies are worried about.
Re working there, even for us oversea born Chinese, we are subjected to double standards. No matter how hard we try to integrate, there's still some level of barrier at the social level. At the corporate level, there are subtle but material discrimination. Slightly better compensation for the same role, little or no need to justify for a more expensive hotel or business class during corperate travel etc.
I recall fears about spyware & Huawei a few years ago in the UK. Supposedly, there were security staff saying off the record that they didn't believe there was any spyware in the Huawei network kit that a fuss was being made about, but they were worried about its leakiness. That suggested that anyone with the skills who had good knowledge of its holes should have been able to hack it easily.
I don't recall any of these supposed off the record briefings saying "Given it's leakiness & what we expect PRC spooks are privy to, we think they could hack it any time they want", but one could think that was implied.
Reported off-the-record briefings like that may be fiction, of course. I don't know.
I don't recall any of these supposed off the record briefings saying "Given it's leakiness & what we expect PRC spooks are privy to, we think they could hack it any time they want", but one could think that was implied.
Reported off-the-record briefings like that may be fiction, of course. I don't know.
Ananda
The Bunker Group
On this one, I believe also being shared now by many in Chinese, Russia or some other Non Western agencies of potential the Western systems they are acquired also have backdoor. I believe there's talks in (as example) Chinese online media and forums on how China has to sweep and resweep all systems in their Presidential 747-400. Or they make Western sources components to be assemble by Chinese domestic subcontractor. That's just example
In the end you end up in developing your own systems with components from your own domestic control supply chains, especially for your confidential and strategic ecosystems for security. However most don't have abilities to really fulfill that. So compromises by combining different sources ussualy the mitigation for that.
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Todjaeger
Potstirrer
China has been concerned about the entry of potential foreign spyware systems for years now. For instance, RF transmission devices like radios cannot be imported into China under normal circumstances. This can make for an 'interesting' situation if/when someone orders a 2-way radio from a Chinese manufacturer and they encounter a problem like the device fails outright at delivery. There is no way to return the radio to the seller in China and/or the production facility for repair.
Having said that, China itself also does have a history of installing software, firmware and IIRC at least one case hardware spyware onto devices manufactured in China for overseas markets. I am trying to find one of the stories which came out where cybersecurity experts working with electrical engineers discovered that circuit boards for a certain device manufactured in China were different from the board as designed, because it included additional IC's that were not part of the device design.
There have been other stories as well, like this one where apparently it was believed that a microchip was added to server kit manufactured in China.
There is also this 2018 article from a part of the US's Georgetown University which alludes to electronics imported from China could be compromised from the get-go.
Ananda
The Bunker Group
Agree on that, I don't think even Russian willing to rely on all their semiconductors to china. Even after Western sanctions.
Russia plans to create 90 nm lithography machine — minister
The first commercial specimen of the lithographic printer operating on the 350 nm topology already appeared this year
www.google.com
All big players have to build their own systems and if possible their own semi conductors. Not all cam do it, but of they can, they will goes that way. Thus for your military, or securities and strategic infrastructure, either you build your own or source it from supply chains that you can trust.
It might be not the best in the market, it might be even decades behind from your competitors. However it is your own systems and supply chains.
Terran
Well-Known Member
On sweeping and reSweeping for monitoring devices it likely had more to do with the fact that the Air China 747-400 were also used in revenue service for passenger flights.
Today Air China seems to have a single aircraft a Boeing 747-8I B2479 modified and dedicated to service of the Paramount Leader and has since maybe 2016. However the previous arrangements used basically a charter. Air China is of course State owned so the aircraft are state property but being that they were Chartered aircraft drawn from revenue services means that they are accessible to the public.
Infamously there was the Previous Paramount leader Jiang Zemin in 2002 had claims that a Boeing 767-300ER intended for such a role was found to contain “20 bugs”. However I always found that case suspect as they never showed the devices and the Conversion was being done in Texas anyway. So even if they did find said devices it’s like a predetermined outcome.
Bugs on planes never really made sense. Unless those bugs are connected to the electrical supply and transmitter, any standalone device will just run out of power. If they are connected to a transmitter, it has to be satellite based and that can be easily detected. If it is not a transmitter but a passive recording device, extracting "20" bugs in person will be difficult and short of strategic decisions, most of that information is either iirelevant or aged.
Furthermore, it is not like Xi and his leadership flies constantly and make decisions in the plane. If I wanted to plan a bug, it will be at the key meeting rooms in Zhongnanhai, not on a seldom used plane.
Furthermore, it is not like Xi and his leadership flies constantly and make decisions in the plane. If I wanted to plan a bug, it will be at the key meeting rooms in Zhongnanhai, not on a seldom used plane.