(Internet and Space Communication)
Index Links: May 26, 2020
INTERSPACE (Bloomberg) Huawei Troops See Dire Threat to Future From Latest Trump Salvo. (Bloomberg) China Poised to Pull Plans for U.K. Nuclear Plants. (Quartz) Millions of Indians flocked to download a tool that removes Chinese apps. (BBC) Google takes down app that removes Chinese software. (Reuters) Exclusive: Huawei hid business operation in Iran after Reuters reported links to CFO. (The Telegraph) America could move weapons stored on British soil if UK persists with Huawei, US senator warns. (The Telegraph) Huawei’s funding of British and Chinese universities raises security fears. (Reuters) Malaysia's Axiata to pick two 5G vendors, in move that could curb reliance on Huawei. (AFP) Britain pushing US to form 5G club of nations to cut out Huawei. (The Wrap) Mark Zuckerberg Says Trump’s Minneapolis Shooting Post Did Not Violate Facebook’s Policies. (The Telegraph) Security officials launch review of Huawei's involvement in Britain's 5G network. (Business Insider) Trump plans to sign an executive order 'pertaining to social media' on Thursday, shortly after he accused Twitter of squashing free speech. (Business Insider) It looks like Trump's draft executive order targeting Facebook and Twitter got leaked online. (The Independent) Trump news – live: President to sign executive order pursuing social media giants amid silence over US reaching 100,000 dead. (Business Insider) YouTube has been auto-deleting comments about China's government-sponsored hacker army, but says it is 'an error in our enforcement systems'. Luat an ninh mang Vietnam 2018.
Business
Taiwan minister says TSMC has offset lost Huawei orders
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| FILE PHOTO: A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is seen at its headquarters in Hsinchu |
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) has made up its order book with other customers now that it has lost China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd [HWT.UL], which is subject to U.S. sales restrictions, a government minister said on Monday.
TSMC's clients include Huawei's chip division HiSilicon. However, the U.S. blacklisting of Huawei over security concerns and trade disputes with China has left the world's biggest contract chipmaker exposed to diplomatic developments between two countries where it also has production bases.
Last month, the company unveiled plans for a $12-billion plant in the United States just hours before the U.S. Commerce Department outlined a proposal to amend chip export rules - a move that would restrict TSMC's sales to Huawei.
The amendment would require licences for sales of semiconductors made abroad with U.S. technology to Huawei, the world's biggest supplier of telecoms equipment and its second-largest smartphone maker.
Kung Ming-hsin, the new head of Taiwan's economic planning agency, the National Development Council, said the United States was taking aim at a specific company, not Taiwan's economic relations with China, the island's largest trading partner.
"The United States has not asked Taiwan to cut off all ties with China. It's aimed at Huawei," Kung told reporters in Taipei.
The main reason the United States has targeted Huawei is because it was not transparent and had too close a relationship with the Chinese government, he added, charges the company has denied.
"As for TSMC, although their orders no longer have Huawei, they've quickly been filled up, as other people really need them," Kung said, without elaborating.
TSMC declined to comment, saying it did not comment on its customers.
The chairman of TSMC, a supplier to U.S. tech giants such as Apple Inc , said this month the firm could quickly fill any order gap should U.S. curbs prevent sales to Huawei.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
World
UK tells telcos to stockpile Huawei gear in face of U.S. sanctions: letter
https://www.yahoo.com/news/uk-tells-telcos-stockpile-huawei-184901274.html
By Jack Stubbs and Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) - British security officials have told UK telecom operators to ensure they have adequate stockpiles of Huawei equipment due to fears that new U.S. sanctions will disrupt the Chinese firm's ability to maintain critical supplies, according to a letter seen by Reuters.
Britain granted Huawei a limited role in its future 5G networks in January, but Prime Minister Boris Johnson has since come under renewed pressure from Washington and some lawmakers in his own party who say the company's equipment is a security risk. Huawei has repeatedly denied the allegations.
Officials at the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) are now studying the impact of U.S. measures announced in May, which are intended to restrict Huawei's ability to source the advanced microchips needed to produce its 5G equipment and flagship smartphones.
Senior NCSC officials wrote to operators including Britain's BT Group and Vodafone last week, said three people familiar with the matter, telling them to maintain adequate supplies of spare parts from all manufacturers.
But the letter also emphasised the increased risk to Huawei's equipment and its future ability to provide updates for those products in the face of U.S. pressure.
"Ensuring that products and components are kept up-to-date is essential to maintaining the security of networks," the letter said. "Escalating U.S. action against Huawei may affect its ability to provide updates for products containing U.S. technology."
An NCSC spokeswoman said: "The NCSC has provided operators with a series of precautionary steps we recommend they take while we carefully consider the impact these sanctions have on the UK's networks."
Huawei Vice President Victor Zhang said: "Our customers are our number one priority and we are working with them to ensure business continuity. We strongly oppose politically-motivated actions by the US that are designed to damage our business and are not based on evidence."
BT and Vodafone declined to comment.
Britain designated Huawei a "high-risk vendor" in January, capping its 5G involvement at a 35% market share and excluding it from the data-heavy core of the network.
Officials now say they are reviewing the specific guidance on how Huawei equipment should be deployed in order to best secure UK networks and are considering a range of options. A decision is due in the coming weeks.
Any move by London to further restrict Huawei or bar the company completely would strain relations with China, which have grown tense in recent months over Beijing's handling of the situation in Hong Kong and the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Reporting by Jack Stubbs and Kate Holton; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Alex Richardson)
World
Special relationship would be 'fundamentally altered' if UK uses Huawei in 5G network
June 16, 2020, 9:56 AM P
The UK’s ‘special relationship’ with the US would be “fundamentally altered” if it uses Huawei in its 5G network, a Republican congressman has warned.
Mike Turner, Chairman of the Defence and Security Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said the special relationship between the UK and US was important “because we rely on each other”, for both one another’s capabilities and the “peer support where we have a dialogue about things we are looking at or things we are concerned about”.
When asked at the Commons Defence Sub Committee if that relationship was at risk due to “recent conversations around Huawei”, Mr Turner said “it would be fundamentally altered in that the ability to share” and retained “the same academic level of trust” would be “impacted”.
“The amount of information that we share would be impacted and the concern about where that information may go,” he said.
Mr Turner added that there had to be “recognition of the reality of an impact” if Huawei is to be embedded in Britain’s 5G, and cautioned that this “should be considered” by the UK.
It comes after the UK Government confirmed that the National Cyber Security Centre had launched a review of Huawei's involvement in Britain's 5G network in the wake of US sanctions. However Boris Johnson has been keen to state that the UK should continue to work with the "great and rising power" of China.
Franklin Miller, a foreign policy and nuclear defense police expert who served for more than 30 in the U.S. government, said it was his hope that the ‘special relationship’, which exists not just through politicians but through “intelligence officers, scientific officers, across the US and the UK”, continued for many years to come.
“The special relationship is absolutely vital,” he told the committee.
“However he cautioned that “the relationship needs to be improved” between the White House and Number 10.
“As someone who has served in both the Republic and Democrat administrations I think the White House and Number 10 need to share views and shared objectives to the maximum degree possible and I think things can get a lot better than they are now,” he said.
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USA TODAY
The FCC wants an investigation into T-Mobile's outage that left customers without voice, data service
Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai said the agency would open an investigation into T-Mobile's Monday network issues that affected voice and data service for many customers.
In a late Monday tweet, Pai called the outage "unacceptable." And added that the FCC would be demanding answers by "launching an investigation."
An hour later, T-Mobile notified the public it had resolved the network issues.
Whereas, T-Mobile's president of technology Neville Ray, confirmed on Twitter around 1 a.m. EDT Tuesday that voice and text services were "now restored."
The FCC has fined carriers, including T-Mobile, before for service failures.
T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert in a Monday statement called the problem "an IP traffic related issue that has created significant capacity issues in the network core throughout the day."
Downdetector, which collects outage reports from users, showed a spike around 3 p.m. EDT Monday for T-Mobile customers.
While there were other reported outages for carriers such as Verizon and AT&T, the companies confirmed that the issue might have stemmed from T-Mobile's problems.
"Verizon's network is performing well. We're aware that another carrier is having network issues. Calls to and from that carrier may receive an error message," said Rich Young, a Verizon spokesperson. "We understand Downdetector is falsely reporting Verizon network issues."
Young said:
Sites such as Downdetector.com utilize limited crowdsourced data drawn from sample social posts which are often statistically insignificant or factually incorrect. A lot of factors can contribute to a false report on a third-party website … a faulty device, network traffic that slows but doesn’t inhibit connections, commercial RF blockers, human error, network issues impacting other carriers and more. These types of sites do not evaluate and confirm the crowdsourced data that they receive, they simply aggregate it and report it. The result can be faulty reports of network performance interruptions causing widespread miscommunication for wireless users.
AT&T also told USA TODAY it was "operating normally."
A spokesperson for the service provider pointed to a tweet from its news account saying, "Our network is operating normally, but it’s possible some customers are unable to reach people on other carriers’ networks."
Follow Josh Rivera on Twitter: @Josh1Rivera.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: T-Mobile's outage prompts an FCC investigation
Business
T-Mobile explains what caused the massive outage that disrupted voice and data service across the United States earlier this week
T-Mobile has shared more information behind the cause of Monday's outage, saying the problems were the result of a circuit failure from a third-party provider in the Southeast.
The carrier is working with vendors to "add permanent additional safeguards" that would prevent such an issue from happening again, according to Neville Ray, T-Mobile's president of technology.
T-Mobile customers across the US experienced outages on Monday that lasted throughout the afternoon and evening.
Customers on other carrier networks also reported issues during the outage period, although AT&T and Verizon had said their networks were operating normally on Monday.
Shutterstock
T-Mobile has shared more information behind what caused the massive outage that disrupted service across the United States on Monday, saying that the issue stems from a fiber circuit failure in the Southeast.
"Our engineers worked through the night to understand the root cause of yesterday's issues, address it and prevent it from happening again," Neville Ray, T-Mobile's president of technology, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday evening. "The trigger event is known to be a leased fiber circuit failure from a third-party provider in the Southeast."
Ray said T-Mobile's existing safeguards that are meant to ensure such circuit failures won't impact customers had failed and resulted in an "overload situation." That overload caused what Ray described as an "IP traffic storm" that spread from the Southeast to create capacity issues across the network that supports T-Mobile's voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) calls.
Ray says the carrier has worked with its vendors to "add permanent additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again" and is "continuing to work on determining the cause of the initial overload failure."
T-Mobile's service was restored around 1 a.m. ET on Tuesday after outages had affected the network across the United States for much of the afternoon and evening on Monday. The website Downdetector, which tracks outages across popular services and websites, indicated that the issue seemed to peak at around 3 p.m. on Monday, with more than 93,000 reports of issues on the network.
Ray said in his latest blog post that "data connections continued to work" during the outage, although on Monday he tweeted that T-Mobile's engineers were working to "resolve a voice and data issue."
Customers on other carriers had reported problems with service as well, according to Downdetector, but both AT&T and Verizon had said their networks were operating normally on Monday. Ray also said that Sprint customers were unaffected by the service disruptions.
The mishap has brought scrutiny from the Federal Communications Commission, as chairman Ajit Pai tweeted on Monday that the outage was "unacceptable" and that the commission would be launching an investigation.
"We're demanding answers — and so are American customers," Pai tweeted.
Read the original article on Business Insider
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Business
Largest union federation in the US demands apology from Mark Zuckerberg over new software feature that would allow employers blacklist words like 'unionize' in chats
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| Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg pauses while speaking as he testifies before a joint hearing of the Commerce and Judiciary Committees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, April 10, 2018. |
AP Photo/Alex Brandon
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka demanded a personal apology from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg after it was revealed the company was working on a feature that could limit union drives.
"The AFL-CIO demands that Mark Zuckerberg personally apologize to working people, pull this tool immediately, and conduct a board-level investigation into how this product came into existence in the first place," Trumka said in a statement on Friday.
Earlier, a spokesperson for Facebook told Business Insider that the company has frozen production on its potentially union-busting feature.
The largest union federation in the United States on Friday blasted Facebook after it was revealed the company was offering to let employers limit unionization efforts on its platform.
Facebook's Workplace functions as an internal message board for corporate clients, an answer to Slack or Microsoft Teams. This week, The Intercept reported that Facebook was promising those clients the ability to exert "content control" over their respective news feeds. Specifically, it said companies could suppress the word "unionize."
That didn't sit well with the AFL-CIO, which represents more than 12.5 million union members.
"Employers censoring their employees' speech about unionizing is illegal," President Richard Trumka said in a June 12 statement. "The AFL-CIO demands that Mark Zuckerberg personally apologize to working people, pull this tool immediately, and conduct a board-level investigation into how this product came into existence in the first place."
Earlier, a spokesperson for Facebook told Business Insider that the company has frozen production on its potentially union-busting feature.
"While these kinds of content moderation tools are useful for companies, this example was poorly chosen and should never have been used," the spokesperson said. "The feature was only in early development and we've pulled any plans to roll it out while we think through next steps."
Trumka also called on Facebook to "embrace global labor rights standards for all its 48,000 workers and for its contractors who employ tens of thousands more," remain neutral to efforts to unionize and recognize employee unions.
Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com
Read the original article on Business Insider
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Business Insider
Zoom deactivated the US-based account of a Tiananmen Square protester after an online commemorative event
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| The Tiananmen Square protests, 1989. |
Zoom deactivated the account of a Tiananmen Square protester after he organized a memorial event for the 1989 protests.
Zoom said the account was deactivated to "comply with local law" but did not go into further detail.
The host is US-based, but Zoom's statement suggests some attendees tuned in from China, meaning Chinese censorship laws applied.
Zoom said it has now reactivated the account.
Zoom, the videoconferencing platform that's ballooned in popularity since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, said on Wednesday it had deactivated an activist group's account for hosting a Tiananmen Square memorial event.
The US-based group, called Humanitarian China, hosted a 31st anniversary event to commemorate Tiananmen Square on May 31, Axios reported. The group is headed up by Zhou Fengsuo, a former student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests which culminated in a massacre of protesters on June 4 of that year.
Zhou hosted the event which was attended by some 250 people. Speakers included mothers of students killed during the protests. On June 7, Zhou's account was shut down.
A Zoom spokesperson told Axios the account was deactivated to "comply with local law." Although it did not explicitly say which local law this was, its statement suggested that users joining in from China may have meant the Zoom meeting fell under China's jurisdiction.
"Just like any global company, we must comply with applicable laws in the jurisdictions where we operate. When a meeting is held across different countries, the participants within those countries are required to comply with their respective local laws. We aim to limit the actions we take to those necessary to comply with local law and continuously review and improve our process on these matters," a Zoom spokesperson said.
Zoom has now reactivated the account.
Zhou told Axios Zoom didn't respond to his emails asking why his account was shut down.
"We are outraged by this act from Zoom, a US company," said Zhou. "As the most commercially popular meeting software worldwide, Zoom is essential as an unbanned outreach to Chinese audiences remembering and commemorating Tiananmen Massacre during the coronavirus pandemic."
Although Zoom is headquartered in California, it has already faced scrutiny over how it interacts with China's laws and regulations. In April 2020 the company admitted it had "mistakenly" routed some video calls through servers in China, sparking security concerns. Subsequently the company announced premium users would be able to choose which data centers are used to route their calls, and non-paying users would not have their calls routed through China.
China has stringent censorship laws which ban the discussion of the pro-democracy movement and Tiananmen Square. Zoom's decision to deactivate Zhou's account mirrors reports about TikTok, the wildly popular short-form video app, which was discovered to have been instructing moderators to take down politically contentious content including mentions of Tiananmen Square. TikTok is owned by Chinese tech giant ByteDance, which is headquartered in Beijing.
Zoom issued a press release on Thursday, June 11th saying it will do better in the future. "Going forward Zoom will not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China," Zoom said.
The company also said it will develop technology to enable it to "remove or block" participants based on geography to comply with local laws, which it can't do right now. Zoom also said that the technology will allow it to be able to protect "conversations for participants outside of those borders where the activity is allowed."
Read the original article on Business Insider
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World
U.S. lawmakers ask Zoom to clarify China ties after it suspends accounts
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| A 3D printed Zoom logo |
By Brenda Goh
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Three U.S. lawmakers asked Zoom Video Communications Inc <ZM.O> to clarify its data-collection practices and relationship with the Chinese government after the firm said it had suspended user accounts to meet demands from Beijing.
The California-based firm has come under heavy scrutiny after three U.S. and Hong Kong-based activists said their accounts had been suspended and meetings disrupted after they tried to hold events related to the anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Zoom said on Friday it was notified of the events and asked to take action by the Chinese government in May and early June. It said it suspended one account in Hong and two in the United States but has now reinstated these accounts and will not allow further requests from China to affect users outside the country.
"We did not provide any user information or meeting content to the Chinese government," Zoom said in a statement. "We do not have a backdoor that allows someone to enter a meeting without being visible."
The online meeting platform, which has surged in popularity as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced millions around the world indoors, has seen its downloads soar in China.
The service is not blocked in China, unlike many Western platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which abandoned efforts to crack China's market years ago due to government demands to censor and monitor content. Twitter on Thursday said it had removed accounts tied to a Beijing-backed influence operation.
Representatives Greg Walden, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the ranking member of a consumer subcommittee, sent a letter to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan on Thursday asking him to clarify the company's data practices, whether any was shared with Beijing and whether it encrypted users' communications.
Republican Senator Josh Hawley also wrote to Yuan asking him to "pick a side" between the United States and China.
The three politicians have previously expressed concerns about TikTok's owner, Chinese firm ByteDance, which is being scrutinized by U.S. regulators over the personal data the short video app handles.
"We appreciate the outreach we have received from various elected officials and look forward to engaging with them," a Zoom spokesman said.
China's internet watchdog, the Cyberspace Administration of China, did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment from Reuters. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters on Friday that she was not aware of the details.
SEPARATE CHINA FROM THE WORLD
Wang Dan, a U.S.-based dissident and exiled student leader of the crushed 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, had his Zoom account suspended. He said he was shocked to hear Zoom acknowledge it had interrupted meetings he was participating in. His June 3 event with about 200 participants was deactivated midstream, he said.
"Zoom complied with China's request, preventing us from going about our lives smoothly," Wang said in an email to Reuters. "It cannot get away with just a statement. We shall continue to use legal means and public opinion to ask Zoom to take responsibility for its mistake."
The company said it is now developing technology to enable it to remove or block participants based on geography, allowing it to comply with requests from local authorities. It said it would publish an updated global policy on June 30.
U.S.-based Humanitarian China founder Zhou Fengsuo said he welcomed Zoom's acknowledgement of the suspensions but told Reuters it was unacceptable for the company "to separate China users from the rest of the world."
The company's China links have been called into question before.
Toronto-based internet watchdog Citizen Lab said in April it had found evidence some calls made in North America, as well as the encryption keys used to secure those calls, were routed through China. Zoom said it had mistakenly allowed Chinese data centres to accept calls.
Zoom says it has many research and development personnel in China. Its founder Yuan grew up and attended university in China before migrating to the United States in the mid 1990s. He is now an American citizen.
Bill Bishop, editor of the China-focused Sinocism news letter, wrote on Friday that "Zoom should no longer get the benefit of the doubt over its China-related issues and given how many people, organizations, government bodies and political campaigns now rely on its services the company must err on the side of transparency.
(Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru and Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Additional reporting by Lun Tian Yew, Huizhong Wu and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Editing by Devika Syamnath, Lincoln Feast, William Mallard and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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Variety
Twitter Removes More Than 170,000 Accounts Tied to Chinese Misinformation Operation
Click here to read the full article.
Twitter said Thursday that it removed more than 170,000 accounts tied to a Chinese influence operation that spread misinformation favorable to the Beijing regime about Hong Kong and coronavirus.
The company suspended 23,750 accounts that were part of a “highly engaged core network,” as well as a larger group of around 150,000 “amplifier” accounts designed to boost core account content, it said. This network was posting mostly in Chinese to “spread geopolitical narratives favorable to the Communist Party of China (CCP),” while also pushing misinformation about politics in Hong Kong.
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Researchers said the accounts also posted about Taiwan and the exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, who is an outspoken critic of Beijing.
Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) researcher Renee DiResta said that many accounts posting about coronavirus were set up in late January. They became more active as the outbreak began to spread beyond China’s borders. In an analysis, the SIO said that common narratives “praise[d] China’s response to the virus while… also us[ing] the pandemic to antagonize the U.S. and Hong Kong activists.”
Twitter on Thursday also took down two smaller state-backed operations originating from Russia and Turkey that were focused more on local audiences in those countries. The company deleted more than 1,000 accounts that posted material favorable to the ruling United Russia, as well as 7,340 accounts posting content promoting the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s conservative AK Parti.
Twitter is blocked in China, where the government operates one of the world’s strictest censorship regimes.
Last August, the company removed around 1,000 accounts that it deemed had ties to China and were “deliberately and specifically” attempting to influence narratives about Hong Kong, where ongoing anti-government, pro-democracy protests have posed a continual challenge to authorities.
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World
Twitter removes China, Russia and Turkey 'state-linked' accounts
World
Could Donald Trump’s War Against Huawei Trigger a Real War With China?
Click here to read the full original article.
The centerpiece of the Trump administration’s “tech war” with China is the campaign to prevent its national champion Huawei from becoming the dominant supplier of 5G systems to the world. The Administration’s objective, as a former Trump NSC staffer described it, is to “kill Huawei.” And China has heard that message. As Huawei’s legendary CEO Ren Zhengfei told the leadership of the company in February, “the company has entered a state of war.”
After months of diplomatic efforts to dissuade other nations from buying their 5G infrastructure from Huawei, the administration delivered what one official called a “death blow.” On May 15, the Commerce Department banned all sales of advanced semiconductors from American suppliers to Huawei. It also prohibited all sales of equipment to design and produce advanced semiconductors by foreign companies that use U.S. technology or intellectual property.
In the five months between now and the election, could the U.S. attempt to enforce that ban become a twenty-first-century equivalent of the oil embargo the United States imposed on Japan in August 1941? While many people may not remember what happened, and while it was certainly not what the United States intended or anticipated, that action precipitated Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor four months later—and America’s entry into World War II.
The thought that the United States and China could find themselves in a real, hot, bloody war will strike many readers as inconceivable. But we should remember that when we say something is inconceivable, this is not a claim about what is possible in the world, but rather about what our minds can conceive. In the summer of 1941, the possibility that a nation less than one-quarter the size of the United States would launch a bolt from the blue against the most powerful nation in the world was beyond Washington’s imagination.
To punish Japan for its military aggression against its neighbors in the late 1930s, the United States had initially imposed sanctions, and later an embargo on exports of high-grade scrap iron and aviation fuel to Japan. When these failed to stop its expansion, Washington ratcheted up the pressure by including essential raw materials such as iron, brass, and copper. Finally, on August 1, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the United States would embargo all oil shipments to Japan.
Eighty percent of Japan’s oil came from the United States, and Japan’s military forces required that oil to operate at home as well as across the Greater Co-prosperity Area in Northeast Asia. Facing what it saw as a choice between slow but sure strangulation, on the one hand, and taking an extreme chance that offered hope of survival, on the other, the government chose to take its chance with what it hoped would be a “knockout blow”—a bold preemptive attack aimed to destroy the U.S. Pacific Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor. As the designer of the attack, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, told the emperor: “In the first six months to a year of war against the U.S. and England, I will run wild, and I will show you an uninterrupted succession of victories.” But he went on to warn: “Should the war be prolonged for two or three years, I have no confidence in our ultimate victory.”
After a Black Swan spring, what else could happen in the fall of 2020?
Let us imagine that the Trump administration actually implements the ban on all sales of advanced semiconductors and equipment to manufacture semiconductors to China. Imagine further that Huawei’s Chairman really believes what he said after the ban was announced that this forces Huawei “to seek survival.” If President Xi Jinping concludes that this is a matter of life and death for his champion advanced technology company that is the poster child for his signature program promising Chinese technological leadership by 2025 and 2030, then what options does China have?
The leading producer of advanced semiconductors for Huawei is the Taiwanese company TSMC. Its factories that supply Huawei and other leading Chinese technology companies are located ninety miles off the shore of the Chinese mainland. While operationally, Taiwan is semi-autonomous with its own market economy and democracy, according to Beijing, Taiwan is a “renegade province” that China’s leaders have repeatedly affirmed will be reintegrated fully under the control of Beijing. While previous Chinese leaders had followed a strategy that envisioned the magnetic pull of its rapidly-growing economy drawing Taiwan into the motherland, Xi Jinping’s government has concluded that this approach failed. As Xi’s Party-led autocracy has tightened controls against political opposition or criticism, Taiwanese, like Hong Kong residents, have become increasingly resistant to the prospect of being ruled by Beijing. In the twists and turns of this story, observers of the recent National People’s Congress in Beijing will have noticed that Premier Li Keqiang’s speech dropped the term “peaceful” from Beijing’s standard call for the reunification of Taiwan. One of China’s senior military leaders, Gen. Li Zuocheng, gave a rousing speech to the Congress assuring them that “If the possibility for peaceful reunification is lost, then the People’s armed forces will, with the whole of the nation, including the people of Taiwan, take all necessary steps to resolutely smash any separatist plots or actions.”
As relations between the United States and China worsen over the months ahead, could Beijing decide to try to make Taiwan the solution to its advanced semiconductor problem? American defense planners have analyzed an array of scenarios that they suspect Chinese planners have considered. These being with cutting off Taiwan’s lifeline of oil, food, and other essential supplies that arrive daily by ship—in essence, a twenty-first-century version of the coercive measures it employed in 1996 to intimidate Taiwan. A second option would be for China’s cyber warriors to shut down Taiwan’s electrical grid and the web as initial steps up a ladder that could then include covert or overt attacks on Taiwanese military bases to persuade its government to meet its demands. A third option foresees Chinese agents and sympathizers on the island, perhaps assisted by a Chinese version of Russia’s “little green men” who seized Crimea in 2014, taking over airports, ports, communication centers, and even key factories and headquarters including TSMC.
If Chinese forces seized TSMC factories and laboratories, then would this solve Huawei’s and other Chinese technologies leader’s advanced semiconductor problems? While views differ, having consulted with a number of those at leading U.S. and UK companies in this industry, my best judgment is that this could buy China critical time—one to two years— to advance its own initiatives. Of course, industry leaders like Qualcomm and ARM are continuously improving their designs and their manufacturing processes. But since Huawei and a number of other Chinese firms have been hard at work in developing indigenous capabilities, even if they should be a year behind, given their other advantages in 5G, this could still allow China to sustain its leadership in this critical new technology.
Before choosing military action against Taiwan, China would consider American reactions. In 1996, when Beijing began an analogous effort, it was forced to back down when President Bill Clinton ordered two U.S. aircraft carriers to support Taiwan. But that dramatic humiliation steeled Chinese leaders’ determination to build up their own military capabilities to ensure that this could never happen again. As has been widely reported, including in the new best-seller by Chris Brose, The Kill Chain, the local military balance of power has shifted dramatically since then. In the last eighteen Pentagon war games in which the United States and China fought a hot war over Taiwan, the score is China: eighteen, the United States: zero.
Is such a scenario likely? I think not. I’m betting that U.S. declarations about an embargo on all semiconductors are more bark than bite. That is also the way the market is assessing this standoff—the stock prices of the major suppliers of semiconductors to Huawei and to China—TSCM, Intel, Qualcomm, and Broadcom—having increased since the announced ban.
Nonetheless, the critical question is whether such a scenario is possible. And the answer to that question is most certainly yes. Those who find this too fanciful should review carefully what President Xi’s Party-led autocracy has done in the past several weeks in Hong Kong. Recognizing that a crisis would be a terrible thing to waste, Beijing has taken advantage of the distraction and disarray caused by the pandemic to tighten the noose to stop that city-state’s slide toward greater autonomy. The past two years of ineffective efforts by the local authorities to prevent disruptive weekly demonstrations demanding greater autonomy has been an embarrassment to Xi. Colleagues and critics have asked how a government that has asserted its authority so effectively on the mainland can have been thwarted by unruly kids. Beijing is thus moving step by step to impose a new national security law on Hong Kong that will outlaw four sins: session, sedition, treason, and foreign subversion. This law will allow Beijing’s state security forces to operate publicly to arrest violators. Under the cover of coronavirus limits on social gatherings and requirements for social distancing, Beijing has already arrested a number of the leaders of the protest and democracy movement and has been strengthening its surveillance system. While some Hong Kong residents have gone back to the streets in protest, even the leaders of these efforts have expressed their sense that the outcome is “inevitable.”
As Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu warned two weeks ago: “If Hong Kong falls, we don’t know what’s going to be next. It might be Taiwan.” The U.S. government has condemned Beijing’s actions loudly, with Secretary of State Pompeo calling them a “death knell for Hong Kong’s autonomy.” It is currently preparing to respond with sanctions and even considering denial of Hong Kong’s special status for trade and finance, despite the fact that this would do more damage to Hong Kong than to Beijing. And many members of Congress are howling for more.
All this is certain to become ammunition in the most vicious war going on today—which is the war within the United States. Trump is fighting for reelection to ensure what he sees as his own personal survival and the future of his vision of America, against Joe Biden and the Democrats who are fighting for what they believe is the survival of American democracy.
In sum, as I wrote in Destined for War? (which was published on Memorial Day three years ago), we should expect things to get worse before they get worse. As the United States increasingly demonizes a rising China that is threatening to displace us from our position of leadership in every arena, and China pushes back to ensure that it can achieve its China Dream, both should be acutely aware that Thucydidean rivalries most often end in real wars. Moreover, the major risk of war in these rivalries comes not from either the rising or ruling power deciding that it wants war with the other. Instead, actions that have unintended effects, third-party provocations, or even accidents that would otherwise be inconsequential or readily managed often trigger a vicious spiral of reactions that drag the principal protagonists to what both know would be a catastrophe.
In sum: the remainder of 2020 could pose as severe a test for the United States and China as the final five months of 1941 did for the United States and Japan.
Graham T. Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is the former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center and the author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?
Image: Reuters
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The Telegraph
US offers to build UK's 5G and nuclear stations to end 'coercive' relationship with China
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| Mike Pompeo with Boris Johnson - TOLGA AKMEN/AFP |
America has offered to build Britain's 5G and nuclear power stations so that the "coercive and bullying" relationship with China can end, Mike Pompeo has said.
In a statement released yesterday the US Secretary of State said America stood with its “allies and partners against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coercive bullying tactics”, as he sighted reports that Beijing had threatened to punish HSBC and “break commitments to build nuclear power plants in the United Kingdom unless London allows Huawei to build its 5G network”.
HSBC is understood to have claimed that it could face reprisals in China if Huawei was blocked from selling equipment to the next generation of networks being built by Britain’s mobile operators.
Mark Tucker, the bank’s chairman, is understood to have made private representations to Boris Johnson’s advisers in which he warned Downing Street against a ban on Huawei in 5G.
Mr Pompeo, one of Donald Trump’s most trusted allies, warned that the CCP’s “browbeating of HSBC” should provide “a cautionary tale”, as he accused Beijing of using the “bank’s business in China as political leverage against London”.
“Beijing’s aggressive behavior shows why countries should avoid economic overreliance on China and should guard their critical infrastructure from CCP influence,” he added.
“The United States stands ready to assist our friends in the U.K. with any needs they have, from building secure and reliable nuclear power plants to developing trusted 5G solutions that protect their citizens’ privacy”.
Mr Pompeo has been vocal of his distrust of Huawei and has previously failed to rule out cutting Britain’s access to US intelligence if it pursues a relationship with Huawei.
Last month the UK Government confirmed that the National Cyber Security Centre had launched a review of Huawei's involvement in Britain's 5G network in the wake of US sanctions.
During Prime Minister’s Questions today the Prime Minister said that while the UK should continue to work with the "great and rising power" of China it must feel "absolutely free" to raise concerns with Beijing.
Mr Johnson made the comments after he was pressed to publish a consultation paper on the UK's engagement with China following concerns over several issues, including Covid-19, Hong Kong and the involvement of Huawei in 5G.
Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader and one of the leaders of the newly formed Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (ipac) told The Daily Telegraph that the “free world” needed to “work together” to make the telecommunications market competitive again.
“The telecoms companies in the market right now who can build the network are no longer in the USA but in Scandinavia and South Korea,” he said. Sir Iain added that 12 years ago “there were about 10 companies in this field”, but today outside China it was only Samsung, Nokia and Ericsson.
“Huawei has driven so many out of business with its subsidised business undercutting them all. We need to rebuild the industry.”
It comes after Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, warned that the West "cannot ignore the consequences of the rise of China".
Tobias Ellwood, Chairman of the Defence Select Committee, said that “when the man in charge of the world’s largest security alliance gives warning of a rising global threat, we should listen”.
“Britain and the United States must lead in re-setting Western foreign policy before other nations are ensnared into China’s web of political influence.
“Pompeo’s offer to stand with allies should be taken before the shifting global balance of power in China’s favour takes us closer to a bi-polar world and another Cold War.”
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Reuters
U.S. failed to properly oversee Chinese telecom carriers: Senate panel
By David Shepardson
ttps://www.yahoo.com/news/china-telecom-urges-fcc-not-010313383.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate report released Tuesday says the U.S. government failed to properly oversee Chinese-owned telecommunications companies for nearly two decades.
The report from the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations says the U.S. government "provided little-to-no oversight of Chinese state-owned telecommunications carriers operating in the United States for nearly twenty years."
It faulted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and "Team Telecom" - an informal group comprised of officials from the Justice, Homeland Security, and Defense Departments - in their oversight of China Telecom (Americas) Corp <728.HK>, China Unicom (Americas) <0762.HK>, and Pacific Networks Corp, which all received FCC approval for U.S. operations about two decades ago.
In April, the FCC issued show-cause orders requiring the three state-owned Chinese carriers to explain why the agency should not revoke their authorization to operate in the United States. All three carriers have urged the FCC not to do that.
The report urged the FCC to quickly decide whether to revoke the three Chinese carriers' authorizations.
"Federal agencies have done little to protect the integrity of U.S. telecommunications networks and counter national security threats from China," the panel's chairman, Rob Portman, a Republican, said in a statement.
The panel's top Democrat, Tom Carper, said the report shows "how we've allowed Chinese government-owned companies gain a foothold in our telecommunications industry while their American competitors face significant barriers to entry in China."
In May 2019, the FCC denied approval for another Chinese carrier, China Mobile Ltd <0941.HK>, to operate in the United States, citing national security concerns.
An FCC spokesman said the commission looks forward to reviewing the Senate report.
Team Telecom until recently conducted limited oversight of the Chinese state-owned carriers and had no interaction with China Unicom Americas since the FCC's authorization in 2002, the report found.
The White House issued an executive order in April to formalize Team Telecom's scrutiny of foreign telecommunications firms, but the panel wants Congress to grant formal legislative authority to "provide for greater oversight over foreign carriers."
(Reporting by David Shepardson. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
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World
Boris Johnson told to give legally-binding Huawei 5G exit date or face Commons defeat
Boris Johnson must provide a legally-binding date to strip Huawei from Britain's 5G network or face a Commons defeat, senior Tory MPs have warned.
Conservatives are pressing for a concrete pledge by the Government within the next two months, while crucial legislation is expected to go through Parliament.
Writing in The Telegraph, Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Bob Seely said: "Parliament is feeling increasingly restless about the UK's dependency on China. More and more legislators are recognising that how we handle this issue hugely affects our constituents."
They said a ban on new Huawei equipment being installed into the UK network from 2023 or 2024, which the Government has been discussing, will "not be sufficient". Instead, they have called on the Government to agree to having "all Huawei equipment removed from the UK network, root and branch, by a fixed date".
Sir Iain and Mr Seely pointed out that 59 MPs have now joined the Huawei Interest Group of Conservative MPs.
A source close to the group said on Monday that they could all vote against the Government by supporting rebel amendments to three potential bills due to go through Parliament before the summer recess. These include the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill, currently going through the committee stage in the House of Lords.
Lord Alton is expected to lay down an amendment to stop companies with links to human rights abuses from supplying telecoms to leasehold properties. A draft of his amendment, seen by The Telegraph, says no operator should be allowed to use the UK's telecommunications infrastructure "to breach human rights after 31 December 2023".
Sir Iain and Mr Seely said the Parliamentary arithmetic on upcoming legislation is "troubling ministers".
They wrote that MPs are "no longer prepared to sit idly by as a nascent superpower, run by a repressive and intolerant government, undermines the global rules-based order", adding: "In allowing Huawei into our 5G networks, we have undermined the unity of the shared Five Eyes approach to the global conduct of the Chinese Communist Party."
Neil O'Brien, the Conservative MP who co-leads the China Research Group, told The Telegraph: "There are important choices to make on whether changes will only affect the 5G network or also older Huawei 3G and 4G equipment that is in the network now.
"There are also choices on whether to set a date for stopping new inflow of Huawei equipment, or a date to have eliminated it by."
It comes amid Government plans to introduce new legislation that would prevent foreign takeovers by companies that represent a threat to national security.
As part of the Government's National Security and Investment Bill, ministers are working to make it compulsory for British companies to report any attempted takeovers that could be a cause for concern over security. Anyone who fails to comply with the rules after takeovers could risk imprisonment and fines.
Mr Johnson's official spokesman said the bill would "strengthen the Government's power to scrutinise and intervene in takeovers and mergers to protect national security, wherever risks may emanate from". He added that details of the legislation would "be announced in due course", saying: "It's a Queen's speech commitment, so I'm sure it won't be too long before we bring the legislation forward."
The Prime Minister wants "academic partnerships" and research projects to be included under the rules amid concern about links between British universities and Chinese companies, the Times reported on Monday.
Last month, The Telegraph revealed that Huawei backed 17 scientific papers with UK universities about cutting-edge "dual use" technologies in an attempt to forge close ties to western culture.
Meanwhile, Huawei published an open letter in several national newspapers on Monday, pledging that it was as "committed as ever" to building internet networks "quickly, affordably and securely".
In the letter, the Chinese telecoms giant said: "For nearly 20 years, we've supplied the UK's mobile and broadband companies with 3G and 4G. But some now question our role in helping Britain lead the way in 5G.
"We're also playing our part in creating jobs, training the engineers of tomorrow, investing in new technology and supporting universities."
Business
Ericsson flags losses from China 5G contracts, takes 1 billion SEK charge
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| An Ericsson logo is pictured at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Shanghai |
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Ericsson expects to take a second-quarter writedown of about 1 billion crowns ($109 million) on product inventory in China, the Swedish telecoms gear maker said on Monday.
The company, which has won 5G contracts from three major operators in China, said it expected negative gross margins in China in the quarter reflecting the high initial costs for new products.
Ericsson had warned in its first-quarter report that an increasing share of strategic contracts would hurt profitability in the second quarter, primarily due to negative gross margins in China.
Ericsson shares, which have gained 7% this year, were down 2.2% in early trade.
China's three largest telecom operators - China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom - have awarded 5G contracts worth billions of dollars this year, mostly to Huawei and ZTE, according to media reports.
Ericsson's writedown was likely associated with free products given to the Chinese telecom companies and is not a real one-off and needs to be taken into the gross margin estimates, JP Morgan analysts wrote in a client note.
"This has always been an issue with China contracts in our opinion that they cause gross margin issues so though this announcement is not a surprise, investors will want further clarity on the extent of the impact," the investment bank said. Ericsson, which maintained its financial targets for 2020 and 2022, said while the deployment of 5G in China will hurt in the short term, it is expected to have healthy profitability over the life of the contracts.
European rival Nokia won a share of China Unicom's 5G core network, but has been on the sidelines for larger China radio orders which often mean taking losses in the early years of a contract.
(Reporting by Helena Soderpalm and Supantha Mukherjee; editing by Niklas Pollard and Jason Neely)
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