Posted on 01/30/2020 5:05:07 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to allow Huawei to provide the United Kingdom’s next generation of wireless technology has prompted nervous U.S. officials to raise a new question: How soon can they be replaced?
"These decisions about technology are continuous," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday in London. "Two, three, five years later, you rip them out and put new systems in. You constantly upgrade software — real time. And so, the decision was made on Tuesday, but I am confident as we work together to figure out how to implement that decision that we’ll work to get this right."
Johnson’s announcement this week was a blow for Pompeo, who spent the last year warning countries that Huawei and other Chinese telecommunications giants are tools of Beijing’s spy agencies. Even during his flight to London, Pompeo held out hope that Johnson might change course, but that’s an unlikely prospect, even though the prime minister’s party is deeply skeptical of the Chinese technology company.
“The government is unlikely to face a significant rebellion at this point,” an adviser to a senior Tory member of Parliament told the Washington Examiner. “Now the decision has been taken, there is nothing MPs can do, I think, bar keep pressure on government to get Huawei out of next-generation tech.”
“Make no mistake, we had an objective,” Pompeo said during a public discussion with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. “We were trying to make the case, as we have made the case to every country in the world, that we think putting Huawei technology anywhere in your system is very, very difficult to mitigate and therefore not worth the candle.”
The new U.K. policy caps the market share of Huawei and other companies at 35% of the 5G market. Johnson’s team hopes that...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
What could possibly go wrong?
The new U.K. policy caps the market share of Huawei and other companies at 35% of the 5G market. Johnson’s team hopes that...
It could be worse.
Hundred bucks says Boris Johnson is sitting on the board of directors for Huawei when he gets out of office.
You only need one compromised device on your network, no matter how large, and you’re screwed. By the terms of this? 35 out of 100 will be compromised from the factory.
The first thing I would do is start putting a little distance between us and the UK regarding intelligence issues, no need to wait for the rush.
I agree. I’m against using them.
It could have been 50 to 70%.
Anything more than “one unit” is irrelevant.
What can you expect from the government that helped screw over Trump? Australia too.
Okay, then I guess 70% of market share wouldn’t be any worse. My mistake.
Sadly, being network-compromised is like being pregnant, you are or you aren’t. And as long as you have one Huawei (or most other Chinese IT gear maker) piece of equipment on your network, it’s compromised, full stop. You could at one point buy a Chinese home router on the open market, put it behind another router as a filter, then sit and watch that Chinese router try to send packets to unidentified (as in not associated with the manufacturer or any aboveboard service) IP addresses behind the Great Firewall.
History is on your side. I agree. The British government is under a lot of pressure not to let GDP slip once Brexit occurs. Boris Johnson is not Donald Trump. He would sell his grandmother. People forget that in his initial post University incarnation Boris Johnson was a journalist.
Well MI-5 helped Brennan spy on Trump, so I can’t say I feel sorry for those bastards now. We just need to strictly limit what we share with them from now on.
Can Chinese equipment be tested to make sure that it is not bugged? If so, is there a problem other than a reluctance, for political or moral reasons, to buy anything Chinese?
No. That's the entire issue, Einstein.
Pompeo didn’t have much luck with the Pentagon either.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/24/the-pentagon-pushes-back-on-huawei-ban-in-bid-for-balance/
Anyone who assumes the Chinese are amateurs are fooling themselves. The NSA had decades of experience and a massive technological lead, but arrogance, apathy and avarice have changed the playing field.
There are very sophisticated methods of embedding nefarious technology that are virtually untraceable. The vulnerabilities are almost infinite. Unfortunately, so are the odds of convincing an ignorant public that security is worth the cost.
Thanks for the technical update.
I am a retired senior telecomm engineer, and I would agree
that UK screwed up here, you can’t segregate the core from
packets forwarded to and from compromised devices.
We will have to go old school, diplomatic pouches, and old
wwii machines that spys used in old movies to keep the Germans and Russians from reading our war plans.
Basically we can’t use the UK for any intel sharing.
It was my understanding that with 35% of the market, businesses would decide to use theirs or the products of the other 65% of the providers.
If everyone will have their equipment, then I’d agree with you.
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