The Chinese government can order Huawei to do basically whatever it wants, and the former has so far shown no qualms about doing as much espionage, corporate or otherwise, as it can get away with. Infrastructure is one threat, smartphones are another.
It appears now that the US government can order Google, Qualcomm, Intel, and even non-US companies like ARM to do basically whatever it wants, and has shown no qualms in the past about spying on their European allies. From the a non-American POV the US does not have a clear moral high ground.
You're assuming the US government cares if a non-American thinks it has the moral high ground. I would be shocked if any decision maker ever considered that before making a decision.
Well ... depending on where you are in the US, certain officials and municipalities are already doing exactly what you describe, while many would openly like to do so except that some pesky laws and constitutional rights seem to be in the way.
Let's not even get into the US's treatment of foreign nations and governments. One man's freedom fighter, another man's terrorist.
There is no "moral high ground" between the two; you're just choosing which evil you are more comfortable with.
Right. Well, I stand by my opinion. I do think US is bad, and what's happening there is nothing short of a circus. But there is still a giant difference. Cultural, perhaps. I think you cant't wipe out two thousand years of dynastic rule in a century. While US is at parts removing rights in China some of those rights never existed. Human activists live in jail in China, I can't say the same for US. But how can you really measure evil, all the bad things minus good things? Is a nation where there is a strict authority who must be obeyed better than a ruckus of power-hungry politicians trying to gain money, who can say.
Well, anyway. Politics probably shouldn't be discussed in HN. Although it's very interesting topic.
As far as we know, apple has very much not built the decryption tech the govt wants. And we are reasonably sure this is true because of the persistence of vendors selling cracks.
I'm sure there are other examples too.
So I don't really see Huawei and apple/Google/Intel as at all the same.
So can U.S. government to U.S. companies.
In the end, it boils down to the question in whom you have less distrust.
Most people(in the world) will still side with U.S. no matter how they appear to be anti-american.
In all fairness, I have still to see any tangible evidence of this actually having happened. NSA-Backdoored Cisco Routers, on the other hand, are well-documented.
There's plenty of evidence of hacking and corporate espionage; that was what prompted the trade war in the first place. I don't know what public evidence there is about Huawei specifically, but I think it's naive to assume they're an exception.
The trade war started as a mercantilist-spat[1] and the targeted attack on Huawei for perceived "economic loss" as the biggest global south smartphone manufacturer that was due to surpass Apple is clear as day. Additionally any critical US infrastructure was already barred from acquiring ZTE/Huawei cell towers/5G access points.
I thought the problem is that basically all the cell networks run on huawei