Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: One man’s Meat Puppets is…, in reply to Martin Lindberg,
Reggae.
Sorry, but I just can't stand it.
You're banned.
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As suggested by Dan News, Creed ...
SHUT UP JUST SHUT UP
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to nzlemming,
ETA By which I mean a US/Aus opinion is actually no reason to take anything seriously. Let’s take the UK opinion (and many others around the world) just as seriously, where they have no problem with Huawei gear
And the UK scrutiny of Huawei has been intensive, to put it mildly. I honestly am surprised at the way the Greens -- and Gordon Campbell -- have acted here.
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Meanwhile, @rupertmurdoch is losing it a bit on Twitter right now.
Last 3 tweets:
"Seems every competitor and enemy piling on with lies and libels. So bad, easy to hit back hard, which preparing."
"Enemies many different agendas, but worst old toffs and right wingers who still want last century's status quo with their monopolies."
"Let's have it on! Choice, freedom of thought and markets, individual personal responsibility"
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In comments over at interest.co.nz:
On ABC television last night, political commentator Heather Ewart, stated the NZ Government "received the same advice" as the Australian Government, but chose to ignore it.
There's a linked video but it's geoblocked.
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FRom today's Questions for Oral Answer:
6. Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS to the Prime Minister: Has he had any recent discussions with the Prime Minister of Australia over security and intelligence concerns Australia has expressed over Huawei?
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to James George,
There is a bit more to the rumour but nothing of real substance and repeating it would add more heat, no light and make it even more difficult to uncover the reality.
And yet you did repeat it. Unfortunately.
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Hard News: The Huawei Question, in reply to Lew Stoddart,
The Greens might distrust New Zealand and Australian governments of both flavours, and they might fear the American government, but they hate and fear the Chinese government more than almost any other. To an extent that’s fair enough – they’re a pretty far cry worse than anyone in the Anglosphere.
They are indeed. But I think there's a tendency to see "the Chinese" as a monolithic entity, rather than the spectacular, emergent, heterogenous and not always great thing that China actually is.
One thing that's struck me in researching this is what an extraordinary company Huawei is. Juha's 2010 story does a nice job of illustrating the limits of its employee ownership structure, but I still tend to marvel at the way a company that began building PBX systems in 1988 can have become one of the world's top three or four providers of the infrastructure through which we're having this discussion -- without ever going near a stock market.
That said, I also think that Juha's point that going public would solve a lot of Huawei's problems was also sound.
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Hard News: Dirty deeds done by Digger?, in reply to nzlemming,
The pile on from all quarters on Murdoch shows that everyone was just waiting for someone else to make the first move.
This Ray Adams guy certainly kept the memos. All 11,000 of them. The AFR says it's been working on the story for four years -- and I suspect you're right that it figured now, after Panorama had called Murdoch's bluff, was the time to go with it.
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Gordon Campbell spews out a whole lot of circumstantial evidence, ignoring pretty much everything that doesn’t suit his case, to reach the conclusion:
The Australians have got it right this time. Plainly, Huawei should be barred from any future role in building our telco infrastructure.
He cites as reason for such a ban the claims (originally in the WSJ) that Huawei provided monitoring equipment to the regime in Iran. It was certainly, like other companies, selling mobile network gear to Iran. Another Chinese company, ZTE, certainly sold a nationwide telecomms surveillance system to the regime. There’s very good documentary evidence of that.
There are first-person reports of Huawei’s sales people telling Iran they were good at censoring news feeds, being from China, but that’s not the same thing as surveillance systems.
But Huawei’s denial was pretty comprehensive. And according to Alexander Downer the company hasn’t ever manufactured or conducted R&D on filtering or surveillance tech – which would seem pretty easy to disprove if it wasn’t true.
It looks like the bottom line is more important anyway – they scaled down sharply in Iran after it became an issue:
Some Huawei executives in Shenzhen see operations in Iran as jeopardizing expansion opportunities in the U.S. and Europe, where the Chinese company has faced skepticism over its compliance procedures and dealings with countries that have pariah regimes. That was a driving factor behind the decision to dial back operations in Iran, a person familiar with the matter said.