Geo Political Risk

[Davexl]

How will a challenge to President Xi play out? I thought he was establishing quite a solid footing.

He appears to be safe for now, attempting to snuff out the Democratic freedoms of Hong Kong, one of the key sources of cross-border Democratic ideas.

However in the longer term, he has already failed, starting with Tienanmen, a whole generation of liberal Chinese waiting for an opportunity,

and the economic failures and mass unemployment brought on by Covid 19, he has to take responsibility for all of it, under his personality cult -

and for people like Liu Xiaobo who kept the flame burning...writing & circulating the Democratic manifesto "Charter 08".

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...nt-liu-xiaobo/

[Leftfield]

Good post Davexi....... like you many have woken up to Xi's aggressiveness. Perhaps he has done us all a favour long term.

[Davexl]

Thanks Left Field.

More on the ramifications of UK offers to repatriate Hong Kongers with BNO passports, also affecting the French led, Chinese involvement, in Hinckley Point C nuclear reactor, and the potential cancellations of billions in UK investment due to shutting out Huawei 5G.

Hong Kong: China says it will not recognise UK overseas passports

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...seas-passports

[Davexl]

This article represents the kind of stupidity and paranoia coming out of the Trump "regime",
such is the US' desperation to demonise Huawei at all costs.

So much for Fair Global Competition!

Imagine how the US would respond if Intel Corporation's global chip fabrication was totally threatened?

Totally unsubstantiated security risks based on ignorance over how your common Router works.
Until recently, almost all Routers has easy default access usernames and passwords, to allow the user to manage the router, and to allow the ISP eg Spark & Vodafone to remotely manage the Router on your behalf. And they attempt to call this "Backdoor Access".
This "backdoor access" was deliberate, all Router manufacturers have done this,
almost all of them are manufactured in China in any event, not just Huawei!

No security concerns whatsoever, it would be commercial suicide to do so - totally unsubstantiated...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/trum...ttle-plan.html

[GTM 3442]

This article represents the kind of stupidity and paranoia coming out of the Trump "regime",
such is the US' desperation to demonise Huawei at all costs.

So much for Fair Global Competition!

Imagine how the US would respond if Intel Corporation's global chip fabrication was totally threatened?

Totally unsubstantiated security risks based on ignorance over how your common Router works.
Until recently, almost all Routers has easy default access usernames and passwords, to allow the user to manage the router, and to allow the ISP eg Spark & Vodafone to remotely manage the Router on your behalf. And they attempt to call this "Backdoor Access".
This "backdoor access" was deliberate, all Router manufacturers have done this,
almost all of them are manufactured in China in any event, not just Huawei!

No security concerns whatsoever, it would be commercial suicide to do so - totally unsubstantiated...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/trum...ttle-plan.html

Th CNBC article is so lightweight that a butterfly's f*rt would blow it away. I doubt that whoever wrote the CNBC article had read the Finite State report.

I am almost certain that the "senior administration official" has not read the Finite State report.

The issue is not the default user service and administration accounts. However it would have been better if the comparisons had been with devices from other, higher-profile brands.

[Zaphod]

This article represents the kind of stupidity and paranoia coming out of the Trump "regime",
such is the US' desperation to demonise Huawei at all costs.

So much for Fair Global Competition!

Imagine how the US would respond if Intel Corporation's global chip fabrication was totally threatened?

Totally unsubstantiated security risks based on ignorance over how your common Router works.
Until recently, almost all Routers has easy default access usernames and passwords, to allow the user to manage the router, and to allow the ISP eg Spark & Vodafone to remotely manage the Router on your behalf. And they attempt to call this "Backdoor Access".
This "backdoor access" was deliberate, all Router manufacturers have done this,
almost all of them are manufactured in China in any event, not just Huawei!

No security concerns whatsoever, it would be commercial suicide to do so - totally unsubstantiated...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/trum...ttle-plan.html

There is some equivocation surrounding the definition of the term “back door” within the context of IT security professionals, however in this case I am not sure that what the administration have outlined in the article is the actual issue causing them to pressure nations away from using enterprise-grade Huawei equipment.

Having said this, utilisation of default authentication credentials is a common method to gain access to routers by individuals, hacking groups and nation states (NK & Russia being a prominent examples). While most routers and other network devices do allow passwords to be changed as part of the configuration process, some have been discovered to still accept the default password subsequent to change. Others have additional non-documented administrative accounts enabled. Others still utilise internal webservers containing known vulnerabilities many of which are unpatchable. In this context, it could be argued that this is a “back door” method of gaining access to the device.

Once compromised, a number of attacks can take place, such as enrolling the router or (typically) IoT device in a botnet to launch a targeted attack designed to bring down essential systems, to help spread malware (particularly crypto-ransomware in NK’s case), or to probe internal systems for confidential, classified, or proprietary information.

So while these are real risks, there must be other issues at play with relation to Huawei.

[Davexl]

An update on the situation in Hong Kong:

Hong Kong election disqualifications and arrests deepen 'terror' fears

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/20...ualifications/

[Davexl]

Th CNBC article is so lightweight that a butterfly's f*rt would blow it away. I doubt that whoever wrote the CNBC article had read the Finite State report.

I am almost certain that the "senior administration official" has not read the Finite State report.

The issue is not the default user service and administration accounts. However it would have been better if the comparisons had been with devices from other, higher-profile brands.

Yes, the REAL issue is NOT about default user service and administration accounts, but that is the pathetic level of debate the US had dropped to.

The real issue is about the security risks of deploying Huawei in the "Core" of the 5G network, vs the "Radio Access Network" and being able to secure it correctly against malfeasance by a foreign state. With 5G, most of the intelligence is in the Core, but an increasing level of intelligence is distributed to the RAN.

In NZ, the GCSB overruled Spark's early decision to deploy Huawei only to the RAN, to the more intelligence limited part of the network. Spark recently went with Samsung.

In the UK, they initially limited Huawei 5G to 30% of the network in the RAN only, and stated they could "manage" the security risk. Then under pressure by Pompeo and their own Conservatives, they relented to removing Huawei from their earlier 3G / 4G Huawei networks over a period of years as the 5G option became untenable.

By far, the UK had the most experience with using Huawei networks, almost 20 years, with a similar timeframe in NZ. The UK security establishment believed it was possible to "manage" the security situation (see above post), the GCSB which didn't have the internal resources to assess the situation, "said" it wasn't possible. I presume ASIO in Australia, (the Australian Signals directorate) convinced them.

The reality is that Ericsson (& Nokia also??) manufacture in China, alongside Huawei, the manufacturing risks are identical, and so are the deployment risks. Operating systems code could be locked down and secured by using check-summing techniques to verify the code. The only significant risks relate to update code, being deployed without prior security vetting, or a new piece of firmware inserted redirecting a data flow elsewhere from the RAN.

The reality now, is that Huawei 5G deployment has been rendered highly risky, not for security reasons but for supply-chain risk, thanks to the US. (See Post 61)

GTM - I would be interested in hearing about the Finite State report, if it can be linked to or summarised for the Geopolitical thread. Otherwise we are probably both straying off-topic and getting too technical for this debate...

[Davexl]

Something more about Trump & Pompeo...

A cold war does not answer China’s challenge

Guarding the west’s interests and values should not mean an ideological confrontation with Beijing

Financial Times
By Philip Stephens

We are always trying to make sense of the present by reaching into the past. Not so long ago, fashionable commentary on the rivalry between the US and China summoned up a sage of ancient Greece. The Athenian historian Thucydides predicted inevitable conflict between an established hegemon and rising power. Now, the favoured parallel for the Sino-American confrontation is the west’s fight against Soviet communism. Neat as it may seem, that analogy is more confusing than illuminating.

The cold war drum is being beaten most loudly by Donald Trump’s US administration. It is easy to see why. Mr Trump thinks his belligerent stance towards Beijing is worth votes in November’s presidential election. Not so long ago he was boasting about striking a trade deal with Chinese president Xi Jinping, Now, as it condemns Beijing on every front, the Trump White House wants to rally US allies to the cause. How better to do so than to draw a comparison with the west’s resolve to defeat Soviet communism. The analogy is as careless of history as it is heedless of present geopolitics.

The US administration’s matchless ignorance was on display a week ago in a speech by Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, intended to set the terms for a united western stand against Beijing. Speaking ominously of “Communist China and the Free World’s Future”, Mr Pompeo prefaced next year’s 50th anniversary of then, president Richard Nixon’s famous “opening” to China.

Perhaps imagining himself as the George Kennan of our times, Mr Pompeo declared that “securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist party is the mission of our time”. Kennan, of course, was the US diplomat who set the framework for America’s cold war policy of Soviet “containment”. It was obvious from Mr Pompeo’s speech that he had read neither Kennan’s famous “long telegram” from Moscow nor glanced at the once-secret policy papers setting out the purpose of Nixon’s outreach to Beijing in 1971.
Mr Pompeo’s premise was that Nixon’s goal had been to bring Mao’s China into the western democratic fold. On that basis, he said, it was time for everyone to admit that the policy of “opening” had failed.

The record of the negotiations between Nixon’s envoy Henry Kissinger and the then Chinese premier Zhou Enlai tell a different story. Kissinger was an arch realist, scornful of allowing values to get in the way of hard-headed diplomacy. He did nothing to press the cause of freedom. His purpose, plain and simple, was to isolate Moscow.

The parallel drawn between the ambitions of Mr Xi’s China and that of the former Soviet Union is equally misleading. The cold war was a struggle between competing systems. Today’s Sino-American rivalry is a contest between states.

The Chinese regime has grand ambitions. It wants to push the US out of the western Pacific and establish its own hegemony in east Asia. It is a fair assessment that the long-term goal is to replace the US as the world’s most powerful nation. But, to borrow from Kennan’s characterisation of Soviet aims, Beijing is not seeking the defeat of capitalism across the world.

Moscow presented the world with an alternative way of ordering society. It had fellow travellers, allies and agents in established parties across the world. This was a contest that only one side could survive. Beijing thinks in terms of “spheres of influence”. Mr Xi is not anticipating what Mr Pompeo calls the “global hegemony of Chinese communism”.

This is not to deny the obvious clash of ideologies. On that score, however, Mr Pompeo’s rallying cry for freedom is scarcely helped by Mr Trump’s frequent public applause for unpleasant autocratic regimes, including that of Mr Xi. By the account of his former national security adviser John Bolton, the president offered personal backing to Mr Xi for the brutal crackdown against Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province.

The Communist party’s repression at home is indeed matched by an increasingly aggressive foreign policy: deploying military might in the South China Sea, economic sanctions against governments that dare to criticise it, and an ugly mix of coercion and threats in emerging nations. But its posture is that of the 19th-century great power rather than the 20th-century Soviet Union. It knows, too, that its claims have to be managed in the context of economic interdependence with the west. The Soviets thought they could crush capitalism. China depends on it.

Certainly, America and its allies should speak out about human rights abuses and draw solid boundaries against aggressive behaviour by the Chinese — and be prepared to defend its values and interests in setting the framework for its relationship.

Mr Trump and Mr Pompeo, however, are seemingly ignorant of the most important piece of advice in Kennan’s
dispatch from Moscow. As vital as it was that the west resisted any Soviet advance, the answer was not provocation or war but to ensure “the health and vigour of our own society”.

Kennan’s last sentence might have been written specifically for Mr Trump: “The greatest danger that can befall us in coping with this problem of Soviet communism, is that we shall allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are coping.”

Source: Financial Times

[GTM 3442]

The Finite State can be accessed here:

https://finitestate.io/finite-state-...in-assessment/

Five minutes or so rolling round the internet will throw up a whole bunch more, of varying degrees of sophistication and credibility.

Although why you'd want to pfaff about with spyware etc when you have the option of a simple, virtually undetectable "kill switch" eludes me.