To be accurate, the US Ass Act has not passed Congress. It may not do so.
I am giving advance warning in case it does.
If this passes, it is a crossing of the rubicon.
If I were China, I would make it a criminal offence to use any US services, software or hardware - and institute harassment (GFWC) to make it mostly painful to do so. China can do that because it can mostly substitute for US products with its own products, either now or in the foreseeable future.
If I were Europe, I would move as fast as possible away from all US services, software or hardware.
We unfortunately arenât in a position to do either, as the 51st state. So this legislation, de facto, applies to Australia.
Would you like to present your evidence? So far the only âevidenceâ I have seen are claims from the US government, the worldâs only bastion of governmental honesty, truth, and self righteous goodness, not to mention its strategic and economic interests to stay #1 in any technology it considers important to its national security.
Once upon a time it was vector supercomputers until Japan Inc beat them at the game, big time, so the US changed the âprocurement rulesâ to massive parallel systems and put vector systems into history (partly replaced by GPUs!) through a political anti-dumping process (Clinton administration). The highest tech networking is in that category.
I knew and sometimes worked with people and a company that assured every bit of comms kit the US shipped to many countries was âscreened and adjustedâ prior to export. It would not surprise me if Huawei and other Chinese companies did the same today but Huaweiâs technology has always been reported to be a step above, so in the absence of blanket banning âChina Incâ I have yet to be convinced about anyone âwaking upâ, just saluting the Trump administration (and probably whoever is next) to avoid becoming an enemy.
The world is waking up to the fact that all tech is compromised by the government that exercises most influence over the company.
Everyone knows that the Chinese government passed a law some years ago that says that all Chinese companies (including Huawei) have to do whatever bad things (for us and everyone else) the Chinese government tells them to.
Everyone knows that the Australian government passed a law a couple of years ago that says that any tech company operating in Australia has to do whatever bad things (for us and everyone else) the Australian government tells them to.
I reported recently that a bill had been introduced into the US Senate that says that any tech company operating in the US has to do bad things (for us and everyone else) the US government tells them to.
It is therefore completely logical for a country to pick the least risky tech companies and stick with them.
The US government would plausibly choose US companies, as being a bit more aligned with US interests and a bit more under the control of the US government.
âWeâ are doing it so it would be unsound to assume that the Chinese are not doing it.
So if the UK or Australian government wants to ban Huawei, I donât think we can fault their logic - although the ban needs to go much much further.
Unfortunately there will soon be no actual trustworthy tech company anywhere in the world.
True - although the âlegalâ arrangements for that are different. It is an iterative process of more and more surveillance and less and less trustworthiness.
If you mean: it is already the case that there is no actual trustworthy tech company anywhere in the world
This is not about a conspiracy, just some concerning facts.
It covers several areas and may be a bit too controversial for Choice, I hope not.
Maybe it is more suited to â4 Cornersâ, but I think Choice would get more coverage Nationally.
Many countries around the world are concerned at the security implications of Chinese manufacturers supplying mobile phone infrastructure.
Given the Chinese governments security controls over ALL chinese manufacturers, I think those concerns are justified.
I would like Choice to investigate two other areas of concern to me and I think all Australians.
A. We, Australia, currently have about 7 or 8 Gigawatts of rooftop solar feeding power into our national grid.
Many of the Inverters in use are manufactured and due to online connections capable of control by the manufacturers in China.
I know this is true for mine and many other brands
What does that tell you about the national security implications of this situation?
Could you investigate how much of our power capacity is currently able to be controlled in this way.
B. Recently there has been some concern internationally regarding the privacy/personal security of phone apps like say Tic Toc.
The subject seems to be treated fairly light heartedly, I would like Choice to make everyone in Australia aware of just how much information is being collated by overseas companies supplying all popular phone apps.
Many apps will have data stored in âfriendlyâ countries, some apps and shopping sites are collecting data that is available for the use of governments that have shown they are capable of NOT being friendly.
A huge task but I am sure both exercises would be very informative and may help Australians to make better decisions.
More importantly, possibly the Australian government would realise they need to wake up regarding our grid security.
I have moved your post into an existing thread which discusses the second issue you raise. If you look back through the posts you will see that others have concern about the privacy of our personal data too.
How do you know this? Could you please provide information to substantiate the claim that manufacturers in China can control your solar PV inverter?
I refer you to the Community Guidelines where it states:
âPlease avoid:
Using the forum to spread misinformation or disinformation and failing to provide valid evidence from reputable sources to substantiate the claim(s) being made. This includes spreading information from sources that have been scientifically discredited or invalidated.â
I look forward to seeing your evidence.
As a by the way, you may enjoy a book called Ghost Fleet by Peter W Singer. The premise of the book is that the Chinese have embeded chips in everything that they have produced, and on a particular day they send a signal and turn all electronics owned by everyone but them off. This obviously leaves them dominant militarily and they set off to invade the US.
This caused me to read through my manual and the manufacturer can indeed remotely control it for diagnostics, but for that to happen it has to be purposefully set to âallow remote access controlâ, requiring knowledge where it is on the network and the login protocols. It defaults to âNo remote access controlâ. From the docs with the system it appears the only ways it can be turned off are automatically when the grid goes down (anti-islanding), when the PV breaker is turned off, or if the âOSâ (Oh S**t) emergency switch is thrown.
My system has micro-inverters so may not be representative of how any string inverter works.
Does it actually work as documented? Trust, well founded or ?
