Realpolitik
Trump's ZTE deal challenged by Senate
United States senators have mobilised against president Trump's plan to allow ZTE to resume dealings with American companies. The ban that brought the Chinese vendor to its knees was reversed by US president Donald Trump as a favour to Chinese president Xi Jinping. Left out of that equation, however, is the position of US …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 10:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
I have no doubt the Chinese bribe to Trump had nothing to do with his ZTE decision. Sure.
"Trump Indonesia Real Estate Project Gets Chinese Government Ally"
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/world/asia/trump-hotel-china-indonesia.html
"Did China Just Bribe Trump to Undermine National Security?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/opinion/trump-china-bribe-national-security.html
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 12:00 GMT Avatar of They
Re: C'mon, everybody knows that the real theat to nationals security is...
Trump really does appear to have alienated all his existing trade partners and allies, while cuddling upto dodgy dictators and rogue nations. (Russia, China, NK)
But to declare Canada an issue, I am wondering if senility isn't an issue for Trump. Worlds gone bonkers.
Whoeveer follows will have a rough sell to bring it back.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 09:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Trumpkims
ZTE were proven to be a threat to national security weren't they?
He's selling out America (and allies) for corporate greed and by extension, making himself even more rich (I don't believe the billionaire claims he seeded in the media, fake news)
But he's missing a trick if he doesn't monetise the Nork meeting hashtag 'Trumpkim' to market a range of pocket money extorting cute toys aimed at six year olds.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 09:26 GMT Chris G
Re: Trumpkims
Were they 'proven' to be a threat or was it more that they are close to the Chinese Government and have been busting American imposed sanctions?
The US doesn't like anyone whittling down their big stick, that's a No No.
The rest of the bill, as is most of what the US is currently up to, is to improve the US's economic power at everyone else's cost.
This bill, like most of them, is driven by lobbyists, that's why it is including all Chinese telcos.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 11:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Trumpkims
"I don't believe the billionaire claims he seeded in the media, fake news."
Jonathan Greenberg, who was part of putting together the Forbes 400 during the '80's, used to get phone calls from a Trump employee named "John Barron" telling him how rich Trump was in order to get Trump into the Forbes 400 list.
"John Barron" was in fact Trump, and now that property records and such are much easier to search, their present estimate is that back then when they would publish Trumps worth at ~$200M, he was really worth only 5-10% of that. Jonathan Greenberg just published a peice about this, complete with recordings of his calls with "John Barron", who one can tell is clearly Trump.
The bottom line is that the reason Trump has prioritized hiding his income taxes from the public above all else is that they would show income not consistent with his claims of being worth billions.
"Trump lied to me about his wealth to get onto the Forbes 400. Here are the tapes."
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 09:45 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Were they 'proven' to be a threat or was it more that they are close to the Chinese Government and have been busting American imposed sanctions?"
A conspiracy theorist might make a career out of the various warnings surrounding ZTE gear but:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/16/zte_gchq_warning/
Yes, I'd say they were a threat, I'd be similarly suspicious of Huawei, despite GCHQ's oversight.
Unfortunately that kinda leaves good old 'merkin companies and their gear is known to have been compromised by the 'merkin TLAs
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 15:07 GMT Eddy Ito
The threat is they dared defy Uncle Sam's sanctions so now Uncle has a hair across his arse and is out looking for blood. As for their phones & other kit being secure, they're probably just as secure as every other phone being made in China, which is just about every other phone.
Sorry Uncle, your crying wolf yet again isn't going to persuade me. Doubly so since you're likely a far greater threat to my security than any foreign government will ever be.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 15:45 GMT Milton
Re: Where is Big John? Where is Bom.Bob?
The former was a bit over-excited and his carer doubled up on the 10mg "soothers", so he's out for the count, drooling in front of Fox&Friends on mute.
The latter is down for maintenance, as the host Artificial Idiot confused "chatbot" with "crackpot" and is now having its code refucktored.
More news soon. If you're unlucky.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 18:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Where is Big John? Where is Bom.Bob?
I'm not sure but I doubt they were big Trump supporters until he became their party's leader. When he goes strongly against the grain of republican orthodoxy by supporting China in this case or more generally in his more protectionist mode threatening tariffs on everything, you don't seem to see them defending him on that stuff. They're conservatives, not Trumpists.
Note that they scream the loudest for standard conservative principles that any republican president would be supporting, whether he was named Trump, Bush, or Pence. They defend strongly against the Russian collusion story not because Trump denies it but because Fox News denies it.
If Mueller releases evidence and Fox was to change their tune (Murdoch is good at knowing which way the wind is blowing, so this isn't as impossible as you think) I wouldn't be surprised to see them cease in their defense of him. They'll be talking about how it won't matter, because Pence wasn't involved (which he probably wasn't, though I imagine he knew a few things and looked the other way)
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 15:20 GMT Alistair
Canada is a THREAT to US (corporate healthcare) Security.
Someone in his entourage had to get stitches for a nasty cut while they were in Chateuguy (France according to CNN) and didn't have to pay a red cent to the hospital. This adviser is now all gaga about socialized medicare and will not shut up.
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Wednesday 13th June 2018 18:18 GMT martinusher
Counterproductive
America has been chucking its weight around by trying to control what technology goes where for many decades now. Every time I've come across this its resulted in a loss of business for an American company -- people grudgingly accede to the US government's extra-territorial demands but invariably try to find a way to avoid problems in the future by avoiding American products and technology where possible.
We're now very close to a significant inflection point. Globalization has not only spread manufacturing over the world but also development. There are now relatively few technological choke points where the US government can hold others to ransom, and those are typically not because of technology itself but because of a combination of intellectual property rights and international standards. Just as encryption technology became 'not American' post DES (due primarily to the attempted stranglehold the US attempted to impose on long keyword DES) other technologies are likely to follow suit, if they haven't done so already. The US will continue to be big and powerful but will gradually become a bit of a technological backwater....and there are signs that this is already happening.
Those legislators are fortunately old and so will get replaced soon. While there's no guarantee that we'll get more enlightened representatives in the future (on past form -- doubtful) there's at least a bit of a chance that they won't be so steeped in a 1950's 'merkan mindset that they might at least understand technology. (To give Trump his due on this one -- much as I hate to -- he probably recognizes that killing off ZTE is likely to incite a lot of global blowback -- and it probably won't even kill ZTE because somehow the company will just open up under another name.)(He's a bit of an expert with that sort of thing.)
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Thursday 14th June 2018 14:55 GMT EnviableOne
Who Are We?
oh just the largest manufacturer of telcoms equipment in the world and the backbone of most countries Broadband networks, and the only way normal americans are going to get decent cheap broadband anytime soon ....
but if your wondering where cisco's cash pile just went, i'd be checking Republican Tom Cotton, and Democrat Chris Van Hollen's campaign funds and where they just got new cars/houses/boats from.