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Huawei Has Now Been Cut Off By the SD Association, Wi-Fi Alliance (phonedog.com) 276

Both the SD Association and Wi-Fi Alliance have cut ties with Huawei following President Trump's executive order barring companies from doing business with the Chinese company. PhoneDog reports: First up, Huawei has been removed the from the SD Association, a non-profit group that sets the standards for SD and microSD cards. Huawei's name has been removed from the organization's website, and the SD Association confirmed to Android Authority that it's complying with the recent executive order that placed Huawei on the Entity List. This news won't affect existing Huawei phones' ability to accept microSD cards, but the company declined to comment on the effect that it'll have on future models. It likely means that future Huawei devices won't be able to use microSD cards. Huawei does have its own Nano Memory Card format that it can use in its smartphones, though.

Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi Alliance has confirmed to Nikkei that it's "temporarily restricted" Huawei's participation in its activities. "Huawei values its relationships with all partners and associations around the world and understands the difficult situation they are in," Huawei said in response to this news. "We are hopeful this situation will be resolved and are working to find the best solution."
Google and ARM also recently stopped working with Huawei. Earlier this week, ARM told staff it must suspend business with the company. Google also suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware and software products, except those covered by open source licenses.
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Huawei Has Now Been Cut Off By the SD Association, Wi-Fi Alliance

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  • Who's left? USB-IF? ITU-R? IEEE?
    Huawei's CEO Ren Zhengfei saying "don't underestimate us, we will fight back" is the WRONG thing to say to our current president. I fully expect the book to get thrown at Ren, and he'll be forced to resign, possibly after eating his words.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Our current *alleged* president is wuss. The rest of the world and in particular, the Chinese know it. This won't end well for America.

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Either I'm missing the joke or the trolls are missing their brains?

        Anyway, I have seen lots of evidence supporting your position, but I want to be optimistic and hope America is still capable of recovery. It's just interesting that all the recent oscillations on the negative side seem to be under so-called Republican leadership. The Democratic Party may be feckless, but at least they aren't Republicans, eh?

  • There may be legitimate concerns, but it sounds a lot like bullying to me because that's basically how our "very stable genius" president operates.
    • The only legitimate concern here is when did the US become a dictatorship? When you have one person who can make decrees that apparently become law without the oversight of an elected assembly that's not democracy.
  • Nice... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Freischutz ( 4776131 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @05:39AM (#58652002)
    If this was really about spying (for which there isn't a shred of proof) they could have left it at just banning Huawei from major telecommunications infrastructure projects. Sure, Huawei has been accused of industrial espionage but there is not a shred of proof that they are colluding with the Chinese government to use their network backbone equipment to bug the telecommunications of other countires and warehouse it wholesale (like the US does). People have looked and nobody has found back-doors that are any more serious than what has been found in Cisco equipment and nobody has found the legendary kill switch. The only motivation behind this campaign against Huawei is that they got 'uppedy' enough to out-compete US corporations who then went to 'Tariff Man' for protection. This is about bankrupting Huawei, not fear of spying.
    • Problem is that the proof is pointing the wrong way. Just reading another book about the stuff that Snowden revealed. Our spy services know exactly what sort of dirty tricks they can pull.

      Having said that, I think Huawei has to be clean, at least in the hardware. The Huawei people KNOW that ANY device they make could be used as evidence against them, and they KNOW that EVERY device they make is going to get lots of deep scrutiny from security experts all over the world.

      • Really ? (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        OpenSSL was chuck full of exploitable bugs for something like 15 years. Each exploitable bug was a full backdoor to obtain the SSL keys and intercept the traffic in plaintext from that point on.

        Same is true for the crap code inside Huawei products. The Chinese know the concept of "plausible denial", too.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Nope. You have no clue how that works. There may have been some things that were exploitable as backdoors under the right conditions, but that is it. Also, OpenSSL is a crypto library. It does not do networking by itself.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Having said that, I think Huawei has to be clean, at least in the hardware. The Huawei people KNOW that ANY device they make could be used as evidence against them, and they KNOW that EVERY device they make is going to get lots of deep scrutiny from security experts all over the world.

        I expect that as well. Oh, sure, there will be things that can be inserted for special customers (like the NSA does it) and there will be known vulnerabilities that the usual TLAs do not tell to anybody. But that is it. They will most certainly not insert backdoors intentionally or lower security intentionally, quite unlike, say, Cisco. Because catching them in that would be far too easy and the evidence would be far too compelling.

    • Re:Nice... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @06:34AM (#58652122) Homepage Journal

      I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The retaliation from China is going to pretty severe. It will be interesting to see just how badly they can screw American companies, now that the US has demonstrated its capability.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. And I think quite a few people understand this and this may just be one reason the EU does not go along with the US in this.

      • by jonwil ( 467024 )

        IMO China should retaliate by banning any American telco equipment company (Cisco, Juniper, HP Networking, Motorola Solutions etc) from doing any form of business in China or with any Chinese company or entity. That would mean not just a ban on the sale and use of equipment from those firms (and their subsidiaries and related companies) in China but also a ban on any manufacturing of equipment from those entities in factories in China as well as purchasing any products made by or sold by companies that are

        • America has ignored foreign patents before, they can do it again. If America decides to invalidate all patents held by China, what can China do about it? America is an empire in decline, China is an empire on the rise. This fight will decide who rules the world.
      • I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop. The retaliation from China is going to pretty severe. It will be interesting to see just how badly they can screw American companies, now that the US has demonstrated its capability.

        Just one shoe? ... if this goes on you'll get Imelda Marcos' entire shoe collection dropping on your head. Trump is like the school bully that just spitballed the new kid in school, not knowing that the new kid in school used to be the bully at his old school.

    • The only motivation behind this campaign against Huawei is that they got 'uppity' enough to out-compete US corporations who then went to 'Tariff Man' for protection.

      I don't think that US corporations asked for this. From what I see, US corporations in the tech industry are pretty worried about it.

    • Potential (Score:4, Informative)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @09:00AM (#58652552)

      I'd say, publicly at least, this is about the *potential* for spying.

      Privately, this is more about Huawei's systemically awful business practices. When they were first getting into the backbone business, they'd have people working at Ericson and Nokia feeding them RFQs from prospective customers, then they'd send salesmen to those customers with quotes half as much. It didn't matter what the equipment or service actually cost, the Chinese government was funding everything and selling at a loss just to get in the door. They've been busted multiple times for this, but nobody at corporate gets into trouble (or if they do they are rotated into different positions.)

      https://www.voanews.com/a/huaw... [voanews.com]

    • IMO this is mostly about the trade negotiations with China. If this were actually about spying then Trump wouldn't have offered to include Huawei in the trade deal [bbc.co.uk].

      You don't do that if they're a threat to national security.

    • Nice business you got here, be a shame if anything happened to it (pushes shelf over). Maybe you better pay me insurance so nothing bad happens. Trump is in business for Trump, not America.
  • Very worrying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by loonycyborg ( 1262242 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @06:01AM (#58652044)
    It bodes ill for entire world that US can expel corporations from industry standardization organizations with an executive order. If US can then Saudi Arabia or Indonesia can too, no?
    • Re:Very worrying (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Megol ( 3135005 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @06:14AM (#58652064)

      This. No matter if there's actually a really good reason for doing this (of which evidence haven't even been shared with close allies) it'll just accelerate the movement towards truly international standards that can't be controlled by one state. This doesn't strengthen the US, it weakens it.

      • The worst kind of weakness is deriving your strength solely from exclusive control over something, because this will just lead to lines of better contenders eager to wrest it from you.
      • Not international. China's the manufacturing leader. We could easily be looking at two incompatible world economies growing from this, especially in the developing nations where China is dominating trade growth. We could be left with the short end of the stick.

        But, it really appears that that is what Trump wants. He's proving himself to be an isolationist who is just pretending to bargain while destroying trade trust forever. The damage will achieve his real goal no matter who is elected after him.

      • (of which evidence haven't even been shared with close allies)

        You may or may not be correct, but you have no fucking idea either way.

    • Re:Very worrying (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @06:31AM (#58652116) Homepage Journal

      Time to move all standards bodies out of the US. We already had to move a bunch of conferences because of travel visa problems.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        The next thing will probably be crypto conferences. Bruce Schneier recently remarked that cryptographers are getting denier entry with no good rasons given. Apparently some people are unaware that academic crypto is not behind the NSA anymore and that much of it is not happening in the US. AES, for example, is from a Belgian team.

      • Too bad your ilk can't move a standard's body* quite so easily as you can your conference (perhaps you can start one...). ;)
      • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        Re "travel visa problems"
        The US can say who is allowed into the USA. All part of been a nation.
        The same with the tech that is used in any nation.
        For any reason they want :)
    • If US can then Saudi Arabia or Indonesia can too, no?

      No. Not unless there are any industry standard organizations headquartered in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia and thus subject -- as an organization -- to their laws. (The SD Association is headquartered in California, and the Wi-Fi Alliance in Texas.)

    • I remember in the 2000s one of the old Soviet Block countries (might have been Hungary) wasn't keeping close watch on who owned/operated CD Duplicator machines. It made it possible to make perfect bootlegs. Furthermore many of the CDs being made weren't technically bootlegs since copyright treaties didn't always exist with some countries the duplication machines were sold to.

      My gov't threatened to cut off all trade with the nation. Essentially an economic blockage.

      And all this Huawei stuff is kinda
    • It bodes ill for entire world that US can expel corporations from industry standardization organizations with an executive order. If US can then Saudi Arabia or Indonesia can too, no?

      No, I don't think Saudi Arabia or Indonesia can, because they don't have enough important companies.

      You should understand the mechanism and rationale behind these expulsions. It's not that the US ordered these standards bodies to kick Huawei out. That's the effect, but the process is more subtle, and not completely obvious.

      The problem is that US corporations are no longer allowed to give information to Huawei. This would seem to include representatives of US companies who are participating in interna

      • I understand those mechanisms, nonetheless I would pretty much mind if some country, no matter whether US, Indonesia or Saudi Arabia could have such a power as to remove companies from industry standard participation, no matter which way, direct or indirect. Because particular political issue of spate between Huawei and Washington exists only between US and China. While industry standards affect entire world. Other countries should not be forced to allow US to filter standard making participants because thi
        • What would you propose? Some international law that bars countries from controlling their own companies? Who would enforce it?
    • No, they cannot.

  • I hope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dnaumov ( 453672 ) on Saturday May 25, 2019 @06:02AM (#58652050)

    everyone will now remember, at least for a while, that the US is not a reliable partner. Of course, many will probably go âwhatever, canâ(TM)t happen to my country/businessâ.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      No, I think this will have lasting power. It isn't that that asshole has made the U.S. unreliable for a bit, it is that a sizable portion of the American electorate think this is a good idea. The feeling that the U.S. is not going to be reliable will last for a long time.

      • by malkavian ( 9512 )

        Just as an external observer, the US has been viewed as an unreliable partner for a long time now.
        The deals to access resources have always been very one sided (US wants extradition from other countries, won't reciprocate etc. and their trade deals are plain ludicrous, often along those same lines of reciprocation).
        The contemporary world is quite a turbulent place though, so it's anyone's guess as to how the past agreements will pan out, especially if China can produce the same resources at the same qualit

        • The ruling empire can do as they please, until they get replaced. Everything is fine until we cross the tipping point and the old empire crumbles to dust.
      • As an american, I can agree with you. We are sick of the hypocrisy concerning trade barriers and intellectual property theft.
    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      I think that decisions like this are dangerous, since we're just going to end up with a bunch of new Chinese tech products that aren't regulated by standards bodies.

      The next generation Huawei phones and tablets aren't going to just stop having Wi-Fi because of this, even though it cannot have the Wi-Fi logo on the box. Will Huawei's "Wi-Fi compatible" wireless potentially cause interference with other wireless products? Possibly. Will the US try to stop them from being imported? Probably. Will they end up g

  • WiFi for commies?! Ban it!
  • If Huawei is not allowed to use SD cards, maybe they will have to switch to Sony's MemoryStick...
  • ...when they can point their finger at a company/competitor and tell the world not to trade with them, all with no significant evidence.

    WMD wearing a new outfit...

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