In the news

People have only recently gained confidence in pronouncing it.

#savage

Who will enhance our lethality now?

Penny Mordaunt, apparently

While keeping her other job too. How the fuck does that work itself out? Women & Equalities and Defence are just part-time posts?

"Mord" is 'murder' in German, so she may be on to something, not to mention 'daunt'. I'm sure she'll enhance the UK's dauntality.

Women & Equalities and Defence are just part-time posts?

Well, motherhood isn't a real job, so only the fighty bit counts really.

But why did the 5G planning have to be so secret in the first place? It’s a piece of infrastructure like any other. We should be entitled to know who’s in the running for the contracts.

Given how antsy they are over this, i suspect the torys have discovered something particularly bad and don't want to be seen as responsible for it.

I personally think that they've suddenly realised that china has had free reign on our networks for a decade.

I'm still somewhat skeptical about in how far Huawei is merely incompetent and this is part of a trade war narrative, and in how far it could be intentional.

Cisco kit has security holes as well, I don't hear the same screaming about the USA maybe having backdoors in Cisco kit.

But that narrative won't suit the USA.

Agreed, but nonetheless this is about as close to a good news story as you're going to get with UK politics any time soon.
With competence in such short supply I'm reasonably confident that he might know what he's talking about

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/04/29/huawei_us_spat/

USA: buy Huawei kit and we won't share intelligence anymore. Well that's escalating nicely... The EU has a more moderate view on Huawei, not sure the UK will get a choice.

And with friends like Trump USA, who needs enemies?

Totally agree. There's something else driving this.

I'm still somewhat skeptical about in how far Huawei is merely incompetent and this is part of a trade war narrative, and in how far it could be intentional.

Cisco kit has security holes as well, I don't hear the same screaming about the USA maybe having backdoors in Cisco kit.

But that narrative won't suit the USA.

As the article you link in your next post - the US will share data with countries that use Cisco, they won't if they use Huawei.

Given that the Tories want to detach us from Europe and make us a detached US state, this really matters to them.

Cisco kit has security holes as well, I don't hear the same screaming about the USA maybe having backdoors in Cisco kit.

Not publicly, but there's lots of screaming about it in the IT world:

(random article): https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-accounts-software,37480.html

The problem is that you never know whether the bug that can be exploited to end up in full eavesdropping was just a result of sloppy development practices or whether it was accidental-on-purpose.

Add on to that the possibility that Cisco (and other US manufacturers) kit was being tampered with prior during the export process:-

https://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/snowden--the-nsa-planted-backdoors-in-cisco-products.html

Hardware/software is nigh on impossible to validate: Is the source code you're looking at the source code that builds the product? Has the build been modified post compilation? Do you trust the compilation tool chain? Has the hardware been scrutinised? Could extra bits (that haven't been assessed) have been snuck in? etc. So called "reproducible builds" are an ongoing unsolved problem in computing.

I personally think that they've suddenly realised that china has had free reign on our networks for a decade.

I'd agree, and I think they're just realising how much of an impact this has had and how much more it will be in the future and that they have no idea how to solve it.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would consider that many of the spooks and military in the room at the National Security Council are very unhappy with the Huawei decision. Some of them would be unhappy with a publicity seeking Tory Boy as their political boss. With those motives they might use their tradecraft to leak the "secret" in a way that implicated Williamson.

Seriously?

There are rumours that the intelligence community are furious about the government permitting Chinese involvement at Hinkley C...

If he is being set up (which I don't believe for an instant), they couldn't have picked a nicer patsy.

There are rumours that the intelligence community are furious about the government permitting Chinese involvement at Hinkley C...

As I understand it, the Government white paper on National Security and Foreign Investment was published directly on the back of those concerns. I've got colleagues that work on local bus policy that have been called into meetings to discuss how they are going to help prevent malign states from interfering with critical national infrastructure projects, so this all seems extra odd to have got this far.

The basic issue seems to be that we need 5G in order to achieve mass role out of the "internet of things", particularly autonomous vehicles. There aren't that many companies that can provide the stuff to make a 5G network, and all of them have their downsides. Huawei would be the best bet, if it wasn't for those pesky Chinese State spies that would have the ability to crash the whole the thing at a click of a mouse.

What are the downsides to the others? Isn't it Nokia and Ericsson? Is it just they are more expensive?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/02/why-we-are-addicted-to-conspiracy-theories

:)

I think they are behind Huawei in terms of development/delivery. As with all this stuff though, it's likely way more complicated than I will ever understand.

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/huawei-muscle-puts-ericsson-nokia-on-5g-back-foot-in-europe---sources/d/d-id/749474

they have no idea how to solve it

carrier pigeon

I don't know enough about technology to argue on a basis of this or that type of code, but in general I don't subscribe to the "it's just a trade war" argument.

Huawei were founded by Chinese army officers, and in early years predominantly functioned as a supplier to the red army. From my reading, mostly the Economist, it has been considered notoriously difficult to untangle where Huawei ends and the Chinese military begins.

The President of Japan has a new beaver door knocker

https://mobile.twitter.com/Birdyword/status/1123889179845328904

I raise a wry smile when Nokia are mentioned. Back in the day, when Nokia were the market leader in mobile phones, the network equipment side of the business was seen as a charity, employing lots of Finns to stop them appearing on the unemployment register. How times change.