At this point I have to start doubting anything I read so far, then. What is the reason?

Ip theft and cirumventing sanctions.

To see no relation to the trade war is, however, a tad naive.

Like you say, it's allegedly entirely about the iran sanctions.

In practice, it's clearly a trade war thing and I'd be willing to bet quite a bit that there was a personal thing between Huawei's loudmouth CEO and our vindictive president.

> Huawei’s loudmouth CEO

Um, from the interviews I’ve been reading Ren has been nothing but gracious and well spoken.

He thanks all the US companies that have helped him and urges his compatriots to not “retaliate” because the US companies need to follow US laws.

That was too strong, you're right.

I'm just noticing that Huawei is conspicuously singled out, and Trump is the kind of guy to do that over some petty personal slight.

I think the trade war is interesting. If this were a street fight where someone hit you (for decades) and you hit back and the perception trumpeted is suddenly you’re escalating things. Compare it to the previous administration which had excellent relations and plenty of IP theft and those companies could demand whatever with little recourse. Definitely politics but not as usual.

The Chinese were playing by exactly the rules we set and asked them to play by, for decades. American companies were ecstatic to outsource manufacturing someplace cheap.

Only in the last couple years have people gotten upset and started calling them cheaters or whatever, retroactively.

It raises some questions. Are we blaming them for our inability to socialize our gains from trade? Were we expecting them to never learn and move up the value chain?

The irony is that all these complaints about IP theft started to flare up once China started to invest heavily in R&D and started pulling ahead in certain high-tech sectors. The real fear isn't that China is stealing IP, but that it might surpass the US economically. Huawei is a perfect example of this. Their heavy investments in the development of 5G and resulting dominance are precisely what caused them to become a target of the US government.

I love how you act like Huawei did nothing wrong. We don't just think they stole IPs, we don't just think Huawei are run by and for their government. The American economy is far from perfect but I seriously doubt that anyone at this point sees China's economy or level of self-built technology a threat.

Sure, most people have a bias or a slant, and it often comes out in what we write, but do you honestly think anyone who sees you are a brand new account and sees your comments here will think anything other than 'insert_country_here apologist'? And that it happens on every story critical of china? Seriously it gets old.

What IP did Huawei steal, specifically? Can you name it without googling? Scouts honor.

It's not cool to accuse people of being Chinese shills, especially people with semi-obscure Greek names that they're very much in character of.

Afaik, without googling, they stole Cisco Ip which is even relevant here.

And this is precisely my point. Huawei was accused in the early 2000s of stealing Cisco IP. They settled the issue quietly back then.

Now, almost two decades later, after Huawei has spent billions in R&D and appears to be the market leader in 5G, all these old claims resurface, and the US government is quite openly trying to drive them out of business. Of course, by sheer coincidence, this happens while Trump is waging a trade war against China.

And for the record, Diogenes couldn't be a shill for anyone. Diogenes is happy living in his barrel in the market, do he clearly isn't motivated by money.

It's like people don't even know what cosmopolitanism means anymore ;)

I googled that Cisco case as well. One of their big claims was a copypasted impl of... strcmp.

When did the street fight start though? When one of them was looting the other’s home? Or is it a new fight with each new administration?