My Way or the Huawei

Written By: - Date published: 5:06 am, September 17th, 2023 - 9 comments
Categories: AUKUS, China, FiveEyes, internet, interweb, Spying, surveillance, tech industry, telecommunications, us politics - Tags:

I like my Huawei phone. I’m looking forward to the new Mate 60Pro. It’s launch means the US-led sanctions aiming to crush Huawei, with New Zealand as a fast follower, have completely failed to set back Chinese technology.

The United States’ approach to ‘extreme competition’ which is how it describes its relation to China, is to crush its opposition. China had set an objective of achieving technological excellence, and the US has set out to ensure it fails. One particular target was Huawei, an employee-owned technology company which in 2018 was leading the world in cellphone sales and 5G technology.

Spark in New Zealand wanted to use Huawei in its 5G radio-access-network (RAN) in 2018. It was blocked by the GCSB in November 2018.

In a statement to the New Zealand Stock Exchange, Spark said it had notified the GCSB of its intention to use Huawei equipment in its 5G radio access network (RAN). “The Director-General has informed Spark today that he considers Spark’s proposal to use Huawei 5G equipment in Spark’s planned 5G RAN would, if implemented, raise significant national security risks,” Spark said. This means Spark cannot implement or give effect to its proposal to use Huawei RAN equipment in its planned 5G network.”

The Director-General of the GCSB, Andrew Hampton, told a Parliamentary Select Committee in February 2019 that the decision to refuse Huawei had been his alone and not the result of any outside influence.

“I would like to assure the committee that in making my decision, at no point was I under direct or indirect pressure from any party. My decision was independent from ministers and while we share intelligence with Five Eyes partners, there was no pressure, requests or demands made by partners, either publicly or privately, to ban any vendor.”

However that may be, in December 2018 the Sydney Morning Herald reported on a July 17 2018 Nova Scotia meeting of 5Eyes chiefs where..

..the conversation returned to a debate that began well before this annual meeting and would run long after it: should the agencies go public with their concerns about China?

In the months that followed that July 17 dinner, an unprecedented campaign has been waged by those present – Australia, the US, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – to block Chinese tech giant Huawei from supplying equipment for their next-generation wireless networks.

This increasingly muscular posture towards Beijing culminated in last week’s arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in Vancouver, over alleged breaches of US sanctions with Iran. Meng, the daughter of the Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei, was granted bail on Wednesday ahead of efforts to extradite her to the US.

Since that July meeting there has been a series of rare public speeches by intelligence chiefs and a coordinated effort on banning Huawei from 5G networks. It began with one of Malcolm Turnbull’s last acts as Prime Minister.

The Sunday before he was deposed (in August 2018) Turnbull  rang the US President Donald Trump to tell him of Australia’s decision to exclude Huawei and China’s second largest telecommunications equipment maker ZTE from the 5G rollout.

This decisions have been followed up in the US by an increasing range of sanctions designed to prevent Chinese firms accessing the latest chip technology. The Huawei Mate60 was launched on the final day of the visit of US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, whose department is responsible for administering the sanctions, and was an instant sensation on Chinese social media and sold out rapidly.

The key thing about the phone is that its components, including its 7nM central processor, are all China made. Just as with the sanctions from hell that were supposed to crush the Russian economy, the sanctions on Huawei are turning Chinese technology into an autarky. It is the US companies that previously supplied components that will feel the heat.

There are more than a few lessons to be drawn from this story. The 5Eyes agencies are certainly running co-ordinated media campaigns on the “China threat.” Smith’s 4th Law of Politics is apposite – ‘don’t believe everything you hear.’ More on that later.

Sanctions do not work. On the one hand they punish the wrong people, on the other hand the blowback is karmic. Calls for Biden to go are growing, Europe will face a hard winter, and the Global South is on the move.

Western technology is not all it is cracked up to be. The promise of AUKUS Pillar 2 may prove to be illusory.

I can’t wait for my new phone.

 

 

9 comments on “My Way or the Huawei ”

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  1. Francesca 1
    17 September 2023 at 7:48 am

    Good on you Mike

    The GCSB don't need to be pressured to ban Huawei, they have a perfect understanding of the consequences if they don't.

  2. barry 2
    17 September 2023 at 10:13 am

    I will be interested to hear your review of harmonyOS, and how useful it is outside China. If you have ever used a chinese version of Android you will be used to a certain level of frustration with many of the "essential" apps from Google play not working as expected. Will HarmonyOS even allow access to Google play? Will Google maps work? what about gmail? the Mate 60 might end up being no more useful here than a $100 carrier-locked phone.

    I agree with everything you say about the negative effects of the US way of competing. I am reminded of the Ben Hur Chariot race https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frE9rXnaHpE where the bad guy spent time/energy trying to hobble Ben Hur instead of just going faster (and got his come-uppance).

    Unfortunately life is not always so good to the underdog, and well resourced bullies usually get their way. Maybe Huawei will be able to keep making phones, but China still has a long way to go to catch up on making top end chips.

  3. Francesca 3
    17 September 2023 at 11:57 am

    That phone that Mike refers to , the Mate 60Pro uses a new chip entirely manufactured in China

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-04/look-inside-huawei-mate-60-pro-phone-powered-by-made-in-china-chip

  4. lprent 4
    17 September 2023 at 7:11 pm

    It makes a pretty good entry level package for this year.

    The Kirin 9000S SOC is 7nm die, which is approx 2017 generation from TMSC. The jump from 14nm to 7nm is pretty good, but is quite old innovation wise. As this assessment out of Singapore says..

    To use an example, an entry-level Samsung phone today (say, the A20 Samsung model which I use) is powered by a 14nm chipset while high-end phones such as Apple’s iPhone 14 and the Samsung S21 Ultra use 5nm chips. The soon-to-be-released ‌iPhone 15 Pro‌ is rumoured to feature the A17 Bionic chip – Apple’s first 3nm chip.

    As a point of comparison, companies like AMD and TSMC were able to manufacture 7nm chips as early as 2017, while SMIC only started mass-producing 14nm chips in 2022. Hence, Huawei’s latest achievement seems to show that China has been able to close the gap in a relatively short time.

    My similar comparison (I mostly buy and run on previous generations). My cellphone is a S10+ from 2019 which runs on a 8nm chip. My computers run on AMD CPUs Zen3 which is 7nm. They were available in 2020. The laptop is on much older intel from about 2017.

    The other feature of the Huawei 60 Pro is that it currently uses old manufactured inventory. SK Hynix DDR5 RAM and NAND are manufactured by Korean company that no longer trades with them.

    Huawei will have to source a replacement for those components if it is a popular model. I was surprised that they released with a Korean RAM and storage combo.

    I guess that they couldn't find a useful Chinese supplier for a replacement DDR5/NAND. That probably explains why the release announcements were so muted. They may have issues supplying high demand.

    Plus of course their re-badged android OS that barry referred to.

    But this looks like a credible catch-up (apart from the old-inventory Korean chips). But it is likely to be based on technology, equipment and techniques in die manufacture sourced prior to technology restrictions.

    When they produce a 3nm, 4nm, or 5nm CPU, and their own RAM/NAND that will be more interesting.

    • adam 4.1
      17 September 2023 at 7:39 pm

      I can't see Chine letting the top end gear it can produce go into consumer goods, no matter how good the propaganda value. When they are shoring up their defensive systems..

      https://www.eurasiantimes.com/hypersonic-china-unleashed-two-new-hypersonic-missiles/

      I also don't think China are anywhere near being able to projecting power out ward. Lack of a serious Blue navy, no real allies (anyone who thinks China trust Russia are seriously kidding themselves), with major issues internally related to demographics and an rapidly aging population.

      I do believe they are doing all they can in relation of defensive of the homeland and can't see the sanctions hurting progress in that area – mainly missile defense both nuclear and hypersonic. They have the tech for that, as 2017 tech is more than good enough.

      My issue with China and indeed Russia in relation to tech, is the role they have in smelting the rear earth materials. The west has exposed itself here, with no quick fix.

      https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/chinas-rare-earths-dominance-focus-after-mineral-export-curbs-2023-07-05/

      • lprent 4.1.1
        17 September 2023 at 9:41 pm

        I can't see Chine letting the top end gear it can produce go into consumer goods, no matter how good the propaganda value. When they are shoring up their defensive systems..

        You'd be surprised. Most military computer systems that I am aware of actually use pretty old die densities compared to the consumer market.

        It is the software that drives them plus its integration with sensor and response systems that are upgraded. Typically the computer hardware is designed in well before prototypes or production models get actually made. And a lot of the contractual design that goes into them is about how to provide spare parts over the lifetime of the system. So typically 5+ years design to manufacture and a 20+ year support period. Plus these are computer systems that are essentially bespoke and manufactured in small quantities.

        I also don't think China are anywhere near being able to projecting power out ward. Lack of a serious Blue navy..

        The only thing that they currently lack in capability compared to the US are aircraft carriers and nuclear powered boomers and hunter-killer submarines. Otherwise

        China now has world's largest navy as Beijing advances towards goal of a ‘world-class' military by 2049, says US DoD

        What the Chinese naval forces currently operate more as a regional rather than a world-projected navy. However there is little apart from limited bases and harbour to prevent them from extending to world wide.

        Regionally you can count in their considerable additional Coast Guard and Maritime Militia both of which fall under PLA control in the event of any conflict. They currently being used used for pressuring their neighbours in territorial and fishing disputes as well as their nominal roles.

        My issue with China and indeed Russia in relation to tech, is the role they have in smelting the rear earth materials. The west has exposed itself here, with no quick fix.

        I pop on earth sciences hat.

        There really isn't that much of a issue with that. Sure China in particular are currently the cheapest source because of the way this got economically prioritised over the past 15 years.

        However people tend to get hung up on the name of 'rare earth minerals' and 'rare-earth metals'. Few of them aren't particularly rare in the crustal mineralogy and in seawater. They're not like heavy metals like uranium that are rare to find out of the mantle or core.

        You can find accessible deposits of them over most of the terrestrial globe, and most are pretty prevalent in seawater and seafloor deposits.

        Besides everyone tends to confuse then with the mineral required for batteries and the major ones for that aren’t rare earth metals at all.

        Lithium for batteries isn't rare at all at ~0.2ppm in seawater. Most of current production is extracted either from brine or ex-brine deposits from evaporated seawater. The rest comes from terrestrial fossil ancient geothermal waters.

        Cobalt is also important in batteries. There are terrestrial deposits, but they are dwarfed by the supply in the oceans.

        Those are the two most in 'shortage' by volume and new plant is being setup on already known terrestrial deposits plus the engineering research to extract them from water is intense.

        Neither are particularly price sensitive for their use in manufacturing as a raw material. The processing to acceptable levels of chemical purity and structure is where all of the cost lies. Neither is hard to put in plant to get to those manufacturing standards. What is hard is just how fast the demand is climbing.

        Same applies to pretty much every other 'rare metal'. They are in temporary shortage because of rapidly increasing demand and the time it takes to put processing plant in. However the economic benefit from the new uses tends to make the raw material and basic processing cost essentially irrelevant. So supply is running up almost as fast as demand – world wide.

        The need for actual rare-earth metals by volume is teeny.

        • adam 4.1.1.1
          17 September 2023 at 11:20 pm

          Lithium for batteries isn't rare at all at ~0.2ppm in seawater. Most of current production is extracted either from brine or ex-brine deposits from evaporated seawater. The rest comes from terrestrial fossil ancient geothermal waters.

          Geothermal waters rich in Lithium we are blessed with here in NZ, should be a world leader in the extraction soon with a bit of luck.

          https://geo40.com/geothermallithium/

          I agree with what your saying about rare earths and their uses, my issue is around smelting. It takes years to get production up to economic levels, in relation to smelting it. Yes I know the US has started here, and Australia too. The issue is Russia and China both were cheap (ish), and easy to get these materials when needed. That is no longer the case. Even if people only need a teeny amount, that teeny amount has been effectively cut off.

          What the Chinese naval forces currently operate more as a regional rather than a world-projected navy. However there is little apart from limited bases and harbour to prevent them from extending to world wide.

          Personally I'm not so bullish on the China navy, I've seen a lot of what they got, and it's not great. Defensively which is where I think their mind set is at, it will do OK. As you say, integrating with the PLA. I would not like to seee anyone attack it. But force projection – not even with aircraft carries, nuclear powered boomers and hunter killer subs do I think they can cut the mustard.

          They also using a hell of lot of man power to run it, it's a very labour intensive navy.

          Even regionally it has major competition in Japans navy, which it's not in the same class as, at all. I also rate the Indian navy higher, India have gone a long way in the last few years to make their navy more of regional power. And done it better in my opinion.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Maritime_Self-Defense_Force

    • satty 4.2
      18 September 2023 at 9:30 am

      The only (EUV) photolithography machines capable to do 3nm or similar chips are from ASML Holdings at the moment.

      There are restrictions in place for ASML to export and now servicing their top technology to China (Bloomberg):

      ASML Faces Tighter Dutch Restrictions on Servicing Chip Equipment in China

      • ASML will be limited in repairing restricted machines in China
      • China’s production capabilities and capacity to be affected
  5. mch 5
    18 September 2023 at 2:15 pm

    While NZ does toe the line on Huawei phones, NZ ISP's are happily installing massive quantities of Huawei Ultra-Fast-Broadband modems. Maybe it's not really about security, more about NZ kowtowing to Uncle-Sam.