Is the U.S. being hypocritical by courting Google while attacking Huawei and ZTE?

by Alan Friedman / Mar 27, 2019, 6:59 PM

Is the U.S. being hypocritical by courting Google while attacking Huawei and ZTE?

President Donald Trump disseminated a couple of tweets today (via The Verge) that mentioned how he had just met with Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Characteristically mislabeling Pichai as Google's "president" (the company has four regional presidents who are under Pichai on the depth chart, and report to him), Trump notes that Pichai is doing quite well and said that the executive is committed to the U.S. military, not the Chinese military (whatever that means). The president added that the discussion included a talk about political fairness (no doubt a complaint about the two years that Trump was under a cloud due to the Mueller investigation) and things that Google could do for the U.S. government.

Google employee's have not been pleased with certain government contracts like the one it eventually backed out of for Project Maven. The latter was a project for the Pentagon that would allow the U.S. military to recognize people and objects captured on video or streamed live by drones. The project anticipated using the buzz words machine learning and Artificial Intelligence to recognize what was being seen on the ground, but Google backed out of it after a petition circulated among its employees.

Another project that Google has taken heat for is code named Project Dragonfly. This is a search engine for China that not only blocks certain things that users in the country might search for (in other words, censoring search), it also allows the communist Chinese government to have easy access to searches made by users. Google employees have written a letter to management opposing this project.

What is interesting about the president's tweet is that Trump hints at various things that Google could do for this country. Yet, lawmakers have branded Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE as national security threats for allegedly using back doors in its products that send personal data to the Chinese government. This has never been proven, and both companies have denied the allegations multiple times.

"We were pleased to have productive conversations with the President about investing in the future of the American workforce, the growth of emerging technologies and our ongoing commitment to working with the U.S. government."-Google

Trump has tried to stay in touch with leading high-tech companies and their leaders. You might recall that earlier this month, at a meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board, Trump thanked Apple for its investment in the states, taking credit for continually asking the Apple CEO to move overseas jobs to the U.S. (that was the conversation during which the president referred to Apple's CEO as Tim Apple). Last month, the president sent out a tweet demanding that the U.S. work on 6G technology ASAP.

But we digress. It just would be interesting though, to see what Trump has in mind for Google to do. If any of his plans have anything to do with using Google's ecosystem to obtain information from foreign governments (an argument that could be raised about Project Maven), or information about his political enemies, it would seem hypocritical to try to keep U.S. carriers from offering its subscribers phones like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, or the newly announced Huawei P30 Pro.

Back in January 2018, both Verizon and AT&T announced that they would carry the Huawei Mate 10 Pro. This excited many American consumers who wanted to see for themselves the buzz that the company had surrounding its high-end phones. But both carriers surprisingly announced not too long afterwards, that they would not be carrying the phone after all. Did the top two stateside wireless providers get calls from a well placed U.S. lawmaker warning them not to carry the phone? We probably will never know.

We can't say that Huawei and ZTE are totally blameless; both have provided goods and services illegally to countries under U.S. economic sanctions. Huawei has stolen robotic phone testing technology belonging to T-Mobile, and ZTE lied to the U.S. Commerce Department. But U.S. tech giants have had their misadventures too.

Perhaps it is time to call out lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have called Huawei and ZTE national security threats and demand that they show us the proof that the Mate 20 Pro or any other Huawei or ZTE device acts as a conduit for Beijing. The U.S. cannot ask Google to do things for the government without full disclosure (especially in light of Trump's strange comment in the aforementioned tweet about the Chinese military), and continue to accuse Huawei and ZTE of doing things that they might have never done. And that is a position that President Trump should know very well.

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14 Comments

1. Doogie203

Posts: 16; Member since: Jun 08, 2016

The devices aren’t acting as spy agents. The fact that the Chinese government controls everything is the problem. China is not America and tbh it’s just not worth the risk. China bootlegs and steals everything!

posted on Mar 27, 2019, 7:57 PM 3

2. lyndon420

Posts: 6860; Member since: Jul 11, 2012

You just discribed the NSA...plus countless other big names in tech and social media.

posted on Mar 27, 2019, 8:28 PM 8

3. tangbunna

Posts: 488; Member since: Sep 29, 2016

wow.. this guy has amazingly less knowledge.

posted on Mar 27, 2019, 8:47 PM 0

4. vgking9699

Posts: 205; Member since: Mar 01, 2019

You do, You realize chine owns the black mart of smartphone knockoffs and even has fake apple stores where even the employees really think they work for apple And the Chinese government limits what the people’s smartphones can view Like in China, all smartphones don’t come with the google play store pre installed and you can’t use Facebook or YouTube without using a vpn to trick the phone into acting as if you aren’t in China It’s a fact and can be easily looked at by watching a few YouTube videos where America’s go to China to show everyone what’s it like there

posted on Mar 27, 2019, 9:07 PM 1

5. cmdacos

Posts: 4302; Member since: Nov 01, 2016

Google limits its involvement with China but others like Apple are willing to hand over encryption keys to do business there so it's not like the restrictions go that deep.

posted on Mar 27, 2019, 9:14 PM 1

9. mootu

Posts: 1537; Member since: Mar 16, 2017

Google is starting to work a lot more with the Chinese. Trumps tweet was in responce to a General in the US military last week labeling Google as traitors for working with the Chinese and said it was indirectly assisting the Chinese military, i'm not sure if it was reported here but it was on some other tech sites.

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 3:08 AM 0

6. MrMalignance

Posts: 317; Member since: Feb 17, 2013

The answer is no. Super weak article. Another false flag by Apple Friedman

posted on Mar 27, 2019, 10:12 PM 3

14. Alan01

Posts: 638; Member since: Mar 21, 2012

That's Alan Apple to you. Regards, Alan

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 4:30 PM 2

15. MrMalignance

Touché

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 8:04 PM 1

7. Bobbii

Posts: 43; Member since: Jan 18, 2017

NSA and CIA are used to "Spying on everything". They can't spy on Europe if Huawei build its 5G infrastructure.

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 12:13 AM 1

8. mootu

Europe mainly operates on Huawei networks already and the US manage to spy just fine. Have a good look at what the Five Eyes network does, all the members spy for each other and share the info.

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 3:04 AM 1

11. pogba

Posts: 113; Member since: Jun 13, 2018

Personally, I think the problem is that Huawei is compromised by the fact that it's an important asset to the Chinese government and the latter has some sense of jurisdiction over Huawei . Thereby it is indeed logical for the US government to apply these safety precautions. If Huawei was an American company and the American government had a way to control and obtain information from them, Huawei would be way bigger than Apple by now.

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 5:12 AM 2

12. ShadowHammer

Posts: 209; Member since: Mar 13, 2015

I tend to agree that if the US govt is going to throw out accusations, it should back them up with some evidence. I can also appreciate the US not wanting their network infrastructure held up by a foreign company in a country that definitely wants dirt on the US. However, blocking regular consumer devices from the consumer based on hearsay seems like a bit of a stretch. It seems like we aren't getting the full story.

posted on Mar 28, 2019, 10:32 AM 0

13. ssallen

Posts: 206; Member since: Oct 06, 2017

The actual issue with Huawei isn't that it has installed back doors for the Chinese Government its that they are LEGALLY OBLIGATED to do so if the Chinese government asks.