[qd6pwu4]

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_de...

Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

The United Nations International Court of Justice, which ordered the US to withdraw sanctions, to which the US responded by pulling out of international agreements.

The European Union, which has attempted to block its companies from complying with US sanctions.

With that said, the US is free to sanction anyone for its own interests, that's its right as a sovereign state. It is also its right as a sovereign state to refuse market access and trade to any company that violates its sanctions.

But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions? That's the equivalent of Russia arresting American business executives and extraditing them to China for violating Chinese sanctions against Taiwan - and yes, there are sanctions against Taiwan, which are regularly ignored by the US, of course. This is a massive escalation and will undoubtedly cause a major international crisis. Stay tuned.

[azernik]

> But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions?

In this case, the other country in question is Canada, which has made its own sovereign decision to also sanction Iran.

Extradition treaties, including the US-Canada one, require that the conduct involved be a crime in both jurisdictions. If the Canadian courts decide that what she did is not a crime under Canadian law, she will get off. Simple as that.

[zavi]

Worth mentioning that Canada has its own history of concerns with Huawei due to the Nortel debacle: https://www.afr.com/technology/web/security/how-chinese-hack...

[DyslexicAtheist]

it is all the FVEY countries that have issues with Huawei. UK, Australia & NZ have played a big role in disseminating US anti-China propaganda. I say this as somebody who has been criticizing Huawei for years. There is no denying their products are not only of poor quality (competing on price), that they bribed their way through Africa, and that the founders have strong ties to the military and party. Yet it would be hypocritical to not call this anything but a political move.

[dis-sys]

> There is no denying their products are not only of poor quality (competing on price)

Huawei Mate 20 Pro starts from 1049 Euro and Mate 20 start from 800 Euro, last time when I checked, 1049 Euro is almost $1200 USD, common sense tells that when an Android phone has a price tag of $1200 USD, it is anything but competing on price.

I have Mate 20/Mate 9/P8, the top ranking build quality has been repeatedly confirmed by numerous reviews world wide. I never ever had any issue with my Huawei Mate 20/10/P8. Labelling Huawei products as poor quality without proof is not helping on anything.

[DyslexicAtheist]

that is true but Huawei isn't just consumer products. Their radio and core network products absolutely suck. Their O&M plane is a disaster no NOC wants to put up with. And their Huawei cloud offering that positions itself as a carrier-grade cloud is worse than digital ocean. Operators choose Huawei because it's cheap not because their features and interoperability and acceptance tests were of better quality then another vendor. They're able to compete below price precisely because they are heavily government funded, and because they stole a lot of IP from the established players and could leapfrog many years of innovation done for them by competitors. Ericsson, Nokia have seen this coming long ago which lead to all these M&A's (starting in the late 90ies till just recently). The only players left now are Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei & ZTE. It doesn't look good for Nokia & Ericsson considering how lazy and half-arsed their presence is in standardization activities and how much of it is actually driven by CENELEC (the Chinese standards-compliance arm of ETSI).

As for consumer products, yes of course they will have to get their money back somewhere. If you're running on one end a shady operation that is to cut the price to levels nobody can compete with and deliver shitty products only developing countries or banana republics want to afford, ... then you need to make up for this somewhere else in order not to expose the whole racket.

[dis-sys]

I just saw news that millions of mobile users in UK and Japan got kicked off the net by those high quality carrier-grade Ericsson carrier equipments.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128720/o2-down-softbank...

> They're able to compete below price precisely because they are heavily government funded.

so you are arguing that rather than funding carefully selected new businesses with good potentials, or those state owned established companies with full government control in the same area such as ZTE, Chinese government is heavily funding the most profitable private high tech company Huawei?

sounds like the Chinese government is on a self destruction mission to me.

[perennate]

I find your comment very misleading.

There is no indication that this arrest is related to U.S. policies to sanction foreign companies for selling to Iran.

Rather, the arrest is far more likely related to "US law [that] prohibits exports of certain US-origin technologies to certain countries" (from nytimes article). Huawei purchased certain technology from the US with the promise not to sell it to certain countries like Iran, and then proceeded to shamelessly violate the agreement.

Without laws like this, sanctions are far less powerful, because any foreign company not affected by the sanction can act as a middleman between the origin country and the sanctioned country.

What the UN International Court of Justice and European Union think about US sanctioning foreign companies that do business with Iran is completely irrelevant, since this arrest is not related to that policy.

[nappy]

The author of this comment has a history of apologizing for Chinese crimes:

>>LOL, kill thousands of its own citizens in protests? The Chinese government never did that (even the famous tank man was unharmed and was not arrested), the truth is, many soldiers got killed because they were not allowed to fire at citizens. Even the Chinese government did kill its own citizen they learnt from the US (1932 Bonus Army, 1970 Kent state massacre, Jesus that was only 48 years ago, not mentioning almost every day someone is being shot by the police somewhere in the US. The funny thing is one shot won't even make it to the newspaper now.)

>>In a word, you have been brainwashed by your media. I know it's hard to wake up someone who pretends to be asleep, but it's good for you.

[simias]

The fact that the parent is pro-chinese is pretty clear, I don't see what digging into their post history adds to the discussion, especially since in this case it's tangential at best.

[dsfyu404ed]

It's always good to know the other parties agenda/ideology as that will (consciously or unconsciously, often the latter) influence what they feel deserves or doesn't deserve being mentioned.

[Dirlewanger]

Because astroturfing has utterly subverted discussion on hot-button issues on all social media platforms (including this one), whether you choose to believe it or not.

[dang]

We've spent a lot of time working on this, and the actual astroturfing that we've found is small compared to the frequency with which users fire this accusation at each other merely because they hold opposing views. That's why the site guidelines ask people not to bring this toxic trope up without evidence. Some users holding opposing views to yours is not evidence of astroturfing, only of divided views.

Perhaps you or someone else knows more than we do about this on Hacker News, but in that case you should be telling us at [e-mail] so we can look into it. That's in the guidelines as well. When there's real information, we take it very seriously. Unfortunately, though, this trope is driven mostly by imagination, not information.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[fosco]

I wonder if there are solutions to astroturfing that have not been explored.

this is really challenging as it is something I have been thinking about a long time and each idea I have I find a way that it would simply not work.

[AsyncAwait]

Do you have a substantive point relevant to what the parent said here?

[tempestn]

Seems like pretty relevant context to me.

[lagadu]

Why? The argument stands on its own legs, how is the commenter's post history relevant?

[akvadrako]

How is a commenter's potential conflict of interest not relevant?

[simias]

A conflict of interest would mean that they have an undisclosed interest in pushing that narrative (say, that they have stock in Huawei, that they're a Chinese official or something like that). The parent comment discloses no such thing. Having an opinion is not a conflict of interest.

At worse you could argue that the poster is biased, but then in this types of geopolitical discussions who isn't? Certainly not me.

[fitpolar]

Everyone technically has a conflict of interest or premeditated motivation. An argument should stand on its own merit, regardless of who makes it. Analyzing anything other than the argument is immature.

[EliRivers]

Analyzing anything other than the argument is immature.

Yet sometimes it leads to a better outcome than just analysis of the argument alone. Context is real. Context matters. Automatically disregarding real information on the grounds of "maturity" ideology can lead to a worse outcome, so it doesn't seem like the best course.

[fitpolar]

While context is important, I’ve found that the context of who someone is personally is rarely beneficial when being objective. If anything, this approach is anti-ideology, as you are not taking ideological bias into account...and there’s way too much ideological bias in discussions these days. I think that’s what I meant by maturity.

[ghusbands]

Calling someone's argument or stance immature is immature.

[fitpolar]

With that mindset nobody should use that word. We should wipe it from the dictionary.

[AsyncAwait]

Subtract the OP's posting history. Is what they wrote still relevant and valid? Yes? There's your answer.

[stef25]

It's not because there may be a conflict of interest that he's wrong. He's mainly just explaining the legal background of this event.

[otalp]

I don't have a history of doing that and came to comment very similar things. US sanctions against Iran are motivated solely for geopolitical realpolitik.

[throwawaylolx]

The author of this comment has a history of attacking the Chinese government:

>This is ridiculous equivocation between a democratic society with a rule of law and an authoritarian regime. You're kidding yourself if you don't think the Chinese government has an interest in data owned by foreign nationals that they could gain access to.

[HeavyStorm]

Ad hominem?

[throwawaylolx]

Just as much as the poster I replied to.

[qd6pwu4]

What I'm posting under this thread is based on fact. So you want to criticize me for irrelevant things?

[dang]

It looks like you've been using HN primarily for nationalistic political comments. That breaks the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Could you please review those and use HN as intended, i.e. for intellectual curiosity, from now on?

The test we apply is whether an account has crossed the line of using HN primarily for political battle. If that is the case, we ban the account, regardless of which politics or nation they're fighting for or against. That is because these battles have a way of consuming everything if allowed to, and therefore must not be allowed to.

Further explanations of how we moderate this are here for anyone who wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[sattoshi]

Is this reddit?

[joelx]

HN should shut down nation state's propaganda accounts.

[_ptgt]

>But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions? That's the equivalent of Russia arresting American business executives and extraditing them to China for violating Chinese sanctions against Taiwan - and yes, there are sanctions against Taiwan, which are regularly ignored by the US, of course.

No, it isn't. They're only equivalent if the American executive's company in question is selling, say, Huawei networking equipment (assuming it is banned; I don't know if it's the case) to businesses in Taiwan -- probably under an arrangement where the intention to sell to Taiwan was never made clear and likely actively concealed.

That's circumvention of export controls and likely fraud at the expense of the sanctioning country -- an entirely different beast than merely passive business between the sanctioned and a separate third-party.

>will undoubtedly cause a major international crisis.

It will, but it has less to do with any escalation by the US than it does with China's own, well, unique political environment. If a similar case occurred to CFO of e.g. Yandex, I have a hard time seeing Russians/Russia reacting nearly as strongly as I expect Chinese/China to.

[fogetti]

You basically repeated what the OP said and making it look like it meant the opposite. Which it does not.

[Itaxpica]

No, that comment is pointing out that OP left out the key fact that Huawei was selling American products to Iran. That changes the situation from the OP’s claim of “Huawei was doing business with a country the US is sanctioning” to “Huawei was actively working to subvert US export restrictions”.

[whack]

I don't support the Iran sanctions either. But a key detail is buried in the middle of the article.

> Since at least 2016, U.S. authorities have been reviewing Huawei’s alleged shipping of U.S.-origin products to Iran

Huawei is free to export all their Chinese origin products to Iran. The allegation here is that us-origin products are not following us export laws. This seems more like a case of "when in Rome, follow Roman laws".

[apexalpha]

Keep in mind that a lot of network equipment for 4G network (eg.) requires US patents, Qualcomm chips. So even if you build 99% of the equipment yourself if you use a single transistor that requires a US patent of is manufactured in the US the US will upkeep it's sanctions.

[azernik]

This case is much more straightforward - it involves a company she chaired, which used Huawei slides and so was probably a Huawei front, offering to be a straw purchaser for HP hardware (buy it and immediately resell it to Iran).

[bagacrap]

I didn't know patents crossed international borders.

[jmalicki]

China is a member of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which exists to ensure that patents cross international borders.

https://www.wipo.int/members/en/contact.jsp?country_id=38

[farseer]

They arrested the founder's daughter! I think it would be a good idea for American execs in China to take a long vacation home until this cools down. No one wants to become collateral damage between a great power rivalry.

[nappy]

Meng Wanzhou is a the CFO of Huawei[0]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-huawei/huawei-f...

[TuringNYC]

Not to make light of the subject, but reminds me of the movie "Sicario: Day of the Soldado" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicario:_Day_of_the_Soldado) where an agent provocateur recommends to the US Government: "You want to start a war? the fastest way is to kidnap a prince"

[rangibaby]

She’s both

[tooltalk]

Ughg, what the previous poster is insinuating is that she wasn't arrested because she's the daughter of Huawei CEO, but because of her role as CFO of the company violating US sanction.

[projectramo]

I would be very curious to know if there were other high level executives (C-suite) who were not arrested when they entered a country (not just Canada) with whom the US has an extradition treaty.

That would resolve the question of whether she was arrested solely because of her role as CFO, or if it was also an attempt to send a personal message.

I assume that is what is being discussed.

[delinka]

You make it sound as if she’s not a company executive and this is some political maneuver, arresting a family member rather than a company employee.

[tonyedgecombe]

Or Chinese execs in America.

[onetimemanytime]

>>But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions?*

You steal a car in Belgium. Belgium investigates, charges you and issues an arrest warrant. In some cases it goes to Interpol or EU-wide systems. You go to Germany for a vacation and your name is flagged. Yes, you are arrested by Germany for violating Belgian laws and the extradition process starts.

You can challenge the arrest on a few basis (such as "Iran wants to jail me for criticizing Mullahs") but other than that, countries do help each other catch criminals. "Violating US sanctions" is apparently a crime in USA and Canada more or less has the same view on major international relations so he is likely screwed. (I think the arrest is almost automatic everywhere, but then courts and justice dept decide on whether to extradite.)

[yhellothere]

Doubtful about massive and major. The US and China have a complicated relationship over Taiwan a la sovereignty -- replace Taiwan with, say, Japan and you have a better but still imperfect analogy.

[dillondoyle]

Plus the arrested party is the daughter of the founder; I can't separate that fact when trying to infer intention here.

I definitely feel anxious..

[nappy]

>>>Meng, one of the vice chairs on the company’s board and the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested on Dec. 1 at the request of U.S. authorities and a court hearing has been set for Friday, a Canadian Justice Department spokesman said. Trump and Xi had dined in Argentina on Dec. 1 at the G20 summit.

She works for the company in question.

[shanghaiaway]

That's obvious to everyone but you. It's literally the headline.

[chvid]

I think this is an extremely dangeruous move on the side of the Trump administration.

This is supposed to be about Iran? Arresting the daugther of Huawei's founder definately makes it seem like there is more going on.

How is any significant American business man flying through Hong Kong airport supposed to feel right now?

[chvid]

And I am pretty sure that the mullahs in Tehran are laughing in their beards over the US picking fights with China (and maybe the EU) over the Iran boycots. At least when this is the way it is done.

[ignoramous]

Well, the world is laughing, including the clergy men in Dharmashala.

[creaghpatr]

Pretty sure the mullahs have bigger fish to fry regarding the future of their country

[odiroot]

> Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

They may be but US is on the right side of history on this one. And I say this as an European.

[emilsedgh]

As a Jewish born Iranian atheist refugee to the states who protested against Iran a few years ago in Iran, I'd have to say, you're pretty wrong on this one.

I hate Islamic Republic with every single cell in my body but you're just wrong.

* U.S. plain and simply fucked Iran up with a coup at 1953.

* Then helped Islamic Republic gain power in 1979. (This is up for debate though)

* Then helped Saddam Hussein attack Iran.

* Then sanctioned the country to the verge of bankruptcy.

* Then made a deal and backed out of it for no reason (Internal politics?)

[tssva]

Iran was already fucked up of its own doing before the 1953 coup. For the last few centuries Iran's history had been alternating periods of civil war and regional agression on Iran's part.

The late 19th century was marked by occupation by Russia and the Ottoman empire. Following defeats in wars which Iran generally had provoked.

Once Iran became a constitutional monarchy in the early 20th century political instability reigned as forces loyal to the monarchy fought for power with those with a more democratic bent. Between 1947-1951 Iran had 6 different prime ministers. The coup itself was really a continuation of this political battle with the US helping the forces loyal to the monarchy.

Iran also didn't help itself during WW2 by choosing to technically remain neutral while allowing a large German presence and German utilization of the oil fields. This led to a joint British and Russian occupation to drive the Germans out.

Even today Iran's economic woes although made worse by sanctions is mostly rooted in economic policy decisions and large scale corruption which feeds money to those backed by the revolutionary guard at the expense of the people.

But it is easier to blame the big bad West for all your woes rather than take an introspective look at your own culpability.

[emilsedgh]

Path to democracy is not easy, specially in an oil-rich country like Iran.

We've had our moments that we were getting close. Now those moments are quite fragile. Every single time the U.S. has kicked us in the nuts in those moments.

Examples are this very same moment, where the economic sanctions and the reformists finally convinced the hardliners to talk to the U.S.

Supreme Leader finally gave it a thumbs up. And he raised his concerns back then that the U.S. cannot be trusted but if that's what people want it's OK to do it.

He was right. The U.S. could not be trusted. Now reformists have lost all credibility. In 2 years we have another election and for sure a batshit crazy like Ahmadinejad is going to be elected.

Same happened around 9/11. We had a really strong reformist movement and government. Then, out of nowhere, president Bush named Iran a part of "axis of evil". That gave the hardliners enough of a reason to push back against major reforms.

Jack Straw (British foreign minister of the time) has good notes on this if you're more interested.

1953's coup was another moment like that. Actually that's probably the closest we've ever been.

Now, if Iran is moving towards democracy, and at the most important moments, you kick it in the nuts, you "are" part of the problem.

[toyg]

You have not really disproven most of the more recent issues he brought up. The US (and Britain) did have a big hand in the struggle that culminated in the Iranian revolution: for fear of getting a USSR ally, they got a completely out-of-control regime and then have fought it with the dirtiest tricks they could muster ever since. Sure, nobody is fully innocent, but that doesn't justify acting like a c*nt in return; it actually justifies blaming "the big bad West" and helping the worst sectors of Iranian society. Isolation always helps this sort of regime, see also: fascist Italy, socialist Cuba and so on.

[resters]

As an American, I am so ashamed that we did this to your country.

The humanitarian toll of US policies is hard to fathom.

[AsyncAwait]

As also an European, I think breaching international agreements like this and making regular people suffer, (because that's what the sanctions are doing), in order to score points because the U.S. is still mad that their regime in Iran got overthrown, I absolutely support the EU opposition to this.

[geff82]

I may say that I recently got a victim of the USA sanctions when our plane back from Iran made two emergency landings in a row and had no real possibility to repair it obviously. We were then put on another Jetliner which can be only seen in museums nowadays (except for Iran, where, thanks to Trump, this is now a dangerous mean transportation). No one should trust the Iranian government without really checking twice everything they say, yet those sanction take hostage of 80 Million people who now really struggle for a decent life. Sure, the US want to create another revolution to overthrow the government. Yet this means regular people have to want to die (because many will fall victims to this authoritarian government then).

[resters]

The US policy is deeply embarrassing and abjectly cruel.

I am so deeply ashamed by how the US treats the people of Iran.

[chopin]

For breaking agreements they've made before? I think Europe is on the right side on this.

As a European I wish the US would take all the refugees their actions cause.

[netsharc]

History is long, and I can't say it with as much definitive certainty as you (I wish you'd cite your reasoning), but as far as I know the reintroduction of sanctions against Iran will cause economic hardships which will radicalize a lot of people, and which will cause further instability to the world.

The same kind of hardships that also radicalized Trump voters, it lead them to vote a populist fascist into power.

Of course if Iran or Iranians cause trouble in the future, you'd use these as an excuse to say "Trump did the right thing, see what they did, they deserved those sanctions!", ignoring cause and effect: without the sanctions, they wouldn't be that pissed off to cause these troubles.

[resters]

Exactly. The neoconservative ethos does not concern itself with those sorts of side effects.

What the US is doing is a form of terrorism. It completely nullifies any inspiring or positive influence that the narratives about the US founding principles might evoke in those abroad, and it is only possible due to the idea of American Exceptionalism, which is patently false to anyone who observes without bias US actions.

[walrus66]

A power asserting its dominance has been the norm for thousands of years; you have just been brainwashed into hating your country. As for neocons being responsible for everything- just wow- that’s two steps past ignorant. The last president and Secretary of State are directly responsible for open slave markets in libya. Predatory foreign policy has been the only bipartisan issue in our history.

[resters]

Maybe you view the word neocon in a more idealistic sense than I do.

I agree the horrible policy is bipartisan.

Please clarify the nature of your disagreement with my comment. Not sure I fully understand.

[netsharc]

I'm not the one you replied to, but you're commenting under my reply chain, so...

> you have just been brainwashed into hating your country.

That's a very large assumption from a few lines of text, I'll classify this as a cheap baseless attack/dismissal.

> The last president and Secretary of State are directly responsible for open slave markets in libya.

So I guess Bush and Cheney are "directly responsible" for a lot of thousand dead Iraqis and Afghanis. Or were those military interventions justified in your eyes? At least Obama has admitted "the aftermath" is his biggest regret.

[toyg]

As another European: That’s like, your opinion, man.

[popee]

Like totally

[austincheney]

I don't understand why this comment is so heavily down voted for a simple difference of opinion. That isn't what the down vote is for.

This isn't Reddit, but the argumentative tone of this thread certainly reminds me of Reddit. Sensitive people make me sad :(

[ionised]

> They may be but US is on the right side of history on this one. And I say this as an European.

As anopther European, the US is most certainly on the wrong side of history with this shit. They're still salty that their pet dictator got ousted all those years ago.

[gdfasfklshg4]

Why do you think this?

[austincheney]

Why are you cowardly hiding behind a throwaway account? Why do you care? Everybody is entitled to their own personal opinion and you are free to disagree with it.

[gdfasfklshg4]

I've used this account for several months now. It's not exactly single use.

You are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to ask you for the arguments behind your opinion. You are of course entitled to respond angrily. However, it doesn't make for great discussion and you won't persuade many people with this approach.