Have any other sources corroborated this story? Bloomberg News lost a ton of credibility with me after their “The Big Hack” cover story [1], claiming Apple and Amazon had been hacked by chips secretly added to their servers in the factory. The picture of the chip on the cover was purely a work of imagination. To my knowledge, no supporting evidence was ever produced, nor were any of the widespread criticisms of the story ever addressed [2], [3].
To push another “China secretly hacked the west” story while also invoking Betteridge's Law leaves me highly skeptical.
I've heard about the nortel hack from other sources, with the link to china being mentioned many times I've seen it. For example, here's some CBC reporting form 2012 that at least somewhat outside the current climate (https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/nortel-collapse-linked-to-c...).
The big problem I have with the Bloomberg article, is it seems to really be trying to stretch the underlying information to draw the conclusion that Chinese Government or Chinese Hackers or Huawei are solely or the most responsible for the fall of Nortel.
Did Huawei benefit and get it's start from stolen IP is likely a compelling story to explore, with lots of compelling underlying facts. Does Huawei or China still do this, is probably another good question. To try and link these questions to the fall of nortel, while glossing over other massive contributors to nortel's fall leaves me skeptical of the narrative also.
It's disappointing, because I do believe there is plenty of compelling evidence around about Chinese IP theft, but reporting like this allows lots of noise to be mixed in, and for consumers of the information to reasonably be sceptical.
Thank you for reminding everyone. I don't trust Bloomberg News at this point — "The Big Hack" seems to have been pure fiction, and this article seems to follow the beaten path to maximum clicks and ad impressions.
There are direct on the record quotes from different people with knowledge about it in this article. You could pretty easily interview or email them and find out.
The big problem I have with the Bloomberg article, is it seems to really be trying to stretch the underlying information to draw the conclusion that Chinese Government or Chinese Hackers or Huawei are solely or the most responsible for the fall of Nortel.
Did Huawei benefit and get it's start from stolen IP is likely a compelling story to explore, with lots of compelling underlying facts. Does Huawei or China still do this, is probably another good question. To try and link these questions to the fall of nortel, while glossing over other massive contributors to nortel's fall leaves me skeptical of the narrative also.
It's disappointing, because I do believe there is plenty of compelling evidence around about Chinese IP theft, but reporting like this allows lots of noise to be mixed in, and for consumers of the information to reasonably be sceptical.