[boffinAudio]

Your paranoia about the Chinese is equally applicable to Americans, whose NSA has given itself carte-blanche to infiltrate any computing system it desires, for whatever reason, in total secrecy - without recourse for the public to address any wrongs.

So I'm not sure that framing your paranoia in terms of "the Chinese" is productive - you might just want to update that thought with "any state actor who operates covert torture sites and violates human rights at immense scale", in which case your set of actually hostile actors becomes a little more realistic.

The biggest threat to your freedom and human rights, as an American, is your own government.

[throw0101c]

> Your paranoia about the Chinese is equally applicable to Americans, whose NSA has given itself carte-blanche to infiltrate any computing system it desires, for whatever reason, in total secrecy - without recourse for the public to address any wrongs.

Yes, except the China also 'infiltrate' Chinese companies themselves, and can perhaps order them to put in backdoors.

The NSA generally does not order US companies around, as evidenced by the fact it's been documented that they intercept shipments and compromise the systems on their own:

* https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

If the NSA had an 'in' into Cisco (or Juniper, or Aruba, etc), they wouldn't need to clandestinely have their own 'compromise factories'.

Yes, both the Chinese and NSA do cyber stuff, but so does every country. At the very least the odds of getting a 'clean' product from an American supplier compared to a Chinese one are higher: the links between Chinese companies and government are often murky.

[boffinAudio]

>Yes, except the China also 'infiltrate' Chinese companies themselves, and can perhaps order them to put in backdoors.

As does the USA's own spy agencies. There is literally no moral authority on this issue that can be claimed by America over China. Did you overlook the multiple NSA backdoors implemented by Microsoft over the years, or just have not caught up to this situation, yet? See also - Intel: TPM.

>The NSA generally does not order US companies around

I believe this to be false on the basis of multiple whistleblower leaks which demonstrate otherwise. Not to mention that American companies have evolved the canary mechanism as a means of bypassing strict secrecy rules around disclosure of this influence by the spooks.

>At the very least the odds of getting a 'clean' product from an American supplier compared to a Chinese one are higher: the links between Chinese companies and government are often murky.

I do not believe this to be true one bit. China and America are equivalent when it comes to trustworthiness, which is to say neither country has the moral authority to claim a more ethical behaviour over the other when it comes to human rights.

China doesn't operate Pine Gap - the worlds biggest, wholesale violator of human rights at massive scale, ever.

And then, there's this:

https://www.androidauthority.com/apple-google-push-notificat...

Not much different to what the CCP can do to its people...

[hmottestad]

I think that US agencies are not as interested in stealing trade secrets or harming US companies as other countries would be.

[boffinAudio]

I think that is a very, very naive point of view. There are countless examples of this happening - probably they're not on your radar because your nation was the recipient of the stolen goods ..

The USA regularly uses its intelligence apparatus to undermine economy and industry in other countries. I would even say, at a far greater rate, with worse results (for the targets) than anything China or Russia are doing ..

The mass violation of human rights for billions of people (literally) that occurs every millisecond of the day at Pine Gap on behalf of the American government, for example, demonstrates that this naivete is very, very dangerous.

[hmottestad]

> The USA regularly uses its intelligence apparatus to undermine economy and industry in other countries. I would even say, at a far greater rate, with worse results (for the targets) than anything China or Russia are doing ..

This was my point. How often does it use its power to undermine the US economy or industry in the US?

[p_l]

NSA is infamous for its involvement in stealing trade secrets and generally cooperating clandestinely to for example ensure US company wins the bid. And the competition is often supposed US allies.

It also rather infamously claimed it never partakes in industrial espionage, despite it being somewhat well documented in 1990s that they do.

Generally, if the contract is big enough, and specially if the companies involved have military/intelligence ties otherwise as well (every bigger MIC corp), you can expect ITC, NSA, CIA and occasionally FBI and others to all be involved in unethical work related to getting the contract won by US vendor.

[hmottestad]

> NSA is infamous for its involvement in stealing trade secrets and generally cooperating clandestinely to for example ensure US company wins the bid. And the competition is often supposed US allies.

This was my point. They don't steal trade secrets in order to harm US companies.