Huawei - Caught Between Two Superpowers (Documentary)

hi welcome to this week's episode of cold fusion last week we had a look at quibby the netflix for mobile it had a-list celebrities and two billion dollars of funding but failed in just six months today we'll be turning to the ever brewing story of huawei vs the united states huawei currently the world's largest smartphone manufacturer was the first high-profile company to be caught in the center of a feud between two competing world powers the united states of america and china after the huawei crackdown it was tick tock and wechat that came under fire it's all extraordinary when you think about it so what are both sides of the story what does this mean for huawei who wins and who loses and how did this all happen in the first place and what's the latest in the two years since the ban began let's take a look you are watching toll fusion tv [Music] so who are huawei we've already done an episode on their massive size and exactly what they do but here's an outline for those who missed it the company was founded in 1987 by ren thing fee a member of the chinese people's liberation army after his retirement he would start the huawei company initially focused on manufacturing phone switches huawei has since expanded its business to include building telecommunications networks communication equipment and consumer devices from data storage to networks and carrier software to pcs vr wearables smart speakers wi-fi routers usb modems and much more they do a lot huawei has deployed its products and services in more than 170 countries and has 21 foreign r d institutes internationally including countries like the united states canada and the uk huawei overtook ericsson in 2012 to become the world's largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer though to most people the company is most known for their smartphones as of q2 2020 they overtook samsung to become the number one smartphone maker selling 56 million units compared to samsung's 54 million in short they're a huge company but then suddenly seemingly out of nowhere in 2018 they were banned by the us government the company had an annual revenue of 120 billion us dollars last year so this ban is a big deal to understand why this happened we first must understand the bigger picture of the relations between china and the us until the 1970s china's economy was under communist control by the government it was isolated and closed from other economies but throughout the 1970s they opened up and in 2000 u.s president bill clinton signed the u.s china relations act of 2000. this agreement paved the way for china to join the world trade organization just a year later the idea was that trade with china would benefit american interests this agreement exchanges membership rights for china and the wto for economic opportunities for america in china for american businesses and american workers without the tariffs and technology transfer requirements and production and china requirements and other requirements which have limited our ability to benefit from their market for too long almost immediately chinese products flooded into the u.s and by the mid-2000s americans began to notice that everything was made in china the fact of the matter was that america was starting to build a reliance on china anything from toys to laptops electronic components and appliances it was now much more cost effective and cheaper for american companies to manufacture these goods in china and sell them back to the united states in 2006 china surpassed mexico as the biggest trade partner to the united states after canada all of this trade with america the biggest consumers on the planet was a huge boost to the chinese economy in the second quarter of 2010 china surpassed japan as the world's second largest economy in 2015 the chinese government unveiled its plans to become the most powerful economic empire by 2025. in this plan they wanted their currency the yuan to be more powerful than the us dollar one aspect of the plan was to pivot private companies to shift their goals towards the government's vision the americans were now nervous the plan was cited as a quote real existential threat to u.s technological leadership end quote by an american think tank in 2018 a trade war between the united states of america and china soon exploded huawei being such a big company was quickly caught in the middle we are being taken advantage of okay and i don't like it and i haven't liked it for many years and i told that to president xi i said how did this ever happen we're down 507 billion dollars in trade deficits how did it happen and they told me nobody ever complained there was never anybody to talk to in the united states so now that we know the driving factors that made this situation reach a boiling point what was the actual ban the united states accused huawei products of spying for the chinese government by using backdoors it was claimed that this behavior would be consistent with chinese laws that required companies to cooperate with state intelligence when needed huawei emphatically denied these claims and said the chinese government never asked them to have backdoors and if asked in the future they would refuse to comply and mr ren you talk a lot about the distance between huawei and the chinese government but what we've seen publicly is senior officials in the government talking at times on huawei's behalf is that useful to the company or do you find that a distraction first it's understandable that government leaders would take pride in the great companies of their country second huawei is being stuck in an extremely difficult situation the us is launching intense attacks against us if the u.s government speaks ill of huawei why couldn't the chinese government speak in our favor that creates a kind of balance in the past no one spoke up for us in 2018 the united states passed a bill that stopped the federal government from doing business with huawei and other chinese vendors due to security concerns but even to date no solid evidence has been brought forward to substantiate these concerns it could be a matter of the evidence being withheld for national security reasons or the simple fact that the evidence doesn't exist right now this is anyone's guess despite this u.s companies had to stop using huawei components in cell networks and current systems must remove any huawei components america encouraged its allies to do the same things quickly escalated when the chinese government threatened economic retaliation against countries that followed the us ban in 2019 huawei filed a lawsuit against the u.s government they cited that the ban was unconstitutional because there was no due process or a chance of rebuttal from huawei the ban divided u.s allies politically australia britain canada and new zealand semi-banned huawei but germany italy and much of europe haven't the german and british intelligence agencies have pushed back on the us allegations stating that they've found no evidence at first it seemed like the us was going to look foolish stephanie richard ceo of the mobile network orange stated that the claims of backdoor spying were like the weapons of mass destruction lie told during the iraq war however in july of 2020 the uk government backflipped and joined the band for their 5g equipment the reason this is an important moment is because some will say this is a moment where the uk is asserting itself as an agile independent political and economic power others will say they're being a bit like a pinball buffeted between the big powers the us and china which are engaged as frankly in a full-scale economic cold war and the uk is caught in the crossfire india would soon join following their northern border conflict with china france also recently stated that they would favor european companies for their 5g network in february of 2020 things escalated again the us department of justice charged huawei with racketeering and conspiring to steal trade secrets from six us companies there was some precedent though prior to this in 2014 huawei was accused of various instances of intellectual property theft against parties such as cisco systems and t-mobile us a t-mobile lawsuit claimed that two huawei usa employees spied on a smartphone testing robot in a lab on a visit to the lab the employees photographed the robot and stole one of its fingertips huawei did admit wrongdoing by the two huawei usa employees and fired them the most brutal part of the ban for huawei was the restrictions on business partners essentially american companies must stop supplying huawei with key components and technologies some of these entities include google arm the taiwanese chipset maker tsmc and mediatek so what does this mean well google has to drop support for huawei phones no google maps gmail or any google apps unfortunately for huawei no google apps means that it's going to be very unattractive to international buyers how important do you think things like google maps youtube all those applications are and they're very very important to be able to have access to them on your phone on the move so if they didn't offer that it would put me off using the phone completely designs from the company arm are used in huawei chips and tsmc manufactures the chips both are not us companies but the us has pressured them to stop support and stop manufacturing in september of 2020 huawei lost access to samsung and lg suppliers because the display driver ship had us technology samsung ram is even off the table it's estimated that huawei would lose 30 billion in revenue in the next two years following june 2019 [Music] so what are they going to do in the consumer market huawei is going to create their own app store and entire operating system they actually already have and it's called harmony os it can run on anything from cars and watches to smartphones and tvs the software will be running on huawei smartphones in december of 2020. interestingly the software can share resources from connected devices for example displaying an image and sound through a huawei tv while using the camera and microphone of a huawei phone they also plan to attract developers by bringing on board and promoting regional app makers that would otherwise have to fight to get market share in a flooded market harmony os is expected to run some android apps according to huawei their os is more flexible than android and 60 faster they claim that one line of harmony os code can do a hundred lines of android code i sat down with someone from huawei to explain more about their new operating system the company also plans to grow out a more robust network of partnerships around the world countries like japan and russia they're also currently working out a deal with qualcomm though r d may be focused towards local chinese chip manufacturing technology despite the sanctions huawei has launched the ninuan project and has struck new chip supply deals [Music] okay so we're almost at the end of the video but let's try and distill this from both points of view from america's point of view the general view is that china has their fingertips deep into huawei and that having any huawei technology in the nation is a big risk to national security not to mention the risk of having ips stolen for america it's mainly a question of trust china's rise and the geopolitical landscape of u.s china relations over the past decade may contribute to this view we convinced many countries not to use huawei because we think it's an unsafe security risk it's a big security risk we cannot ensure the defense of the west if our allies grow dependent on the east for the benefit of a few corporations you cannot sell the privacy of the the people of your country down the river from huawei's point of view i spoke to some people within huawei and in their view the real threat is the prison project started in 2007 the prison project was implemented by the us government to collect internet communications from companies that now include google facebook apple and microsoft [Music] huawei still asserts that there's been no evidence of spying in over 170 countries despite many the general view from huawei is that it's being used as a pawn to put pressure on china management in huawei claims that the us government persecutes it because huawei's expansion can affect american business interests attorney general william barr has been quoted as saying that the us needs to ban huawei to maintain its tech dominance it's all a big ploy to keep the rising china at bay to them it all seems unfair and unwarranted over the past century which countries and companies have made the us scare the us hasn't been scared of anyone or anything though for such a powerful country to be scared of a small company like us some other countries are saying your products are so good that the us government is scared we won't test your products we'll buy them directly that's why some deep pocketed countries with rich oil reserves are buying from us they are buying our products in large quantities as the us government is advertising for us in this there's going to be some unintended consequences as huawei breaks up from its u.s suppliers the suppliers will lose money in 2018 u.s companies earned around 11 billion dollars from huawei in addition 5g systems may end up being more expensive and ripping out existing huawei systems will cost money in the uk this is set to cost 7 billion pounds in addition america may be seen as a less secure place to do business than it previously was they had a virtually untarnished record of free trade in general any company that wanted to do trade in america could along with the more recent tick tock ban this pristine image is beginning to be altered even the risk fire foundation the company that provides open source software standards for the chips that power smartphones has moved from the us to switzerland due to concerns about stricter u.s regulation this all isn't to mention further escalation china may retaliate by stopping american companies from doing business with them so in the end who wins so far it seems like no one huawei will be battered from this experience but if they can achieve more robust partnerships they'll survive the us may have lost some credibility with their european allies and may be perceived as a less stable place for companies to invest but back to huawei the main issue for them is trust and that's a question of human psychology something that's becoming a little unpredictable in modern times though when you really do take this entire situation as a whole the real winner might be companies like samsung they don't really have any tyres to either side and may see some benefit in the end only time will tell so what do you guys think which side do you think is right do you take huawei side and think the us is scared of china rising or do you take the us aside and think that huawei is a front for china spying let me know in the comment section below in next week's episode we'll be taking a look at apple's new m1 chip and what this means for the bigger picture of the computing industry as a whole as it turns out this might not just be more marketing hype from apple and they could be on track to doing something special anyway that's about it from me thanks for watching don't forget to follow me on instagram and twitter and as a side point the standard cold fusion merch is still available if you want to grab it my name is dagogo and you've been watching cold fusion [Music] cheers [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: ColdFusion

Views: 367,917

Rating: 4.8163753 out of 5

Keywords: Coldfusion, TV, Dagogo, Altraide, Technology, Apple, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Tesla

Id: HExhxPDOewE

Length: 18min 14sec (1094 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020

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[u/Over_Nuclear]

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