The IT Nerd

This seems strange, but perhaps not surprising given how US President Donald Trump folded up like a cheap suit to the Chinese during the G20 Summit. A report from Reuters says the following:

The U.S. may approve licenses for companies to re-start new sales to Huawei in as little as two weeks, according to a senior U.S. official, in a sign President Donald Trump’s recent effort to ease restrictions on the Chinese company could move forward quickly.

Well, that’s great if you’re Huawei and you should be happy about that…. Or perhaps not:

A Huawei spokesman said “the Entity list restrictions should be removed altogether, rather than have temporary licenses applied for US vendors. Huawei has been found guilty of no relevant wrongdoing and represents no cybersecurity risk to any country so the restrictions are unmerited.”

So to be honest, I don’t know how to read this. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Boy is this situation weird.

Over the weekend, I wrote about the fact that President Trump folded up like a cheap suit and said that the ban on everybody’s favorite telco gear maker Huawei would be lifted. But that seems to be in doubt now based on this report from Reuters which cites sources within the DOC who say staff members have been told by leadership that US companies are still prohibited from selling stuff to Huawei:

In an email to enforcement staff on Monday that was seen by Reuters, John Sonderman, Deputy Director of the Office of Export Enforcement, in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), sought to clarify how agents should approach license requests by firms seeking approval to sell to Huawei.

All such applications should be considered on merit and flagged with language noting that “This party is on the Entity List. Evaluate the associated license review policy under part 744,” he wrote, citing regulations that include the Entity List and the “presumption of denial” licensing policy that is applied to blacklisted companies.

He added that any further guidance from BIS should also be taken into account when evaluating Huawei-related license applications.

So you have to wonder if Trump was just making stuff up as he is known to do, or he doesn’t know how things work in Washington, or maybe both at the same time. All to placate the Chinese who he crossed paths with at the G20 summit. Whatever the deal is, this is clearly a grade A gong show with no clear path to resolution or clarity.

It appears that President Donald Trump who was talking a good game about going after Huawei has appeared to cave “big league” to the Chinese at the G20 summit. Here’s the details:

US President Donald Trump has appeared to soften his tone on Chinese communications giant Huawei, suggesting that he would allow the company to once again purchase U.S. technology. Speaking at a press conference in Osaka, Saturday, Trump said that the U.S. sells a “tremendous amount of product” to Huawei. “That’s okay, we will keep selling that product,” said Trump. “The (U.S.) companies were not exactly happy that they couldn’t sell.”

Now it isn’t a lifting of the ban that Trump signed, but it really is going to throw Huawei a lifeline. But more importantly, Trump has really made himself look stupid in his rather desperate attempt to get some sort of trade deal with China which is what I think this is all about. He’s effectively taken Huawei from being the devil incarnate to being perfectly fine to do business with. If he walks back all the security claims too, then his credibility which is already in shambles, will take a hit that he will not recover from with just a year to go before a presidential election.

In an ironic twist, telco gear made by China’s Huawei is far more likely to contain flaws that could be leveraged by hackers for malicious use than equipment from rival companies, according to new research by cybersecurity experts that top U.S. officials said appeared credible.

Over half of the nearly 10,000 firmware images encoded into more than 500 variations of enterprise network-equipment devices tested by the researchers contained at least one such exploitable vulnerability, the researchers found. Firmware is the software that powers the hardware components of a computer. The tests were compiled in a new report that has been submitted in recent weeks to senior officials in multiple government agencies in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as to lawmakers. The report is notable both for its findings and because it is circulating widely among Trump administration officials who said it further validated their policy decisions toward Huawei.

“This report supports our assessment that since 2009, Huawei has maintained covert access to some of the systems it has installed for international customers,” said a White House official who reviewed the findings. “Huawei does not disclose this covert access to customers nor local governments. This covert access enables Huawei to record information and modify databases on those local systems.” The report, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, was prepared by Finite State, a Columbus, Ohio-based cybersecurity firm.

If you buy into this report, you don’t have to worry about getting pwned by Huawei if you use their gear. Instead, the pwnage will come from others and the Huawei gear is just the vehicle for the pwnage. Lovely. Assuming that this is true. We’ll have to see if this report is fact of fiction and hopefully the clarity will come via a third party that can be trusted.

Huawei who revealed a foldable smartphone at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year has now decided to put the product on pause. Here’s the reason that was given via a Huawei spokesperson to CNBC:

We don’t want to launch a product to destroy our reputation

Clearly that’s a not so subtle reference to Samsung who’s Galaxy Fold product has become an bit of a joke at this point because of the screen issues that were highlighted by reviewers before the product actually shipped. Clearly Huawei, who has 99 problems at the moment, doesn’t want a sub par foldable smartphone to be one of them. And a tip of the hat to them for their expert trolling of Samsung. Well played.

Could Huawei be on the verge of becoming a patent troll? That was my first thought when I read this Reuters report which details that the troubled Chinese telcom gear maker wants (insert Dr. Evil voice and place your pinky finger next to your mouth) $1 Billion dollars from American telco Verizon for them using 238 of Huawei’s patents without compensation:

Verizon should pay to “solve the patent licensing issue,” a Huawei intellectual property licensing executive wrote in February, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier. The patents cover network equipment for more than 20 of the company’s vendors including major U.S. tech firms but those vendors would indemnify Verizon, the person said. Some of those firms have been approached directly by Huawei, the person said.

The patents in question range from core network equipment, wireline infrastructure to internet-of-things technology, the Journal reported. The licensing fees for the more than 230 patents sought is more than $1 billion, the person said.

One thing to note here is that while Verizon doesn’t directly purchase equipment from Huawei, it relies on other vendors using the technology that Huawei is going after them over. If this latest move by Huawei spreads from Verizon to other telcos, I think it would be safe to assume that the words “Patent” and “troll” will be added to the things that Huawei is known for.

We now have the first sign of trouble at Huawei because of the executive order that has effectively banned the company. Huawei has scrapped a product launch for the first time since the executive order was signed:

Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer division, told CNBC that the firm had formally planned to launch a new product in its Matebook series without giving a date, but it had been indefinitely put on hold. He said that being on the U.S. Entity List, which restricts American companies from selling products to Huawei, had caused the cancellation. “We cannot supply the PC,” Yu said, adding that the situation is “unfortunate.” When asked if the laptop could be launched at a later date, Yu said it “depends on how long the Entity List will be there.” He acknowledged that, if Huawei is on the blacklist for a long time, the laptop will not be able to be launched.

You now have to wonder how many more products will face a similar fate. And how long Huawei can take hits like this before they finally tap out. I would suggest that you stay tuned as things are about to get interesting.