[Cryptography] GHCQ Penetration of Belgacom

[Jerry Leichter]

On Dec 18, 2014, at 1:03 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:
> I would fully support a UN treaty whose signers agree to charge
> at least a 100% tariff on all imports of chips, routers, switches,
> and computers. And probably operating systems too while we're at
> it, even though that's a huge moneymaker for the US.
> 
> It would mean everybody uses mostly domestically produced network
> infrastructure, and thereby remove a huge motive for all
> governments to force manufacturers to produce insecure network
> infrastructure.
What it would actually guarantee is the complete collapse of high tech.  No single country in the world today has the capability to design and build even the components you list.  Nor could they easily gain that capability. And if they did gain the capability, it would be at a much higher cost.  This is most obvious at the bottom:  IC manufacturing facilities cost many billions of dollars, and can only make stuff cheaply if they sell huge volumes.  *Maybe* China's market, on its own, is large enough.  *Maybe* the US market, on its own, is large enough.  There's no chance that any other individual market is close to large enough.

And why are you looking at "countries"?  Should the EU do EU-wide development - or should the French be concerned about using German-developed routers, and vice versa?  Should the Catalonians use their own infrastructure to make sure the Spanish government hasn't compromised it?

This sort of stuff is jingoist nonsense.  You think we can't find ways to compromise Chinese manufacturing?   You think the Chinese can't find ways to compromise ours?
                                                        -- Jerry