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Government Businesses China Software The Almighty Buck United States Technology

Senate Votes To Reinstate ZTE Ban That's Nearly Shut Down the Company (theverge.com) 161

Posted by BeauHD from the back-and-forth dept.
The U.S. Senate has voted to reinstate a ban on ZTE that prevents the Chinese telecom company from buying U.S. components and using U.S. software. As The Verge notes, "it's still not clear if the reversal will make it into law: it has to clear a conference with the House, and then avoid a veto from President Trump, who advocated for cutting a deal that would lift the ban." From the report: ZTE was hit with the trade ban by the U.S. Commerce Department in April after failing to following through with a punishment for violating sanctions on Iran and North Korea. That ban essentially shut down ZTE, which relies on U.S. parts like Qualcomm processors. Shortly thereafter, Trump said he would cut a deal to revive the company, and a deal was reached -- with additional penalties that the department said were uniquely stringent -- earlier this month.

But senators on both sides of the aisle immediately threatened to stop the deal and reinstate the ban, citing ZTE as a national security risk. And ultimately, a bipartisan group worked to get legislation introduced. The Senate voted 85 to 10 in support of reinstating the ban. It was included as an amendment on the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass piece of legislation that has already moved through the House.
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Senate Votes To Reinstate ZTE Ban That's Nearly Shut Down the Company More

Senate Votes To Reinstate ZTE Ban That's Nearly Shut Down the Company

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  • How dare they? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Monday June 18, 2018 @08:48PM (#56806844)
    Obey the President. Anything but total fealty is treason.

    • Re:How dare they? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday June 18, 2018 @11:29PM (#56807378)

      Obey the President. Anything but total fealty is treason.

      Can't wait to hear from Peter Navarro [thehill.com] about the "special place in hell" for Senators that go against President Donald J. Trump.
      [ I imagine they will find Justin Trudeau to be very polite company ... :-) ]

      I'm getting out my popcorn popper ...

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 )

        Obey the President. Anything but total fealty is treason.

        Can't wait to hear from Peter Navarro [thehill.com] about the "special place in hell" for Senators that go against President Donald J. Trump. [ I imagine they will find Justin Trudeau to be very polite company ... :-) ]

        I'm getting out my popcorn popper ...

        Speaking of special places in hell, the Trumpvilles of little children separated from their parents are showing a rather disturbing side of the Republican party.

        Someone did ask a rather troubling question though - where are the infants and little girls in these Trumpvilles? They were taken away from their parents, but are nowhere to be found.

        • It's what happens when you don't read history. Somehow there's this collective amnesia over what we did during WW2 to people we called our citizens. This feels historically significant.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:How dare they? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:27AM (#56808910)

        They also elect congress to do a job - that job being setting the rules of government that the other branches have to obey. With an 85-10 vote we're not talking party politics, we're talking Congress doing it's F'ing job and preventing the president from undermining the rule of law to line his own pockets.

        • I agree with the sentiment, but he won't care because Ivanka's trademark was already granted. He'll fire back only if they revoke it.

          • We'll see. The problem with that strategy is that it reduces the value of future favors, and thus the size of future bribes.

            On the other hand, Trump is so erratic that a "one time action" may be the only thing anyone ever bribes him for anyway.

        • Why start now?

          • Perhaps because there's a historically unsubtle con man in the White House, and his excess is riling up the populace? He's generating a lot of backlash, in both parties, and politics-as-usual is looking far less reliable than usual in the upcoming elections.

            • My point exactly, maybe I was too subtle.

              • Maybe so. We're living in unsubtle times.

                Kind of refreshing in a tragic sort of way - the status quo has been upset, and the new path is bad enough that it seems most people can agree that it's even worse. It offers the most realistic possibility of productive change that I've ever seen.

      • Re:How dare they? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @08:27AM (#56808914) Homepage Journal

        You ever hear of checks and balances? This is one of those rare cases of government working correctly as designed. It's not democracy if the president can unilaterally do whatever he likes.

      • Remember that you support this 110% when a congress kneecaps the next democratic president, after all "what is good for the goose".

        Here's your Whoosh!

        Whoosh!

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by cyberchondriac ( 456626 )

        Yup.. if you flip this around to say, 2011, there'd be cries of "Obstructionism!" But now the popular rallying cry is, "Resist!".
        Because that's helpful!

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by rsborg ( 111459 )

        > Remember that you support this 110% when a congress kneecaps the next democratic president, after all "what is good for the goose".

        I remember 2009 - 2016 very well. You know where the Senate failed to do it's duty to even hold hearings for approval of judiciary and executive appointments (through use of the silent filibuster). And the House voting for the 53rd time to repeal the ACA.

        So now the shoe's on the other foot. Except there's really no defending DJT's craziness in this or the random tariffs.

      • I don't think anyone need to talk about kneecaps here.

        I'm generally a Trump supporter, but I think he's wrong here. Reasonable people should be able to disagree with individual policies of a specific president without getting excoriated for it.

        I know what's the chances of that now days?

        This pretty much has bipartisan support and is a good idea. If Trump vetoes it he's likely to lose on override. Hopefully he'll just sign it if it passes both houses.

      • I will indeed remember this just as surely as I remember all the times Congress ceded more power to the Executive just because they were controlled by the same party.

        I said it when Clinton was in office and also when Bush and Obama were in office. You may want the President to have more power, but you're going to regret it when the other party is in the White House.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by cyberchondriac ( 456626 )

      But... Obama has already left office. Why are you still repeating your mantra?

      • But... Obama has already left office. Why are you still repeating your mantra?

        As Mrs Clinton said, "But my emails!"

  • Keeping companies in the United States (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Qualcomm sold the equipment to ZTE. They know punishing Qualcomm will give them thought of leaving. Punishing a buyer would be a risk to their shareholders. I bet right now, someone at Qualcomm is drawing up what it would take to leave the United States influence.

    • I doubt that Qualcomm could get away from US influence. Even if they moved out of the US they would want devices with their products to be able to be imported into the US. The only reason why a Chinese company, ZTE, paid any attention at all to a US law and penalties about selling devices to Iran and North Korea was because they needed supplies they could only get from the US. If they could have found a non-American supplier I'm sure that they would have gladly told the US to get lost and given up the US ma

    • The only places on the globe the USA can't reach into with impunity are Russia and China. And they're both worse. Besides the land of brexit, that is.

    • Qualcomm sold legally to ZTE. There was no problem with selling parts to ZTE before the sanctions.

      ZTE broke the law by selling to Iran and North Korea. While the sanctions are in place, Qualcomm cannot sell to ZTE.

      Why does Trump about jobs at a Chinese company that broke the law? There is some speculation [vox.com] of bribery, but there has been no investigation thus far.

  • Override the veto (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday June 18, 2018 @09:33PM (#56806994)
    unless they do that then this is just political posturing so that reps in vulnerable districts don't take flak for saving Chinese jobs while American ones go overseas.

    • Re:Override the veto (Score:5, Informative)

      by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @01:36AM (#56807706)

      85-10 is pretty squarely in the "override veto" territory.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        It sounds like it was 85-10 to add it to the defense bill. How many of those senators voted to add it to the bill, but have no intent to vote on the actual bill itself? Maybe they think it will kill the bill?

        • It sounds like it was 85-10 to add it to the defense bill. How many of those senators voted to add it to the bill, but have no intent to vote on the actual bill itself? Maybe they think it will kill the bill?

          I read somewhere that the defense bill was considered a “must pass” bill. Therefore, I would assume that all 100 senators would be sure to vote on it and, unless something changes, would be in favor of it.

          Of course, in politics, such assumptions can be dangerous.

        • How many of those senators voted to add it to the bill, but have no intent to vote on the actual bill itself?

          Maybe 2 won't vote for the bill. They added it to "Fund the US Military, the Bill". It's like 40% of the US budget, agreed to and everything. It pretty much has to pass, like the debt ceiling, or the economy/country suffers a catastrophy.

      • 85-10 is pretty squarely in the "override veto" territory.

        IIRC there has to be a super majority in both houses for it to be veto proof.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Which is extremely short sighted because if ZTE dies then a lot of American jobs will be killed off too. China will retaliate, just like it is retaliating against the tariffs, just like every other country hit with them does.

      No one wins trade wars, one side just loses more slowly.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's more to do with the reprisal from China rather than US jobs directly depending on ZTE. It also harms US companies by creating a greater incentive to replace their products for security reasons.

  • Here's what would work (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Patent Lover ( 779809 ) on Monday June 18, 2018 @10:19PM (#56807130)

    I think our dear orange leader should just switch his phone over to a ZTE to prove how great they are. Win win.

    • It's an iPhone currently?

      Slashdot had a previous story on the hardened Galaxy S4 that Obama was using, a collaboration between Samsung and the 3 letter agencies.

      So I'm sure intelligence would prefer that Donald use a locked-down Android device. If ZTE want to restore trust in the US market, cosying up to the feds would be a start.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dwater ( 72834 )

      The Axon 7 was a pretty nice phone (big focus on audio with front-facing speakers), and quite popular in the US too. I have no stats, but my impression was that the US was ZTE's primary market. There was some in Europe, but in the UK we only got the Axon 7 mini. It was available in China a few years ago, but ZTE hasn't had any retail presence in China for a couple of years - nothing at all from them in any of the many phone markets. Maybe there's something online.

      I was waiting for the Axon 8...which didn't

  • If I were Trump I would just veto the bill, just to teach congres to stop this shitty sideloading of bills. There are no "must-pass" laws.

  • It's just Genie Bottle Stuffing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NReitzel ( 77941 ) on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @03:28AM (#56808000) Homepage

    Where did the idea come from that preventing someone from "using 'our' software" was a thing that was even possible?

    In his book "Dark Sun" Richard Rhodes quotes I. V. Kurchatov as saying "The most important thing that we learned from the Americans was that the atomic bomb was possible."

    Knowledge is a highly infectious virus, and no amount of governmental attempts at control will do more than delay things. It's nice that companies want to make a fortune off a piece of software, especially a piece of software that was developed in thousands of different places for tens of thousands of different purposes. The long protracted and in my opinion idiotic SCO lawsuits should have demonstrated once and for all that patenting a general idea is a colossal waste of time.

    In the 1980's, half a dozen small companies and more than a few individuals spent a year or two developing Unix clones from general principles. Western Electric considered it "their baby" and went to great lengths to protect it. Their corporate mind simply ignored the fact that the first versions of Unix were written by one person in a closet, and what one person was able to do, other people could - and did - also do.

    Trying to stop the Chinese or the Russians from getting "our software" is just going to cause them to find some smartass programmer to do it all over again. Worse, such attempts will mean that a lot of similar and not-very-compatible versions will now circulate around and inevitably the consumer will pay in the end when stuff doesn't work quite the way they thought is should.

    Somebody tell the Senate to stop tilting at windmills and worry about real problems instead of trying to prop up corporate moguls with a business plan that boils down to selling old products to deprived consumers for all eternity.

  • Things to consider...

    1) How hard is it for Iran or N. Korea to send someone to buy some ZTE phones. Doh?

    "the ban prevents ZTE from using common Qualcomm processors, and certified Android devices with Google Mobile Services software."

    Seriously, there are nearly 50 millions smartphones in Iran. NOTHING about this jeopardizes national security.

    2) Even if they gave software code. I mean, come on, why would the likes of N. Korea with their super (if you believe the BS U.S. propaganda) programmers even need such.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's not a question of national security; the sanctions against Iran are economic. If you as a company don't honor the sanctions, you're economically supporting someone the US wants economically punished. Therefore the US will extend those economic punishments to your company as well, if they have reason to take notice of your company. Someone selling them a few handsets isn't going to draw ire. Someone selling hundreds of thousands of handsets will.

      Simply put, big manufacturers like LTE have to decide who

  • Does anybody have a ZTE device they can recommended that works with an open source Android and LTE band 13? 4GB of RAM and a decent screen would be nice. The lack of NSA implants will make up for a few shortfalls.

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