Teardown of Huawei Flagship Phone Finds US Parts Despite Blacklisting (arstechnica.com) 31
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Huawei is still using components made by U.S. companies in its newest flagship smartphone, a Financial Times teardown has found, despite the U.S. all but blacklisting the Chinese telecoms equipment manufacturer. The teardown was done by XYZone, a Shenzhen-based company that disassembles smartphones and identifies the suppliers of their components. The biggest surprise was that some parts from U.S. companies were still ending up in the newest Huawei smartphone, despite the U.S. all but banning its companies from selling to the Chinese tech company.
The P40's radio-frequency front-end modules were, according to XYZone's teardown analysis, produced by Qualcomm, Skyworks, and Qorvo, three U.S. chip companies. RF front-end modules are critical parts of the phone that are attached to the antennas and required to make calls and connect to the Internet. The Qualcomm component is covered by a license from the U.S. Commerce Department, according to a person familiar with the company. [...] The "Entity List" designation means that U.S. companies have to apply for a license to export any U.S.-origin technologies to Huawei. The U.S. government has granted a "temporary general license" to its companies, allowing them to sell to Huawei to service existing products -- helping clients such as telecoms carriers that may need to replace parts of their wireless equipment. But the general license does not cover sales for the purpose of making new products, such as the P40 smartphone. For that, companies must seek individual licenses, and the Department of Commerce has not said which ones it has granted them to. A spokesperson for Huawei said the company has "always complied with any export control regulations of various countries, including the United States" and that "all the product materials are obtained legally from our global partners, and we insist on working with our partners to provide consumers with high quality products and services."
Also missing from the P40 are parts from U.S. chipmaker Micron. "Micron made the storage devices called NAND flash memory chips for some batches of last year's P30 smartphone, and South Korea's Samsung made the same chips for other batches," reports Ars. "The FT's copy of this year's P40 Pro appears to have only Samsung NAND flash memory chips."
The P40's radio-frequency front-end modules were, according to XYZone's teardown analysis, produced by Qualcomm, Skyworks, and Qorvo, three U.S. chip companies. RF front-end modules are critical parts of the phone that are attached to the antennas and required to make calls and connect to the Internet. The Qualcomm component is covered by a license from the U.S. Commerce Department, according to a person familiar with the company. [...] The "Entity List" designation means that U.S. companies have to apply for a license to export any U.S.-origin technologies to Huawei. The U.S. government has granted a "temporary general license" to its companies, allowing them to sell to Huawei to service existing products -- helping clients such as telecoms carriers that may need to replace parts of their wireless equipment. But the general license does not cover sales for the purpose of making new products, such as the P40 smartphone. For that, companies must seek individual licenses, and the Department of Commerce has not said which ones it has granted them to. A spokesperson for Huawei said the company has "always complied with any export control regulations of various countries, including the United States" and that "all the product materials are obtained legally from our global partners, and we insist on working with our partners to provide consumers with high quality products and services."
Also missing from the P40 are parts from U.S. chipmaker Micron. "Micron made the storage devices called NAND flash memory chips for some batches of last year's P30 smartphone, and South Korea's Samsung made the same chips for other batches," reports Ars. "The FT's copy of this year's P40 Pro appears to have only Samsung NAND flash memory chips."
China will depend on any US made parts (Score:2)
I can see why Xi Jinping would want to do that.
Back from the virus, baby! (Score:2)
There's a thriving gray market again. Things must be on the mend over there.
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The US intelligence agency's need a few US manufactured components to make their way into the supply chain. They need a way of injecting their own malware into Chinese products. There is precedence of US intelligence agencies allowing it's adversaries to steal certain pieces of technology that are already compromised. In the 80's Russia was allowed to steal some cutting edge PLC technology. Russia installed the stolen tech in one of their Siberian pipeline pumping stations. A few weeks later a large explosi
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Ah yes, imaginary undiscoverable remotely controlled detonators working over thousands of miles before the 90ies.
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That Siberian pipeline explosion is a hoax.
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The Heawei threat is that they're going to break crypto'ed conversations, or send data they shouldn't back to China. They deny all of it, but that's the current American fear, so... we've always been at war with China, we're not at war with Europe.
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"we've always been at war with China"
No we haven't. China is one of the few countries the US has never invaded. The US military presence in Asia is there to fulfill it's treaty obligations with it's allies in the region.
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US company brand != US technology (Score:3, Informative)
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It's also true that just because it has a certain label doesn't mean it's a genuine part. I used to work for a company that designed silicon and their designs were being delidded, reverse engineered, and copied... More than twenty years ago. The technology of copying has only improved since.
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their designs were being delidded, reverse engineered, and copied...
Sometimes it is even simpler than that: The contracted fab just runs some overage and sells it out the side door.
wishful thinking (Score:1)
Perhaps this is a reminder that the "I" in "IP" stands for "imaginary"...
Stockpiled Parts (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe it's because Huawei had a 12 month stockpile of parts [nikkei.com]?
Re:Stockpiled Parts (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's because Huawei had a 12 month stockpile of parts [nikkei.com]?
The whole world could learn from that right now.
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Indeed. Critically depend on your supply-chain working at all times, be fucked if _anything_ goes wrong...
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Some supply chains don't lend themselves well to having stockpiles - food for instance.
You can't just kill much more than 5000 head of cattle per day and even if you could where would you put the meat?
Technology is probably tricky too. You could stockpile certain components, but will you even need them in 12 months? Might they be outdated and possibly obsolete?
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Some supply chains don't lend themselves well to having stockpiles - food for instance.
Huh? Since when? This is just the first I found with numbers: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/m... [swissinfo.ch]
You cannot stockpile all foods, but stockpiling foods is entirely doable and done in practice.
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Fair enough - you can stock up on some supplies, but at what cost?
I don't think you can just keep producing at the same levels you always do and expect to store it all. And some food is certainly more preservable than others. I was thinking about meat which would have to be frozen.
I am wondering about the people who cut up our meat. Those people work close to each other. If one person in a meat plant gets sick he or she will likely spread it to their co-workers.
Hmm ... (Score:2)
A spokesperson for Huawei said the company has "always complied with any export control regulations of various countries, including the United States" and that "all the product materials are obtained legally from our global partners, ...
Technically, I think is more the responsibility of the U.S. company/ies providing the exported part(s). Either some one/company in the U.S. didn't follow U.S. export control regulations or Huawei got the parts through a foreign intermediary (or U.S. foreign subsidiary) that misrepresented something to the U.S. supplier(s). Huawei is simply buying parts from a vendor. Also, while I don't know about the parts in question and/or any specific restrictions against Huawei, not all products are under export co
U.S. exceptions (Score:4, Informative)
Trump admin also has twice granted exceptions to U.S. companies to resume selling chips to Huawei [wsj.com].
The Trump administration has given permission to some U.S. suppliers to Huawei Technologies Co. to resume shipping to the Chinese telecom giant, easing export restrictions while U.S. negotiators struggle to wrap up the first stage of a trade deal, the Commerce Department said Wednesday.
Commerce officials put Huawei on an export blacklist in May, citing national security concerns. U.S. officials have warned that Huawei products could be used to spy on or disrupt telecommunications networks, which the telecom giant denies.
But President Trump, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29, agreed to ease the blacklisting for cases that didn’t involve national security.
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said late Tuesday on Fox Business Network that his agency had received nearly 300 requests for exemptions, and that he had begun approving some of those license applications.
“We’ve now been starting to send out the 20-day intent-to-deny letters and some approvals,” he said.
A Commerce spokesperson said Wednesday that the approved licenses “authorize limited and specific activities which do not pose a significant risk to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
While trade talks have largely avoided security-related matters such as those involving Huawei, the approvals were seen as constructive for U.S. negotiators seeking to remove some obstacles in the way of reaching a “phase one” deal that Mr. Trump outlined last month.
Commerce officials didn’t say how many licenses were approved, denied or still awaited clearance by its own application reviewers or those within the Departments of Defense, State or Energy, which also have a say in approvals. A person familiar with the situation said Wednesday that many applications were still awaiting a decision.
The news brought a sigh of relief to the country’s semiconductor industry, even though some companies had determined in recent months that they could still sell Huawei certain products made outside the U.S. without violating export controls and risking steep fines. U.S. chip makers and other companies sent $11 billion in components to Huawei last year. Some chip makers had cut revenue forecasts after Huawei’s blacklisting.
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You may not have noticed, but Trump isn't exactly the sharpest crayon in the box.
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Basically it's a blacklist approach to security.
We tried that with crypto in the 1990s.
Companies responded by moving all their crypto R&D outside America.
The same will happen now with semiconductors. America will be seen as an unreliable trade partner, the jobs will move overseas, and America will fall behind in yet another industry.
Years ago there was conjecture about how America would lose its place as the preeminent world power. But no one predicted that we would voluntarily flush all our advantages down the toilet.
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Protecting IP you worked hard for is fine and appropriate.
Trade embargoes don't protect IP. They remove potential profits of existing IP and give both our enemies and allies reasons to work around our IP to reduce their dependence.
What American crypto IP was "protected" in the 1990s?
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This is all to protect the US from Huawei and/or China from supposedly putting in spyware in their 5G hardware that will send all of the encrypted data back to China so that they can steal America's secrets. If the mobile operator's don't recognize all of this extra traffic on their network, or those whom they connect to, then perhaps just maybe they deserve to be hacked.
So far the US hasn't shown the world any proof of the security threat that they are talking about. It's like the WMDs in Iraq. Other count
who cares? (Score:3)
Haven't read the full FTA, but come on, of course they are...
The problem has never been whether parts came from USA or China, that's just politics...
Unless the world is willing to come to an actual discussion, this specific discussion will never come to an end. It's kind of like holding an American manufacturer responsible for using a Chinese part, for a part that isn't made anywhere but china....
Like, seriously, make a Bluetooth radio without that specific required cable that is made only somewhere in china, especially in a world where all other factories are changing to make medical supplies...
At some point we are just feeding a fire for the sake of feeding it...
'... all but black listed != 'black listed' (Score:2)
Right there in the slashdot write-up it says '... all but ...' meaning NOT blacklisted.
So title was absolutely misleading. Nothing to see.