Highly recommend House of Huawei by Eva Dou, I didn’t know much about the history or background of this monolithic and demonized company so I picked it up and I have to say I found it fascinating.
If you’re interested in recent history or telecommunication development over the last 50 years it’s a great read. It’s not a technical deep dive nor a political hit piece, the author wrote for the Washington Post and it really reads like a long and in-depth article. Which is actually nice despite sometimes leaving me wanting for more, definitely made it a quick read.
Meta note: FTM (Follow The Money) is a small Dutch investigative journalism outfit which has exposed a far amount of bad shit in the Netherlands, and probably had the biggest per-staffer impact of any publication here (if you could somehow quantify that).
I wasn't actually aware they had an English-language .eu version but great for them! I found their "about us" page to be a bit obtuse (no names, no locations, making it very similar to the "about" pages of fake news sites and extreme-left/right associated magazines), so figured it might be nice to add this bit of context: In NL, FTM is generally considered a respected news organization and they're not particularly associated with any political angle.
Basically how it goes in NL is:
- FTM writes something
- A few nerds pick it up
- A day later, bigger news sites write the same story worse, sometimes even crediting FTM
- Scandal ensues
Corruption at European parliament should be highly and serverly punished by Enforced Works for the rest of their life with abduction of all there good of all their family that have get ane Euro from corruption.
Surely you joke about avoiding corruption within the EU. Ursula von der Leyen negotiated privately with CEO's of vaccine companies, while her husband worked for a US supplier of said vaccine companies and her SMS data disappeared.
The current European Council president, took such a job directly after being forced to resign as Portuguese prime minister due a corruption scandal, where the Portuguese police found thousands of Euros in hard cash in the office of his assistants.
Even more ironic, Portugal got a new prime minister, who two days ago, had to resign due to a....yes...new corruption scandal. So I expect him to get an EU job also soon.
Yes. But it's a lost cause. It's structural, since EU jobs are compensation roles for failed politicians. If you ever been into inside politics as more than just an elector, you will know this is how lists pre-election are built.
My fear is that similar dynamics were at play when the AI act was shaped and approved, with the three European biggest countries unhappy of the content of the act (France, Italy, Germany).
> Are you sure? Publically criticize the American government, then do the same with the Chinese government. Now, did your opinion change?
Personally I'm less bothered by China. I need to do business in the US, I don't need to do business in China. The US government has a lot of leverage to fuck up my life, I would not care about the reach of the Chinese.
I would rather someone sitting in China wants to persecute me than someone in my own country / town / neighbourhood / home - who can actually persecute me.
Likewise if I lived in China, and I had to pick between being spied on by my state or someone half way around the world - I would welcome the CIA to listen in all day long.
The thought police already arrived, see Columbia grant cancellations and Mahmoud Khalil [1].
[1] "Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” said the official." https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ice-detention-of-a-columbia-stud...
I don't think absolutes make too much sense. When in China I use US hardware. When I'm in the US I use Chinese hardware. Europe is much more closely aligned with the US than China, so I'd generally use Chinese hardware there as well.
China doesn't give a damn if I criticize them from the EU. Even our politicians are free to criticize them, in contrast to US leaders/oligarchs especially nowadays.
You're never going to get rid of bribery and corruption entirely, unfortunately. Greed is way too strong a motivator. Hopefully people actually getting arrested and charged for it makes people think twice though.
Greed is NOT the ultimate problem. With over 21 trillion undocumented adjustments in US GOV. It is too much for just greed. People who are taking that much money is about control.
Humans just love control and predict future and not good at uncertainty that's how we ended up here.
I bet you need lesson on corruption from EU court then, for exampl.
Von der Leyen Commission loses COVID vaccine transparency case ahead of crucial vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMub-tzrKmk
I'm very aware of the corruption in the EU, corruption will always happen because greed will always happen, the questions are: what is the level and degree of said corruption? What do institutions do to fight it?
Living in this black-and-white world where you expect absolutely no corruption is not helpful, von der Leyen has plenty to answer on the Pfizer case and as far as I know the case is still being looked upon so institutions are working, they might not be as fast as we would like to see a conclusion but that's how it works as of now.
I'd suggest you to play less into the shitstorming, it just creates even poorer discourse on the internet, the effects of such poor discourse can be seen on the political environment of the USA at the moment. I believe we can all agree that's not a path we would like to go to.
A major problem in EU is that it is at least in practice very opaque. EU politics are not followed by the media or the citizens, and it is surrounded by a gigantic lobbying machine, and run by democratically unaccountable officials.
E.g. US corruption is at least mostly in plain sight, with EU who knows what's going on.
I believe people fundamentally misunderstand what the EU is and how it works.
Here is what I have learned from people who know the system very well and after working with it myself:
- The EU is designed to be influenced and run by lobbies. And it is in the open and assumed.
- The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there, because they know it is joke.
- It used to be that corruption was not a thing in the EU. Just because none of those Commission people would risk their career and benefits, and it was severely punished. So they wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee from you.
Now it does seem things got out of control, at least in the Parliament.
This does not make sense to me. I question how much you have worked for the EU.
1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
2. Being a candidate to run for Member of European Parliament is considered to be available only to the Member of National Parliaments with the most personal votes and/or most influential. It is definitely not a job given to the low-performers, particularly because only a few seats are available per country.
I don't know where you are from, but at least in Slovenia if you see someone running for EU parliament you know he is basically retiring from politics.
EU parliament has no actual power, EU is basically ran by EC and ECB.
There has been plenty of movement between the EU parliament and the national parliament in Finland.
As an institution, the EU parliament has real power. It's just that citizens are not particularly interested in what it does, and the media consequently does not report that much about it.
The core issue is that being a MEP looks like a career dead end to an invididual politician. While national MPs have less power, they enjoy more media attention. And if you are an MP for a major party, you have a real chance of becoming a minister. The same pathway does not work in the EU parliament, because commissioners are nominated by national governments rather than selected from MEPs.
> 1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
The problem is in practice those big law and regulations end up benefiting the biggest actors with "Star Destroyers" type legal departments and lobbying.
I have witnessed it, 10 years ago GDPR pushed most European companies in one of the hyperscaler cloud. Exactly the opposite of what we were naively expecting.
The EU Cyber resilience act is finishing up the job.
Funny how now just because Trump was elected, some European are waking up wondering why they are in this mess and welcome more EU regulation to get them out of there...
In the UK, before we (sadly) left, being an MEP was a bit of a joke, where being an MP was a much bigger deal. Maybe other countries are different, but nobody who wanted to rise through the ranks in the UK would opt to be an MEP over an MP, and I suspect that’s very similar in many other member countries.
> The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there
The European Parliament is not made of countries, nor it is meant to represent national interests.
National governments don't "send their best there", because it is the doing of each party in each nation. Sometimes parties that are represented in the EU Parliament are not represented in a member country's parliament.
Actually my comment was not really negative (apart calling the Parliament a "Joke").
I would invite you to see for yourself because those EU institutions are quite open, you can actually lobby them yourself.
Lobbying by the way is not reserved to corporations, you can and should lobby as an individual/private citizen.
You can send emails to those people they will usually answer you.
In general I'd agree that whataboutism is a logical fallacy, since it is basically a form of ad hominem, but it can also demonstrate that an attack itself is unjustified. For instance imagine if a farm was attacked for having laborers pick fruit for pennies per pound.
If one doesn't know much about the industry that would indeed sound potentially abusive - especially with sufficiently leading framing, yet it's also the global standard. That doesn't mean it's right, but it also means that allegations against one specific entity for such are, at the minimum, misleading.
If you’re interested in recent history or telecommunication development over the last 50 years it’s a great read. It’s not a technical deep dive nor a political hit piece, the author wrote for the Washington Post and it really reads like a long and in-depth article. Which is actually nice despite sometimes leaving me wanting for more, definitely made it a quick read.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/721789/house-of-hua...
Edit: Washington Post, not New York Times
I wasn't actually aware they had an English-language .eu version but great for them! I found their "about us" page to be a bit obtuse (no names, no locations, making it very similar to the "about" pages of fake news sites and extreme-left/right associated magazines), so figured it might be nice to add this bit of context: In NL, FTM is generally considered a respected news organization and they're not particularly associated with any political angle.
Basically how it goes in NL is:
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
The current European Council president, took such a job directly after being forced to resign as Portuguese prime minister due a corruption scandal, where the Portuguese police found thousands of Euros in hard cash in the office of his assistants.
Even more ironic, Portugal got a new prime minister, who two days ago, had to resign due to a....yes...new corruption scandal. So I expect him to get an EU job also soon.
Mine is Zyxel (Taiwan). There are others like Sagemcom (French), Fritzbox (German), not sure if microtik (Latvia) does end user stuff?
Are we clear?
Although I agree that with latest guys it won't be long before they also get a thought police.
Personally I'm less bothered by China. I need to do business in the US, I don't need to do business in China. The US government has a lot of leverage to fuck up my life, I would not care about the reach of the Chinese.
Likewise if I lived in China, and I had to pick between being spied on by my state or someone half way around the world - I would welcome the CIA to listen in all day long.
[1] "Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” said the official." https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ice-detention-of-a-columbia-stud...
And get a tariff raise in response?
Humans just love control and predict future and not good at uncertainty that's how we ended up here.
Will there be issues? Of course, whenever money is involved there are issues but as usual: level and degree matter. It's not binary black-and-white.
Living in this black-and-white world where you expect absolutely no corruption is not helpful, von der Leyen has plenty to answer on the Pfizer case and as far as I know the case is still being looked upon so institutions are working, they might not be as fast as we would like to see a conclusion but that's how it works as of now.
I'd suggest you to play less into the shitstorming, it just creates even poorer discourse on the internet, the effects of such poor discourse can be seen on the political environment of the USA at the moment. I believe we can all agree that's not a path we would like to go to.
E.g. US corruption is at least mostly in plain sight, with EU who knows what's going on.
Here is what I have learned from people who know the system very well and after working with it myself:
- The EU is designed to be influenced and run by lobbies. And it is in the open and assumed.
- The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there, because they know it is joke.
- It used to be that corruption was not a thing in the EU. Just because none of those Commission people would risk their career and benefits, and it was severely punished. So they wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee from you.
Now it does seem things got out of control, at least in the Parliament.
1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
2. Being a candidate to run for Member of European Parliament is considered to be available only to the Member of National Parliaments with the most personal votes and/or most influential. It is definitely not a job given to the low-performers, particularly because only a few seats are available per country.
EU parliament has no actual power, EU is basically ran by EC and ECB.
As an institution, the EU parliament has real power. It's just that citizens are not particularly interested in what it does, and the media consequently does not report that much about it.
The core issue is that being a MEP looks like a career dead end to an invididual politician. While national MPs have less power, they enjoy more media attention. And if you are an MP for a major party, you have a real chance of becoming a minister. The same pathway does not work in the EU parliament, because commissioners are nominated by national governments rather than selected from MEPs.
The problem is in practice those big law and regulations end up benefiting the biggest actors with "Star Destroyers" type legal departments and lobbying.
I have witnessed it, 10 years ago GDPR pushed most European companies in one of the hyperscaler cloud. Exactly the opposite of what we were naively expecting. The EU Cyber resilience act is finishing up the job.
Funny how now just because Trump was elected, some European are waking up wondering why they are in this mess and welcome more EU regulation to get them out of there...
The European Parliament is not made of countries, nor it is meant to represent national interests. National governments don't "send their best there", because it is the doing of each party in each nation. Sometimes parties that are represented in the EU Parliament are not represented in a member country's parliament.
You can see how threatened they must feel by the amount of trolling they do
I would invite you to see for yourself because those EU institutions are quite open, you can actually lobby them yourself.
Lobbying by the way is not reserved to corporations, you can and should lobby as an individual/private citizen. You can send emails to those people they will usually answer you.
I also agree with you that whataboutism posters come out in droves whenever there is negative-sentiment news about a non-Western aligned entity.
If one doesn't know much about the industry that would indeed sound potentially abusive - especially with sufficiently leading framing, yet it's also the global standard. That doesn't mean it's right, but it also means that allegations against one specific entity for such are, at the minimum, misleading.