• whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Huawei famously ran an Israel office for a long time, idk about xiaomi but smic usually works in nations they’re sanctioned in through shells like (at least in the past) Israel microwave company.

    The point isn’t to find the one pure company but to recognize the reality of semiconductor manufacturing and development at this moment being insanely integrated across every imaginable border and take a more nuanced and serious view of the impact a chip could have on your life than “chip tied to Israel, chip and stuff it’s in bad”

    That’s not to say your replies could be reasonably distilled down to that mischaracterization, just that I’m hoping people come away thinking they should think of more than weather something has a tie to the bad country.

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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      2 days ago

      But we’re talking about today, not the past. Last I looked, Huawei has no business with Israel right now. China also explicitly told companies to not use US and Israeli tech https://www.reuters.com/world/china/beijing-tells-chinese-firms-stop-using-us-israeli-cybersecurity-software-sources-2026-01-14/

      I think it’s absolutely the point to use tech stacks outside US and Israeli control because these are bad actors, and any technology associated with them cannot be trusted.

      • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        That’s a pretty recent change, but I take your point that chip manufacturing with no ties to Israel may exist.

        To the main point, while it could be a good idea in theory to avoid devices with chips tied to Israel and the us, in practice that would lead people away from iphones and pixels that do best against graphite and cellebrite which would be bad.

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          2 days ago

          I don’t really see a problem with steering people away from iphones, but older pixels with graphineos are probably a safe enough device to own right now.

          • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml
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            2 days ago

            I mean, if your goal is to make people as safe from the police as possible as simply as possible then the cellebrite and graphite leaks would steer you towards the last few generations of pixels and any iphone that can get the latest os.

            That’s not to say graphene isn’t a fantastic choice, I use it daily and it’s secure from law enforcement hardware, just that the leaked capability matrixes consistently indicate that cops can’t break into appropriately secured iphones and specific android phones as well.

            Which is really useful knowledge to have and build your behaviors around that would be completely missed if someone were to base their choice of device around what doesn’t have Israeli connections first.

            • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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              1 day ago

              I mean if you base your choice of device around what doesn’t have Israeli connections first that means you’re not getting a phone built on the US/Israeli supply chain, and these do tend to be more secure. There’s a reason Huawei is banned in the US, and the US has been lobbying all the vassals to stop using Huawei gear. It’s not because they’re afraid of Chinese surveillance, but rather because Huawei doesn’t have American backdoors.

              • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml
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                1 day ago

                From cellebrite’s own documentation (on the first page, of a sales pdf, which was the second or third google result):

                Supported devices include Huawei H1611, Xiaomi Mi 5, ZTE Z832 Sonata 3 and ZTE Z981 ZMax Pro

                I’m, again, not as familiar with huawei and xiaomi product lines and whatnot as I am with the iphones and pixels so I can’t speak to the popularity of specific ones implicated in just that bullet point and the doc I quoted from is at least seven years old, however I do know that many more chinese devices are accessible with these cop metasploit tools.

                The idea that backdoors can be grouped by what nation state intelligence apparatus has control over the manufacturing of the device in question is good reasoning when we have no other information to go off of. In this case though, there is a wealth of information public, leaked and from people who just can’t help but warthunder their classified documents in fights online.

                I would never suggest American/israeli tech power should be accepted as a net positive or reasonable compromise. What I want is for people to critically and carefully consider the devices they trust based on what we know about intelligence apparatuses ability to compromise them as opposed to the fog of information war.

                • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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                  1 day ago

                  These are phones literally from a decade ago. Huawei H1611, Xiaomi Mi 5, and ZTE Z832 Sonata 3 were all released in 2016. This is not a serious argument.

                  The idea that you want to avoid devices from known bad actors shouldn’t be controversial in any way. Devices developed using an independent tech stack will always be inherently safer.

                  • whatiswrongwithyou@lemmy.ml
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                    6 hours ago

                    Apologies for the late reply, sometimes I’m not in a good spot to chase down leaks about cop shit.

                    As of at least 2021 cellebrite claims they have the ability to access xiaomi and huawei devices, listing explicitly the soc and baseband chips used by the very phones you are claiming are safe because of their lack of amerisraieli death pact ties.

                    A famous leak of their support matrix from 2024 confirms this and also explicitly groups android devices by their soc/baseband chips. Reenforcing that the chips ostensibly with no ties to the amerisraeli death cult are not any more secure or private than ones with those ties.

                    The point of those is to quickly draw a line that connects the past to the present. We see the same claims, then the affirmation of those claims reported by a third party.

                    I think in a vacuum, assuming perfectly spherical semiconductor manufacturing industries and leaving software out of the picture, the point you’re trying to make is the most materialist take: you can’t trust the imperialists tech, the masters tools cannot be used to tear down the plantation, etc.

                    In our present day with a hundred years plus of semiconductor manufacturing history encompassing real countries whose attitudes towards one another and development have changed significantly during that span, given reliable information about the explicit capacities western (and lest be serious here, any) le or intelligence apparatus has, the most materialist take is that there’s more to the choice of what device to trust than where the chips come from.

                    To butcher a car metaphor, what you’re saying is similar to people claiming buying and driving a Tesla is better than a BYD because you can’t trust Chinese tech. That idea might be fine (or chauvinist) in a bubble but when we can evaluate the Tesla and BYD for ourselves in a parking lot or on the road we might come away with wildly different ideas.

                    Technology has to be evaluated based on its capabilities and how it’s being used when that’s possible and I would argue it’s extremely possible in the case of security in phones and that if you think you’re gonna be scooped by the cops you need to be on graphene, the latest ios or maybe a pixel with the latest android.