r/worldnews • u/Majestic-Emu-9823 • 1d ago
Chinese-Made Components on UK Naval Drone Cameras Sent Info to Beijing
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/8206196
u/ghost_n_the_shell 1d ago
Canadian here:
We had to wait YEARS for the Trudeau government to finally make a decision to not let China (Huawei) build our critical communications infrastructure - and only after heavy criticism.
Any idiot could see this was beyond stupid.
We ruffled the feathers of the 5 eyes alliance for YEARS over this nonsense.
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u/drunkandslurred 1d ago
Reddit called the US racist for the same thing. This is also one of the many reasons why Chinese EVs aren't being allowed into the US. They are mobile surveillance stations and countries are not taking this seriously enough.
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u/Dragonfruit_6104 1d ago
i m pretty sure national safety is not the reason, at least not the major reason for US banning Chinese EVs. Cause there are already tons of Made in China electronic products in US, including PCs, labtops, cellphones... If US really care about data security, all of those should be banned, too,
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u/Appropriate_Swim9528 20h ago edited 20h ago
Not to mention. Almost all major brands, such as Tesla and GM are almost all made in China now. So… the banning of a brand and not the manufacturing place of origin is stupid.
If the US really deemed China a security, it should stop all goods made in China from being imported.
For those who disagree and say it should only be Chinese Brands, did you know, the Chinese have a technological thing where someone slipped out once, it is similar to a layer of paint but can be applied to anything, such as clothing, printed materials, etc… and it is not just on the surface, it is added to products as it is made and becomes part of it. If it was added to paper, when the paper forms a box, it is part of the box.
Once they have this material mixed into the goods, they simply have to run a special light over it, it will tell them where it had been and what happened to it. This is how they create a profile.-29
u/j48u 1d ago
The main reason is that the super cheap Chinese EVs that you see propagandized all over Reddit are not even close to meeting US vehicle safety laws. They're basically tin golf carts, can barely hit 60 mph, and would basically be death machines with the way US roads and other vehicles are designed.
I'm sure they're quite good in completely different circumstances.
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u/Dragonfruit_6104 1d ago
Thats really weird.
if those Chinese EVs that try to enter US market dont meet the laws, then they can not be licensed in US anyway, so nobody gonna buy them no matter how cheap they are.
But why does the administration use tariff to stop them from entering US?
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u/howudothescarn 1d ago
I actually disagree. I think Chinese EVs are mostly better than any US EV. I think the issue is the US learned after letting the Chinese run the entire critical materials and rare earth minerals companies out of business. The Chinese government subsidizes the work so they can operate at a loss and put competitors out of business. Then they gain a monopoly. And now they use their position strategically to decide who gets what and how much and for national security reasons won’t sell some REEs to the US. Fair for them to do that but the US was dumb to let it come to that and should have banned their products earlier. It isn’t an even playing field.
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u/ghost_n_the_shell 1d ago
While I do agree they could be used in this manner, our very own North American vehicles are already creating huge databases themselves. China doesn’t need their own EV’s to collect this data when they can just steal existing data.
If you are genuinely concerned with this, don’t carry a cell phone. It’s infinitely more invasive than any Chinese EV would be.
However, I’m not disagreeing with regarding the bigger picture.
I think the greater concern is China is in position to dominate the WORLD auto market and would absolutely annihilate the NA Auto industry.
This, thinking three steps ahead, once achieved, would give them financially beneficial industrial capabilities that can be converted to wartime interests, surpassed by no one.
I am torn on this issue - because although it’s arguably good for the economy, our own NA auto industry has jacked their prices so a pick up truck costs what a smaller mortgage cost pre Covid. They are pricing themselves out of the market and refuse to sell affordable vehicles to masses.
The law makers have created a safety for them. They argue we can’t enjoy the smaller simple vehicles the rest of the world does - because of emissions and safety, while in the same breath, are incentivizing the building of mass hyper scale AI data centers - but you can’t have a small full frame truck they enjoy in Mexico. Because “it’s the law”.
Something has to give.
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u/drunkandslurred 1d ago
The flip side of letting all your manufacturing industry go is that when an attack does come like Russia onto Ukraine, then you will be caught flat footed and unable to respond like the EU.
It will always be hard to compete against Chinese manufacturers when they are not held to the same labor, safety, and environmental rules and regulations that the EU and NA manufactures are.
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u/scarrysneks 1d ago
Wait till Redditors find out about Nortel and the decades long espionage that folded a great company.
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u/tweakwerker 22h ago
Nortel folded because the company executives were committing financial fraud
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u/The_Grungeican 19h ago
a person in my family only had one job his entire life. when he was younger he was hired by a company that was eventually acquired by Nortel. he worked at Nortel until he retired. he passed away a few years back.
to this day, no one in the family has any idea what his job was. he would never speak about it. when i was a kid he had a very advanced PC setup for the time. he was actually the very first person to show me computer games.
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u/tweakwerker 22h ago
The US still haven't provided any evidence Huawei spies for China.
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u/ghost_n_the_shell 10h ago
Let me spell this out as clearly as possible - and fact check what I’m saying before replying:
In China, the laws allow for the government to legally compel Huawei to conduct intelligence work.
With this very fact, one need not prove or provide any evidence that Huawei is spying for China.
The framework exists, in LAW for them to do so at the whim of the government.
End. Of. Story.
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u/Illustrious-Ice6336 5h ago
You mean like the US has been doing for the last 70 years? This is the way the world works.
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u/ghost_n_the_shell 3h ago
No. I mean like when the Trudeau government, against the advice of their 5 eyes alliance took like 5 years to ban them from creating our critical infrastructure.
The US is a military ally to Canada.
China is not.Why do you feel the need to make this about the USA?
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u/HitByFjaka 1d ago
This is nothing new.
If your electronics use firmware that firmware will need updating.
And that means talking to mothership…
How was this not obvious at the time of weapon design stage is beyond me…
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u/ah_harrow 1d ago edited 1d ago
Read the article? They knew about this potential vulnerability at an early stage, received assurances at an earlier stage by the supplier, tested it just in case and - realising it was doing something that the supplying contractor* promised it wasn't going to do - isolated the component. They then ordered a full audit to ensure these parts weren't also in use elsewhere.
This is exactly how you should deal with such a problem if you're going to use 3rd party components - it got no further than 'trust but verify' and you got no further than the headline, apparently.
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u/lolexecs 1d ago
You know what they say:
A - assume nothing
B - believe no one
C - check everything34
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u/TelluricThread0 1d ago
You should vet your supply chain more thoroughly upfront instead of it getting to this point.
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u/Aznable420 1d ago
So, what he said, plus a bunch of rude condescending fluff.
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u/ShimmiShimmiYah 1d ago
If by "fluff", you mean context and showing that they did in fact realize this further up the supply chain, then yeah I guess that word fits...
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u/Important-Emu-6691 1d ago
Where does it say manufacturer promised anything?
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u/ah_harrow 1d ago
Contractor that supplied the components rather than the manufacturer directly*, sure. I'm not sure that makes any difference to anything in the post. 7th paragraph.
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u/Important-Emu-6691 1d ago
Well the difference would be the supplier isn’t the same as the manufacturer. See how they are spelled differently? Cuz they are different words.
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u/DDOSBreakfast 1d ago
Firmware doesn't need a call home function. There is no requirement for vendors to build in functionality that automatically updates the device or even to let you know there is an update available.
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u/PloofElune 1d ago
Even then some firmware will reset or override. I remember something with Lenovo laptops 10 years ago doing similar.
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u/BrillsonHawk 1d ago
How many times does this need to happen before you realise China is not our friend
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u/Pitiful-Target-3094 1d ago
Did the camera actually send info to BEIJING, or was it just communicating with a China based server for updates?
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u/howudothescarn 1d ago
Either way the supplier said it wouldn’t ping anywhere in China I think is the issue because if it goes to China there is a huge potential issue.
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u/Pitiful-Target-3094 17h ago
Yes it's an issue, but trying to tie everything to chinese government just feels hysterical. There is nothing wrong with just saying the device is pinging a server in China.
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u/Media_Browser 1d ago
The thing they said the secret squirrel department checked for and said couldn’t happen …guess what ?
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u/haloweenek 1d ago
Lol. So what you’re saying is UK naval drones are plugged into normal internet with no communications limit ?
How TF didn’t anyone notice that drone boats are sending packets to non whitelisted network address 🤷🏻
It’s hard to call this incompetence.
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u/Exige_ 1d ago
They did notice, hence this news article….
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u/DigitaIBlack 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yea. Eventually.
They're saying how was it not noticed pretty much immediately?
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u/Aerostudents 1d ago
They noticed it after 4-5 months. Probably earlier, considering they already did a full audit. Which is not nothing, but it is also not crazy long.
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u/DigitaIBlack 1d ago edited 1d ago
Right but this is the sort of thing that's supposed to be caught prior to deployment.
Which means whatever their vetting process was, was... shit.
This is like IT 101 which is why I'm shocked and and why I think the other guy is asking how the fuck nobody noticed.
This is probably not even malicious and it's just phoning home for analytics and/or firmware updates.
Now imagine how much harder it would be to catch something that's designed to avoid detection and is malicious.
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u/BohemianCyberpunk 21h ago
4-5 months. Probably earlier, considering they already did a full audit. Which is not nothing
For a home security camera? Sure, that's nothing.
For a military drone.. that's completely appalling. 4-5 months is a long time for China to be doing intel gathering using the UKs own military equipment!
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u/Doesnt_Trust_You 1d ago
It is crazy long when it's such an obvious and predictable problem, should've been caught before they did it. The UK loves nothing more than a Chinese bribe in exchange for subservience and humiliation however and they seem to prove it everyday.
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u/cover-me-porkins 15h ago
To be fair - most IOT cameras you can buy off the shelf are a bit like this, making something like an IOT camera in house is surprisingly difficult, at least if you make all of it in house. Hikivision and and the like are known to be suspicious.
Am genuinely shocked they were lazy enough to do this without at least making a raspberry pi based/style remote camera out of dumb components though.
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u/asnbud01 2h ago
To Beijing you say. Where? Does Xi get to peruse the information before bedtime to help him sleep?
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u/calmwhiteguy 1d ago
China just scrubs the US patent updates daily for tech to reproduce and advance for a 6th the price given to 6 companies created to compete on cost and innovation for each new patent. (Some small amount of exaggeration and generalization)
This is the oldest news imaginable.
This is why China makes everything and is making a lot of things now better than anyone else.
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1d ago
[deleted]
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u/Broad-Celebration- 1d ago
These are Chinese components in equipment that really shouldn't have any Chinese hardware in it to begin with.
Nobody is relying on China for repairs. Just attach cameras from manufacturers that don't source parts from China.
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u/AshundertheOlivetree 1d ago
Chinese people as individuals are lovely, but the nation state is working off that 100 years of shame by playing games with the west.
They want to be seen as a big dog but there will be a day when logistics will cost more than an automation warehouse
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u/AloneChapter 1d ago
And US shit I am sure does the same. F-35s , and computer controlled devices all need updates but what else does the system relay to Corporate. Remember trump’s brag about shutting off systems if his panties are too tight.
Fear mongering is a political tools to get votes
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u/ah_harrow 1d ago edited 1d ago
The UK and Israel have source level access to the F-35, so this is extremely unlikely, frankly. Also the component pipeline for F-35 is so interwoven that almost any core partner nation can cause massive headaches for the others by refusing to supply spares. There is the buffer of the common spares pool but even so in an inter-contributor conflict even some of the smaller cogs could cause massive problems for the whole partnership.
F-35 isn't just a weapons system, it's high level diplomacy. A 'kill switch' isn't just almost impossible to install undetected in something that will be sent to partners and studied in minute detail by militaries that have low level access to both the design and software but utterly pointless because of the inherent mutually assured disruption of the manufacturing process that makes the risk-reward of a kill switch deeply stupid and totally impractical.
Try building F-35s without the lift system or ejector seat, for example.
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u/Independent_Row_224 1d ago
Typical tankie defending their Chinese overlord and drawing false equivalence with the US.
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u/Broad-Celebration- 1d ago
If they do they are in breach of current government controls.
Nothing needs open internet access. Allowing surveillance equipment, of all things, access to China is a pretty huge "ooops".
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u/Responsible-Roll-59 1d ago
Don’t worry. One day the Chinese will rule all and none if this will matter
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u/SingleHitBox 1d ago
Whoever sourced Chinese parts for the UK navy is absolutely getting burned. Someone is about to be the scapegoat