Kitty, and just to reiterate why the chinese, cheap charlie 5g equipment ban is justified. TPM is a low cost provider, it will always seek the lowest cost possible. It is correct and good that the Australian government did the right thing and is courageous enough to be the the first in doing so world wide. And this is not something you can say about the government nowadays.  Lets just hope if Labor gets in they don't "reverse" the ban. 


https://www.smh.com.au/national/farewell-tech-utopia-how-governments-are-readying-the-web-for-war-20190218-p50yhh.html

Farewell tech utopia: how governments are readying the web for war

By Peter Hartcher

February 19, 2019 — 12.00am

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As Australia loses its internet innocence in a state of mild surprise and confusion, other countries already have moved far beyond the concept of a worldwide web.

There are five key points. First, while the federal government is being very coy about naming the "malicious state actor" that attacked the parliament house email system as well as the systems of the major political parties, let's be straightforward. It's China. I've had this confirmed by multiple authoritative sources.

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The political question that arises immediately is why won't the government name the aggressor?
The government's cyber security adviser, Alastair MacGibbon, while claiming the source to be a mystery, said on Monday: "While this offender was sophisticated enough to compromise the networks, it was not sophisticated enough to remain undetected."

Or perhaps Beijing didn't care if it was noticed. We know that the Chinese Communist Party is deeply unhappy about Australia's decision to protect its sovereignty by banning Chinese telecoms firms - namely Huawei and ZTE - from any part in its 5G network, the next phase in global interconnectedness.

The decision, made by Malcolm Turnbull in his final fortnight as prime minister and with the support of the then-treasurer Scott Morrison, set a global precedent that others are now following. It's Beijing's standard modus operandi to punish countries that resist its will. It wants its victims to know that they're being punished. Even as it breezily denies any part in it.

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Austalia's government has had no hesitation in naming and blaming Russia publicly for previous cyber attacks. And it named China's intelligence services for hacking into some of the world's biggest software providers in December, an attack that compromised perhaps tens of thousands of Australian firms. That was the first time Australia officially had named China as an aggressor.

Australia was in good company - it was one of 14 nations in a US-led posse that outed China over that attack. That attack was "breathtaking", Australia's MacGibbon said at the time, "the biggest and most audacious campaign I've seen".

Why not name China this time? We know why. For fear of further CCP aggression against Australia's interests. Australia doesn't have the comfort of being in company with other governments over this particular attack. Without the protection of a posse, Australia is afraid.

Putting the question another way, how much pain and intimidation is Australia prepared to tolerate before naming its bully?

The second key point is that the gathering global movement to shut China's telecoms firms out of the democratic world is not just about the 5G mobile network and the coming "internet of things". The internet went public amid visions of a techno-libertarian Utopia. The internet would democratise power, unite the people, overpower governments and transcend national boundaries. Remember? Today, the evidence is that the web has been taken in the opposite direction on every count. It's being walled off by nation-states, Balkanised.

So far, at least nine countries have cut off their national internet connections to assert political control at critical moments. A countersecurity fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, Justin Sherman, in a piece last month called "Here Come the Internet Blackouts", listed Egypt, Libya, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Syria as countries that had deliberately shut down the internet in recent years to contain people's protest, and, so far this year, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo have done the same.

Illustration: Dionne GainCREDIT:

Much smarter are the countries that have managed to retain political control of the web without resorting to the crude tactic of disconnecting it. The standout success is China. China long ago figured out how to plunder the web globally while walling itself off from attack locally. The West's tech geniuses always said that this was impossible, that the web was beyond the control of any government, that censorship in the age of the internet was quixotically pathetic. But the Great Firewall of China has proved them wrong.

Beijing not only wants to keep sovereign control of its web and its people, it also wants to be able to survive a US internet embargo, the equivalent of the old-style trade embargo.  Last week Russia's Duma gave initial approval to a bill that would allow Moscow to do the same.

Illustration: Andrew DysonCREDIT:

Russia is planning to change the configuration of its internet so that it can be entirely self-contained and self-sustaining "to ensure the long-term stable function of internet networks in Russia", in the words of the bill's sponsoring MPs, "bearing in mind the aggressive character" of the US.

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China and Russia aren't doing this for recreational purposes. They are preparing for a crisis or conflict with the US. If Washington tries to shut off their internet systems, Beijing and Moscow want to be ready. This is the third key point. The web is a frontier in a hardening confrontation between the autocratic world and the democratic one.

This explains the Huawei ban. It's not just about Chinese espionage. The decision to ban Chinese telecoms gear is a declaration of national sovereignty. If and when a great clash arrives, Australia does not want its national internet to be subject to an "off" switch located in Beijing.

Fourth, beyond the web, China and Russia are frantically building their own GPS systems. GPS is, of course, vital for many functions including shipping and aviation navigation and missile targeting. In the event of a crisis, they do not want to be dependent on America's GPS.

Finally, going to the next level, China is now reportedly leading the world in developing a hack-proof communications system based on the spookily mysterious workings of quantum physics. You can't hack it because there is no signal to intercept, just paired atoms placed far apart that move in perfect sync, with no detectable connection.

The web of a techno utopia is long gone. The reality today is a tech dystopia. The internet, GPS systems and quantum physics have been conscripted by governments and are being readied for battle in the next war.

Peter Hartcher is international editor.