[sorinv]

Trump blocks Broadcom's bid for Qualcomm on security grounds - BBC News

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[John Vieira]

The White House blocks it. Trump doesn't know what a Qualcomm or Broadcom is.

[Chuck Finley69]

Sounds like a good idea regardless of your political leanings...

[Dunt Dunt Dunt]

I agree... don't see any benefit for consumers with less competition.

But it is another light being shined on "Chinese telecommunications equipment which will make us vulnerable to Chinese espionage".

I really don't know what the difference in a US company hiring a Chinese company to make a product and a Chinese company making a product for themselves. I guess it's assumed that the US company will fully inspect and test the product meets their specifications, and nothing has been added....

[Troy Tiscareno]

I really don't know what the difference in a US company hiring a Chinese company to make a product and a Chinese company making a product for themselves. I guess it's assumed that the US company will fully inspect and test the product meets their specifications, and nothing has been added....

The difference is that today's SoCs have virtually all of the important security components inside of them. A smartphone is more-or-less an SoC, a screen/digitizer, a battery, and some external sensors (mics, cameras). The SoC contains the CPU, GPU, RAM, GPS, encryption, USB connections for sensors, battery regulator, and a bunch of other things. And that makes it more difficult to find a few "bad" instructions that can bypass encryption or send information to third parties or whatever, because finding those would be like finding a needle in a field full of haystacks.

By keeping the design and manufacture of those SoCs under US control, there's far less chance that some other company is going to gain access to the phones of American government officials, CEOs, judges, etc., or just clean out people's bank accounts.

The Chinese have already compromised many pieces of older networking gear (HP, for example, contracted out the manufacture of some routers, and somehow backdoors found their way into them, more than a decade ago), which is why the US government doesn't want such gear making its way into US governments or businesses. The SoC thing isn't a lot different, really.

[sorinv]

Very well explained.
I got some flack a few years back here when I was questioning how BlackBerry could claim they secure the phone when they don't design the SoC. Even Qualcomm could do things on their SoC that BlackBerry wasn't aware of and could not protect against.

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[Bbnivende]

BlackBerry's manufacturer, TCL, is 16% Chinese state-owned. (KIA Investment Research)

BlackBerry Mobile is loosely intended market is Enterprise and Prosumers - what could go wrong?