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Israeli-founded app preloaded on Samsung phones is attracting controversy

(www.sammobile.com)
391 points croes | 4 comments | 17 Nov 25 16:54 UTC | HN request time: 0.002s | source
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baklavaEmperor ◴[17 Nov 25 20:30 UTC] No.45957934[source]▶
What’s striking is how often these ‘small’ surveillance tech stories trace back to the same state-aligned ecosystem. When Israel does it, it’s treated as a complex security issue. When another ‘bad’ country does the same thing, we immediately call it espionage. And almost on cue, the discussion drifts anywhere except the uncomfortable fact that it’s the same ecosystem from the same country showing up again.
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crmd ◴[17 Nov 25 21:38 UTC] No.45958632[source]▶
it’s a tough infosec situation because the tel aviv-haifa corridor in israel has an enormous amount of computer science R&D going on that gives US companies a competitive advantage.

for example, annapurna labs in haifa develops the technology behind AWS’s nitro cards, which run the hypervisor, block storage, and networking in every EC2 server.

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1. verisimi ◴[17 Nov 25 21:42 UTC] No.45958677[source]▶
Fair enough. I guess it's fine to be spied on to make sure US companies have that competitive advantage you mention. As its all in a good cause, I'll take the Samsung phone!
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2. dijit ◴[17 Nov 25 21:58 UTC] No.45958836[source]▶
To be fair, us over in Europe have been uncomfortable for a while due to the US surveillance apparatus having total dominion over the underlying systems that run our countries.

So, its a little bit tone deaf to hear these complaints from Americans honestly.

We’re told that we’re uncompetitive (yet when rising startups happen they’re bought out before being too large)- we’re told that we shouldn’t run on anything except US SaaS and US cloud providers.

I’m not saying that you specifically make these arguments, but the zeitgeist on HN definitely centres on this notion.

So, please forgive me for not taking this as seriously as you’d like me to.

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3. crmd ◴[18 Nov 25 00:25 UTC] No.45960036[source]▶
I think USA tech hegemony is perfectly analogous to this Israeli tech dilemma. As a dual American and EU (Irish) citizen, should my company strive to categorically avoid Intel and Nvidia technologies for national security reasons? I think there is a strong argument for tech nationalism but there is still a hegemonic dilemma.
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4. pjmlp ◴[18 Nov 25 10:18 UTC] No.45963359{3}[source]▶
The main problem, even if you would avoid Intel and NVidia, is that during the last decades we confortably let OS and programing languages driven by US companies take over.

So you might go with ARM, RISC V, but still have to make use of an OS and programming stack with strong ties to US based companies, even if open source.