Washington has the right to block US federal agencies from buying products by Huawei Technologies Co (華為) on cybersecurity grounds, a US judge ruled on Tuesday, dismissing the Chinese telecom giant’s legal challenge to a purchase ban.
Huawei filed the suit last year and claimed that the US Congress had failed to provide evidence to support a law that stopped government agencies from buying its equipment or services, or working with third parties that are Huawei customers.
The court ruled there was no constitutionally guaranteed right to a contract with the federal government.
The ban was justified in the context of a congressional investigation “into a potential threat against the nation’s cybersecurity,” wrote US District Judge Amos Mazzant.
Huawei said in a statement that it was disappointed with the ruling and would “continue to consider further legal options.”
Washington has long considered Huawei a possible security danger due to the background of founder Ren Zhengfei (任正非), a former Chinese army engineer.
It has warned that the company’s systems could be manipulated by Beijing to spy on other countries and disrupt critical communications, and is urging nations to shun the firm.
Last week, the US also filed criminal charges against the company for an alleged “decades-long” effort to steal trade secrets from US companies.
Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) was arrested in Canada in 2018 on a US warrant in a related probe into her company’s breaches of US sanctions. She is under house arrest awaiting a ruling on whether she is to be extradited to face charges south of the border.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day