politics

It seems that things are going from bad to worse for Huawei, now including its smartphone business. Not only has its temporary general license expired last week, the US government is now also issuing more restrictions that will practically cut off Huawei's ability to produce its own silicon for its smartphones.

The US Commerce Department just added 38 Huawei affiliates to the country's Entity List, extending the new rule it announced last May that prevented sales of semiconductor materials and parts to Huawei, directly or indirectly.

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They say all good things come to an end and that's especially true with reprieves. Recent events, both related to the COVID-19 pandemic and TikTok, may have shoved Huawei out of the spotlight but the beleaguered Chinese company has once again come into focus and not in a good way. Huawei's license extension in the US has expired as of Thursday night and its customers both in the telecommunications and mobile markets are at a loss on how to proceed.

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That the US government under President Trump wants to ban TikTok in the country is no surprise. That it wants TikTok to sell to a US company in order to escape that ban, a deal that includes giving the US Treasury some percentage, is not a shocker either. What was rather unexpected was that Microsoft is apparently so interested in buying up the popular short-video social network that CEO Satya Nadella personally talked with government officials about it. It turns out, Twitter is another prospective buyer and it might actually be a better fit for a TikTok owner. Presuming, of course, it could even buy it.

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It seems that Huawei is quickly running out of time to keep its mobile business from getting significantly impacted by its tussle with the US government. It has just confirmed that its upcoming high-end Mate 40 series flagship will be the last of its kind to bear its equally high-end systems-on-chip, the Kirin processors made by subsidiary HiSilicon. While there is still a great deal of uncertainty in HiSilicon's future, Huawei has apparently gained an unlikely champion in Qualcomm.

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After successfully kicking out tech giants like Huawei and ZTE, the US government has apparently set its eyes on smaller fish. That said, the user bases of short-video platform TikTok and instant messaging service WeChat are so large that one can't take for granted the immediate disruption a ban would have on both the companies owning them as well as unsuspecting users. That, however, is exactly what will happen to both TikTok and WeChat if they don't give in to the new Executive Order from US President Donald Trump and sell their US operations to an American company within 45 days.

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While Huawei's smartphones are often publicized as the most immediate casualties of its tussle with the US government, they aren't the only business affected by it. Not only is Huawei involved in the equipment and technologies used to run many of the world's networks, it also has a voice in existing and upcoming industry standards when it comes to networks, AI, and even self-driving cars. Huawei's involvement in these standardization efforts has ironically put US companies in limbo which why the US Commerce Department is easing up on that restriction a bit to allow them to at least collaborate with the Chinese company on such matters.

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The US might be singling out Huawei in its spat with China but the world's second-biggest phone maker isn't the only one that is being affected by it. In light of the US Commerce Department's new trade rules, companies that export products or provide services to Huawei are now uncertain whether they will be able to keep the Chinese manufacturer as a lucrative customer. One of the biggest of those is semiconductor maker TSMC, though the Taiwan-based foundry seems not to be that worried even if it loses Huawei.

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Although controversial right from its infancy, Facebook got into deep trouble because of its involvement in the 2016 US elections. Most of that centered the spread of misinformation, some of which came from accounts that were traced to state-controlled actors and media. It has spent the past years trying to defend and rebuild its reputation and with another US election coming, it's taking a hard stance in making sure users know who might be behind certain media companies.

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If the US government is bent on bringing Huawei to its knees through trade laws, India's citizens are taking a different route to show their protest against China. A new app has landed on Google Play Store that singles out apps that originate from China as a response to a call for Indians to boycott software made by Chinese citizens. That call seems to have resounded strongly as the app gathered now over 5 million downloads in just two weeks.

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The COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to much of the world's businesses and operations and it has only been recently that some have finally been able to reboot a small portion of their lives and work. But then a single even caused waves across the US and even the world, forcing companies like Amazon and Apple to scale back or even close their shops as the number of protests and violent incidents rise in the wake of George Floyd's death.

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The Trump administration have released an executive order to hold Twitter and social media platforms responsible for posts found on their sites. The executive order gives more power to federal regulators to argue that social media companies are violating free speech rights when they censor posts or limit user privileges.

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The US government's trade ban on Huawei was meant to bring the company to its knees both as punishment for its alleged cybersecurity crimes as well as a bargaining chip in trade talks with China. For the past 12 months, however, Huawei has found some ways to get around some of those restrictions to maintain its business. Over the weekend, the US Commerce Department dealt what could be the most crippling blow to the company, and, unsurprisingly, Huawei has responded with accusations that the US is attempting to strengthen its technology industry by crushing everyone else's.

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