Well AllanGH, an actual intellectual argument that I can take many points to heart. You have rational arguments and many points that I have not considered. And you have made points that i simply recognize as rational. This is somewhat different from your first approach, but though I see some of your points as Valid, others I will again point out below.
Unlike BitUSer, you actually are not trolling and coming out with weak conjecture without counterargument. There is something that I can respond to rather than BITUSERS tripe and personal opinion and stubborn attitude towards different opinions and based fact.
Now there are a Few points AllanGH that i need you to consider without trashing on China;
Does America Steal Technology? Of course it does, this is the reason why the companies have been suing each other for many years. Intellectual theft is exactly the same as what they are claiming what china does... But mega amounts of money makes the problem go away.
Lets have a look at Microsoft for example, a company that only crated an interactive Shell, that combines essentially stolen tech. In principle the courts of law should have shut down Microsoft on principle of the company stealing others tech to make money from it. But the courts seem to allow this theft with fines far less than the rewards. This convinced many that Microsoft was being used as a state actor by the NSA to allow them to infiltrate homes of all windows uses with a standard platform. NSA has also been trying to recently bully companies into allowing backdoors into programs and hardware that allow spying, not only domestically, but internationally. This is essentially proven and shown in the fact that hackers can easily hack windows easily. Spectre was a tool made by the NSA in the first place, also showing that Intel was also a state actor deliberately leaving a vulnerability to allow spying. Hence Russia now fabricates its own processors from the ground up.
America is a country (like UK, Israel and France) that has prolific spy agencies that are now being found out to have hands in the pies of many illigal operations working abroad, but also domestically. This is made Legal by the eyes of the congress with emergency powers, so that the constitution never has to be in question.... But in that argument, the whole point of AMENDMENTS was to destroy what the founding fathers placed as an almost perfect original set of rules. What is a constitution when it can be changed altered and constantly reinterpreted at any time????
You also talk of "Kill switches", and I imagine that you are unaware of the Level 0 access on Intel processors also has a kill switch.... this was LEGIT sold as a feature of anti theft (talk about evasion of the law), but essentially Intel could send out a bunch of signals (right now) over the internet and render ALL Intel chips useless. This is worrying considering Data theft seems so easy at the moment. One state actor only needs to access the information of these Keys, decrypt it and BANG Intel users are screwed. No doubt the governments chips don't have this feature in their processors.
Intel are a victim now of their own infamy, as people now jump over to the Red team for many reasons... but more and more we see their reasoning as security... but even gamers, with the revelation of Spectre patches seriously impacting performance, are switching to AMD too. Market shares Prove my point on this.... All because of the NSA that NO AMERICAN can defend.
Quote by Ronald Regan (on my NSA argument);
" Those that trade in security for Freedom, will gain neither, and lose both!"
and that while he was President... He understood it as did Kennedy (who lost his life for it).
You cannot smear China for what America does and has been proven to do on a grander scale.....
China " We steal your tech because you GIVE IT TO US..." ;
; examples
AMD gives its Ryzen 1 blue prints to china as a royalty based pay off. China now has legal access to Ryzen tech
Intel gave them both the Atom and On board Graphics tech when it wanted to flood the smart phone market with Intel based smart phones.
So in that case China did not need to steal ANYTHING!
Now about the router problems, China blamed for not fixing problems that American routers also have... Only difference, America closes one hole with a software patch and opens another only know to Government. And this later also gets found and the cycle starts again.
Be under no illusion on this fact. My country and America are two of the worst countries in the world for Human rights abuses, With questionable policies that disrupt life domestic and abroad. China has not started a war over lies... America and UK have.
WMD shows that information (pure lies) are believed when coming from a supposed trusted source, started an illegal War killing many innocents and FEW Guilty in the name of democracy and Freedom. then Screws up countries and regions for Many decades....
Look at Afghanistan, look at Iraq, look at Lybia. It is known that these regions were ruled by dictators, but they kept the peace, they put down gangs and other 3 party rulers.... Now their dictators are gone, their countries are fragmented, ruled by Gangs and 3 party rulers and the People now wish for the old regime (and yes I have worked recently in mid east for Oil companies so I know first hand).
Please don't toot to me about western values... I am a westerner and find it a joke!
The CIA MI5 MI6 NSA MOSSAD are all as bad... if not worse than any agency from China or Russia.
My point is, POT KETTLE BLACK.....
1 finger at them, 4 back at us.
Also, China does not need to steal tech info, we keep giving them last Gen tech and they sell it on with all the flaws we left in it. It is all legit, until the propaganda says it isn't... But Tomshardware itself has let us know the giving to china of Ryzen and Atom tech. So no stealing required.
This is why China makes the market like it does. SO WE THROW OUR LAST GEN TECH AT THEM FOR NEAR NOTHING.
then we accuse them of Bootlegging.
Russia also had its nuclear problems with Chernobyl... Made out to be a reactor issue, but actually all down to 1 Manager that decided to see if he could increase effciency of a reactor and the production of Steam, by removing ALL COOLANT to let the heat get high for this to happen. Problem was, manager did not understand that the heat builds up to fast and before the Flushed systems could be refilled BOOM! Nuclear is safe,,, Mans will to make money is not.
By the way, Like your friend, I am an engineer that was Employed by the British Government to deal with some of the issues above. Sadly, like your friend, we are signed up to Official Secrets policies. I would love to expose many things that I cannot.