PRC Jihad vs US Tech: Norton, Kaspersky Banned

Battling the evil empire of US technology.

There's more fun news suggesting a further escalation of China's tech jihad against American technology firms. Now, PRC authorities are banning government procurement of US antivirus and security suites such as Norton and Kaspersky Labs. Given the importance of government purchases to software spending in China--mainly because they are almost certainly licensed copies rather than pirated ones--this is bound to hurt. However, you cannot say this was a surprise after PRC authorities began encouraging its banks to stop using hardware and software from IBM, Oracle and EMC. Even more recently, they have initiated antitrust investigations against Microsoft.

China has excluded U.S.-based Symantec Corp and Russia's Kaspersky Lab from a list of approved anti-virus software vendors, according to a Chinese media report suggesting Beijing is expanding efforts to limit use of foreign technology.

The state-controlled People's Daily reported the news early Sunday on its English Twitter feed, saying that the government's procurement agency "has excluded Symantec & Kaspersky" from a list of security software suppliers.

A second tweet said that government procurement office had approved the use five anti-virus software brands, all from China: Qihoo 360 Technology Co., Venustech, CAJinchen, Beijing Jiangmin and Rising.

What has surprised me so far is that these prejudicial actions have not yet prompted US technology concerns to approach their government to make a case against China at the WTO over not observing national treatment. With the United States being such a lawyer-infested place, you'd think they'd be chomping at the bit. In other words, China is clearly not treating foreign firms on a level playing field by encouraging commercial and government purchases of homegrown hardware and software. True, China has signed on to the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) which discourages precisely these sorts of practices, but the PRC's meddling extends far beyond the public realm.

Then again, you could say Americans were simply asking for it with all this holier-than-thou BS about how PRC employs spies on the US. There is no doubting that the US government's National Security Agency (NSA) conducts espionage, but here it's just a ready-made excuse to ban US software in the same way the American government presumes Chinese tech firms are out to do the Communist Party's bidding.

What goes around comes around as far as US-China trade spats are concerned. In the end, these two countries deserve each other.