Huawei launches first laptops using home-grown HarmonyOS(reuters.com)
reuters.com
Huawei launches first laptops using home-grown HarmonyOS
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/huawei-launches-first-laptops-using-home-grown-harmony-operating-system-2025-05-19/
44 comments
Big part of anti trust is because it crushes healthy competition so don’t think that is necessarily incompatible with winning tech races.
> China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge
I’d say the lead is so slim it’s basically already gone. At least in the practical sense. If you were to isolate both right now. Cut them both off from the outside. One would be able to produce a modern cellphone the other would not.
Any sort of residual technical lead in the pure IP/knowledge sense is good for 3 years max I reckon.
> China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge
I’d say the lead is so slim it’s basically already gone. At least in the practical sense. If you were to isolate both right now. Cut them both off from the outside. One would be able to produce a modern cellphone the other would not.
Any sort of residual technical lead in the pure IP/knowledge sense is good for 3 years max I reckon.
When you prevent somebody from accessing what is out there, they release their own.
The problem with that??
Well, only they mastered it since it was developed with local tech, by the time the goods are sent worldwide, you are blindfolded.
Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.
Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.
> I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.
There is no public evidence that Chinese consumer tech has ever been used to spy for the Chinese government. None. Meanwhile, the USA has been caught running mass surveillance programmes like PRISM and tapping the phones of its own allies. That is confirmed. And yet it is the USA making the most noise, spreading fear about Chinese tech. People only seem to worry when the device doesn’t have a US brand on it. You can be a patriot, but don’t be naïve. Believing unproven claims while ignoring confirmed facts is not critical thinking.
There is no public evidence that Chinese consumer tech has ever been used to spy for the Chinese government. None. Meanwhile, the USA has been caught running mass surveillance programmes like PRISM and tapping the phones of its own allies. That is confirmed. And yet it is the USA making the most noise, spreading fear about Chinese tech. People only seem to worry when the device doesn’t have a US brand on it. You can be a patriot, but don’t be naïve. Believing unproven claims while ignoring confirmed facts is not critical thinking.
The sources are anonymous US government personnel who refuse to give any details, so nothing can be verified. Anybody can make baseless accusations.
Wait until you learn how many off-the-shelf consumer devices contain a wifi capable microcontroller like the esp8266 and dont need or declare wifi capabilities...
O you sweet summer child, think of why there is no public evidence on Chinese espionage while you can easily rattle off a laundry list of Western espionage programs and you'll realise your mistake: China is a closed society without public inquiry while most of the West hangs its dirty laundry out for all to see and comment upon. Look under the cover of that Xiongmai camera, that Huawei base station or those Chinese inverters and you'll find plenty of remote access and control facilities which no doubt were left there purely by accident.
That sounds clever, but it dodges the core issue. You're treating suspicion as proof. Yes, China is less open, but that doesn't justify assuming guilt without evidence. Both Western and Chinese tech have had security flaws - whether truly accidental or not is up for debate. As you mentioned, Xiongmai cameras had hardcoded credentials and poor default security, and Huawei routers have had vulnerabilities - like many western alternatives. But none of these have been proven to be intentional or used for state spying.
In contrast, the West has been caught with INTENTIONAL backdoors - many of which have been directly linked to government and intelligence services. Juniper firewalls had a secret access mechanism tied to compromised cryptography. Trustwave issuing subordinate certificates to facilitate MitM snooping on all TLS traffic. Netgear and Cisco devices including undocumented public-facing remote access features. These were not speculative or theoretical. They were discovered, documented, and in some cases quietly patched without disclosure.
None of these were revealed out of transparency. They were found by researchers or whistleblowers. If there is no public evidence against Chinese devices, there is no case. Assuming intent without proof is not analysis. It is projection.
And let’s not ignore the obvious: many of these devices are manufactured in the same Chinese factories. But once a US brand name is stamped on the box, the fear seems to vanish. Somehow, they stop being a threat...
In contrast, the West has been caught with INTENTIONAL backdoors - many of which have been directly linked to government and intelligence services. Juniper firewalls had a secret access mechanism tied to compromised cryptography. Trustwave issuing subordinate certificates to facilitate MitM snooping on all TLS traffic. Netgear and Cisco devices including undocumented public-facing remote access features. These were not speculative or theoretical. They were discovered, documented, and in some cases quietly patched without disclosure.
None of these were revealed out of transparency. They were found by researchers or whistleblowers. If there is no public evidence against Chinese devices, there is no case. Assuming intent without proof is not analysis. It is projection.
And let’s not ignore the obvious: many of these devices are manufactured in the same Chinese factories. But once a US brand name is stamped on the box, the fear seems to vanish. Somehow, they stop being a threat...
> Still, I would never buy a Chinese tech device, you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you.
> you are buying a surveillance system to allow its government to spy on you
And yet the audit of the Huawei routers fond no backdoors.
And yet the audit of the Huawei routers fond no backdoors.
> you are buying a Chinese surveillance system to allow the Chinese government to spy on you
ftfy
ftfy
> We should have known that if we limited China from accessing our tech, they'd just grow their own.
It was known and was accounted for.
The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology on our terms instead of their own.
They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.
It was known and was accounted for.
The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology on our terms instead of their own.
They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.
> opportunity cost
What was the opportunity cost in this equation? A substantially smaller bailout for their commercial real estate market?
> [The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology] on our terms (emphasis added)
What terms did we dictate? Timelines? Trade?
How does America or the West emerge ahead here?
What was the opportunity cost in this equation? A substantially smaller bailout for their commercial real estate market?
> [The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology] on our terms (emphasis added)
What terms did we dictate? Timelines? Trade?
How does America or the West emerge ahead here?
> They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.
It will pay itself and offset those costs once they reach breakeven and start selling their equal or better tech in the international market, displacing the incumbents.
It will pay itself and offset those costs once they reach breakeven and start selling their equal or better tech in the international market, displacing the incumbents.
If that was the case then they would have done this work without impetus from external policy.
Not necessarily. That would imply competing with the multinational incumbents during the first trillion dollars of investment is just as easy and profitable as having the market cleared out for you because the US placed tech export bans, caps, or pricing pressures to parts of the world market (not just China alone).
Of course this doesn't automatically mean China wouldn't eventually pull ahead without the external pressure either. I'm just not as convinced it was so clearly a forced opportunity cost loss as much as something which provided a washed mix of both friction and acceleration despite assuredly preventing the US from making more money while its tech was farther ahead.
Of course this doesn't automatically mean China wouldn't eventually pull ahead without the external pressure either. I'm just not as convinced it was so clearly a forced opportunity cost loss as much as something which provided a washed mix of both friction and acceleration despite assuredly preventing the US from making more money while its tech was farther ahead.
Won't claim to be an expert but there were many high profile stories of china breaking up or otherwise limiting their biggest tech companies. Why would the US not propping theirs up hinder america's lead?
what a lot of people don't get about china is their tech sector is build on intense internal competition; its a specific goal of the industrial policy....
I hope Europe figures it out too
With this, China is ahead.
HarmonyOS is a modern (post-Liedtke) microkernel, multi-server OS.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is stuck with the likes of Linux (monolithic), Windows NT (ugly hybrid) and MacOS (pre-liedtke Mach, hybrid, ugly).
Good technology exists (e.g. seL4, genode, RISC-V) but we seem to be stuck investing into bad tech.
HarmonyOS is a modern (post-Liedtke) microkernel, multi-server OS.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is stuck with the likes of Linux (monolithic), Windows NT (ugly hybrid) and MacOS (pre-liedtke Mach, hybrid, ugly).
Good technology exists (e.g. seL4, genode, RISC-V) but we seem to be stuck investing into bad tech.
Without disagreeing, can you tell me what makes this a game changer? How would I apply this in my personal life or at work?
Modern microkernels deliver stability, security, performance (look it up if you want the details). Back when I did CS we were talking about this as the next big thing in operating systems. It didn't happen - common operating systems instead expanded in scope, started to include things like a web browser and supporting a gazallion pieces of hardware, rather than trying to "do things right".
The game changer part is of course in terms of the broader tech war. What we have here might be a consumer operating system that is technologically better than what is on offer from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Built by a vilified Chinese company.
The game changer part is of course in terms of the broader tech war. What we have here might be a consumer operating system that is technologically better than what is on offer from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Built by a vilified Chinese company.
This is not a game changer. Microkernels have been a reality for ages. See QNX or even Fuchsia. I don’t know what "modern" microkernel means. The architectural concepts haven’t changed.
There are reasons nobody uses true microkernels. IPCs are slow and the gains are limited compared to the strategies all broadly used kernels already use. They are no monolithic kernel anymore. Everyone has slowly but surely been shifting more and more things to user space in isolated processes including Linux and Windows.
Hongmeng might be an interesting kernel. It might also not be. Sadly its proprietary and there are very little benchmarks not published by Huawei. Personally I won’t hold my breath for this one.
There are reasons nobody uses true microkernels. IPCs are slow and the gains are limited compared to the strategies all broadly used kernels already use. They are no monolithic kernel anymore. Everyone has slowly but surely been shifting more and more things to user space in isolated processes including Linux and Windows.
Hongmeng might be an interesting kernel. It might also not be. Sadly its proprietary and there are very little benchmarks not published by Huawei. Personally I won’t hold my breath for this one.
>IPCs are slow and the gains are limited compared to the strategies all broadly used kernels already use.
The problem you are describing is a characteristic of 1st generation microkernels, and was solved by Jochen Liedtke in the mid 90s, introducing 2nd generation microkernels.
seL4 is a 3rd generation microkernel.
>I don’t know what "modern" microkernel means.
To get up to date, a good resource is Gernot Heiser's blog[0], read from oldest to newest.
0. https://microkerneldude.org/
The problem you are describing is a characteristic of 1st generation microkernels, and was solved by Jochen Liedtke in the mid 90s, introducing 2nd generation microkernels.
seL4 is a 3rd generation microkernel.
>I don’t know what "modern" microkernel means.
To get up to date, a good resource is Gernot Heiser's blog[0], read from oldest to newest.
0. https://microkerneldude.org/
It’s not about being up to date. What you call modern here is just recent. It doesn’t fundamentally diverge from the historical architecture.
Even SeL4 fast IPC which is not actually a full IPC but works well in the barebone context of SeL4 remains in fact slower than good old syscalls.
The fundamental question remains the same “Is this worse the costs (in terms of both efficiency and design complexity)?”
To me, the answer is muddy here. Sometimes yes, sometimes probably not. I think it’s why hybrid approaches are now generalised but no one is really shipping a microkernel outside of industrial applications.
Even SeL4 fast IPC which is not actually a full IPC but works well in the barebone context of SeL4 remains in fact slower than good old syscalls.
The fundamental question remains the same “Is this worse the costs (in terms of both efficiency and design complexity)?”
To me, the answer is muddy here. Sometimes yes, sometimes probably not. I think it’s why hybrid approaches are now generalised but no one is really shipping a microkernel outside of industrial applications.
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Sorry. Of course you right - the game changing part is that there is now an advanced consumer os that is owned by a Chinese company - it being micro kernel is a small part but important.
Really cool to see the microkernel vision come to reality
Who in 1990 would have thought a Chinese telecom company would productionize it before Hurd even released 1.0
Who in 1990 would have thought a Chinese telecom company would productionize it before Hurd even released 1.0
Quite easy when you are a state apparatus
Statements like this are just lazy justifications, born out of the desire to reinforce a certain world view, rather than genuine effort to understand.
Much has already been said about why Huawei is not simply a state apparatus, so I won't repeat that. The point I rather want to make is this: having a factually wrong image of the counterparty is dangerous, especially if you view the counterparty as an enemy (justified or not).
If you care about advancing your material interests, then you might want to emulate what you believe makes the counterparty successful (in this case, the belief that they're a state apparatus). But when you find out that the emulation yields bad results because your image of the counterparty was wrong in the first place, you will have wasted a bunch of time and resources. It's in your interest to get your world view right the first time aroubd.
Much has already been said about why Huawei is not simply a state apparatus, so I won't repeat that. The point I rather want to make is this: having a factually wrong image of the counterparty is dangerous, especially if you view the counterparty as an enemy (justified or not).
If you care about advancing your material interests, then you might want to emulate what you believe makes the counterparty successful (in this case, the belief that they're a state apparatus). But when you find out that the emulation yields bad results because your image of the counterparty was wrong in the first place, you will have wasted a bunch of time and resources. It's in your interest to get your world view right the first time aroubd.
Fair point on the need for nuance—I could have made that clearer. But the core idea still stands: Huawei can’t operate outside the CCP’s interests. Sure, the Party isn’t managing daily tasks, but it sets the rules of the game. Everything Huawei does ultimately aligns with national goals, whether by design or necessity. That makes it a de facto state apparatus.
Calling Huawei a “counterparty” suggests it has real independence. But in China’s system, especially with big tech, that’s just not how it works. The CCP doesn’t need to own a company to control it. There are legal, political, and financial levers that ensure Huawei stays on track. That’s not comparable to how companies operate in the U.S. or EU, where they can push back on the state without fear of retaliation.
I get why my comment came off as simplistic, but it’s not baseless. If we want to understand what we’re dealing with, we have to be honest about the structure Huawei operates in. Misreading that is a bigger risk than calling it what it is.
Calling Huawei a “counterparty” suggests it has real independence. But in China’s system, especially with big tech, that’s just not how it works. The CCP doesn’t need to own a company to control it. There are legal, political, and financial levers that ensure Huawei stays on track. That’s not comparable to how companies operate in the U.S. or EU, where they can push back on the state without fear of retaliation.
I get why my comment came off as simplistic, but it’s not baseless. If we want to understand what we’re dealing with, we have to be honest about the structure Huawei operates in. Misreading that is a bigger risk than calling it what it is.
If you so believe that you're not misreading them, you ought to test those beliefs. Advocate for emulating their model. They're obviously doing something right, to have grown so much, and it's in your interest to make yourself stronger. The result of your emulation will tell you whether your image of them was right, or whether you misread them. Have skin in the game.
This is an interesting comment.
It makes me wonder why the Pentagon, with a US$1 trillion budget and being a critical piece of the US state apparatus, could not create a solution like that in recent years.
It makes me wonder why the Pentagon, with a US$1 trillion budget and being a critical piece of the US state apparatus, could not create a solution like that in recent years.
The DoD already uses a commercial microkernel OS called INTEGRITY for various applications.
The US government ( most governments in the world ) decided to give money to Microsoft instead.
Their initial supposed large system type was supposed to run refrigerator displays though: https://gitee.com/openharmony#system-types
Not laptops
Not laptops
Completely new kernel and userspace? Wonder how long until it's Tier 1 or Tier 2 for Rust. ... Do they use GCC in China?
It's already Tier 2. [1]
*-unknown-linux-ohos:
> Tier: 2 (with Host Tools): aarch64-unknown-linux-ohos, armv7-unknown-linux-ohos, x86_64-unknown-linux-ohos
> Tier: 3: loongarch64-unknown-linux-ohos
OpenHarmony has no support for gcc. All the toolchains are LLVM. [2]
[1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/platform-support/openharmony...
[2]: https://gitee.com/openharmony/third_party_llvm-project
*-unknown-linux-ohos:
> Tier: 2 (with Host Tools): aarch64-unknown-linux-ohos, armv7-unknown-linux-ohos, x86_64-unknown-linux-ohos
> Tier: 3: loongarch64-unknown-linux-ohos
OpenHarmony has no support for gcc. All the toolchains are LLVM. [2]
[1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/rustc/platform-support/openharmony...
[2]: https://gitee.com/openharmony/third_party_llvm-project
The game is afoot, and China knew to de-risk and decouple. I don't think that it can be stopped at this point.
HarmonyOS, RISC-V, DeepSeek, domestic EUV, etc. China is standing up its own tech pillars.
So I suppose American lawmakers see this as a game of slowing down the competition rather than fully impeding it. China will eventually route around every road block, so the question is whether or not any of this will help America keep an edge, or if that edge will even matter.
In the meantime, we're holding up our own tech giants up to antirust scrutiny (and rightly so). But does that also hinder America's lead on China? And, if so, what will that mean for the tech/AI race?
Europe is also hell-bent on slowing down American tech. Again, rightly so - data sovereignty is important, and anti-competitive, monopolistic behaviors have long stifled domestic industry and talent. American giants shouldn't be allowed to behave that way as guests in other peoples' homes.