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As Jon Gruber says: "Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “The Big Hack” in October — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services."

"The story presented no confirmable evidence at all, was vehemently denied by all companies involved, has not been confirmed by a single other publication (despite much effort to do so), and has been largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources."

"By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Bloomberg’s institutional credibility is severely damaged, and everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract the story or provide evidence that it was true."




I have explained why Bloomberg's story would have been vehemently denied by all companies involved even if it was completely true:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18655803

Many people in tech, including John Gruber, seem to lack a basic understanding of who makes decisions concerning national security and international politics.


Denials made under oath in court might be worth considering. Public denials are a penny per gross, i.e. meaningless.


I think your argument is the security services or the US government would tell them to deny it but I don't see why. Google 'Chinese hacking' and there are hundreds of stories. It's not a big secret. I can't see why they'd censor it.


> everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they [..] provide evidence that it was true

Call me a cynic, but I'd hope all of us would want to take that approach with every source.


If we all followed your advice the world will be a truly awful place to live.

Given how critical journalism is to the fabric of society I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt wherever possible.


It's possible to value journalism without assuming it's accurate.

For example, one can subscribe to a local newspaper, but also hold them accountable for stories that are weak on supporting evidence.


How do you know for sure that the story is false? As you've mentioned Bloomberg hasn't corrected or retracted the story. Governments and companies have in the past denied things that have been true.

Do you seriously think Huawei vehemently denying that it has backdoors in its technology makes it true all of a sudden?


Because an actual review by Super Micro did not find any chips like that [0]. Unlike the Bloomberg article, they also released which company did the audit, while whoever was behind the Bloomberg article couldn't even supply a sample of these chips to any other security researches.

Which was just very weird: On one hand you claim to have discovered this extraordinary thing trough physical evidence, yet when asked to produce said physical evidence, you can't. That alone was reason enough to trigger several red-flags.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-supermicro-chips/super-mi...


If Bloomberg is going to make serious claims like that they NEED TO BACK IT UP with some evidence.

Not a damn thing came out of the Supermicro story. And now this story about Huawei where it's unclear if they're talking about bugs, vulnerabilities or deliberate back-doors--- three very very different things.

It's not that I trust Huawei either, but if Bloomberg is going to make claims like that they better be fucking true and verifiable.


> How do you know for sure that the story is false?

That's not how journalism works, at least until fairly recently


Bloomberg publishes what thousands of articles a year. Some percentage of them are guaranteed to be wrong. That doesn't meant that the burden of truth should instantly shift towards them being untrustworthy based on a single article.

Journalism depends on the public trusting them and in the current environment in which that trust is being eroded to have comments like this that dismiss Bloomberg entirely is reckless and pretty disgraceful to be honest.


     > That doesn't meant that the burden of truth should instantly shift towards them being untrustworthy based on a single article.
How many very high-profile articles need to be complete bullshit before it's time to start questioning the integrity of Bloomberg?

The Supermicro nothing-burger was supposedly the culmination of a year of effort by top-shelf journalists. They knew what they were doing, they had NOTHING to show for it and published anyway. I think that's irresponsible at best and more likely had ulterior motivations.


a) We don't know if the article is bullshit.

b) You have no evidence that that they didn't have sources, no evidence that they have ulterior motives and no evidence that they published the article without evidence.

c) Like you said if it was a year of effort by top-shelf journalists surely there is more to the story than simply "nothing".


    > ...there is more to the story than simply "nothing".
Well, where is it? Seriously, where?

Bloomberg made the assertion, a serious one that moved markets, and now it's on them to prove it. Or at least someone needs to step forward with something that remotely corroborates the story.

It's a hard-to-believe claim on a technical basis alone like something straight out of James Bond story. It was a year in the making and now approaching 5 months later and still nothing?


> being untrustworthy based on a single article

A single article... and the negative to do anything about it.

Yes it does.


If one mistake tarnished reputation forever then after Iraq war none of CNN, Fox, NYT, MSNBC, WaPo should be in business, specially since all of these were accomplices in and not victims of falsehoods.


You are allowed to objectively criticize the Iraq war any more as it's been endorsed by both major political parties at this point.

It's sad that the major news outlets are complete propaganda machines at this point. Nobody is taking the government to task for it's continued wars in the Middle East. The only angle I ever see is how some 'atrocity' has taken place and how we need to bomb them even more.


[flagged]


The Economist frequently publishes corrections. I've also seen them note when one of their stakeholders is also linked to the topic of an article.


By the time they publish a correction it's late; they've already made money.


Given the price differential between subscribing and on-stand, I'd imagine most of their regular readership has paid before ink hits paper.


In many countries you are subject to civil and criminal penalties for slandering or libelling someone.

So no. They wouldn't be around if they were in the business of lying.


"Any other media publication" did not publish an almost identical sensationalist story a few months back, which turned out to be unsubstantiated crap.

Had any website other than bloomberg published this, I might have read past the headline.


Consider that some of these parties you're throwing mud at, based on assumptions, might not be deserving of mud. If news is making one cynical, maybe take a break, and look for parties deserving of flowers, keeping the mud in reserve.


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