this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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For sure, tech upgrades are difficult. I've dealt with this stuff personally at one of my jobs. At the same time this is such a critical security issue, that relying on foreign tech was a wrong call from the start.
While relying on foreign tech is a massive risk, for a developing China lacking the firms to produce home-grown software and tech products, using foreign made products was essentially the only choice. China couldn’t just reject foreign products if they possessed no viable alternative.
Now that the infrastructure and technical base to produce Chinese software is in place, the reliance is moot and can be done away with.
This is also meant more for businesses, smaller firms, and lower level bureaucratic apparati, as I have no doubt that the Chinese military, political apparati, and other institutions, made the change long ago, while Joe-Schmo app developer or Xi-Biao small tech firm owner went with whatever option was readily available or cheaper.
I'd argue it made sense in most sectors, but I disagree that tech dealing with national security tech needed to be implemented on western platforms. After all, people managed to do security before this tech was available. It would've been better to simply do things the old way until domestic options were available.
I’m a little confused by what you mean by the “old way”. There is no old way, digital infrastructure is constantly evolving as are threat actors, you can’t use older products and expect them to work nor is there even an older way oftentimes. The national security risk also isn’t for nuclear weapons or CPC internal communiques, it’s for hospitals, smaller firms, individual websites, and so on. Technically anything can be classified as “national security”.
If by old you mean analog? Then that’s not feasible, an analog system would be insanely impractical and cost ineffective. You can’t run a digital economy on an analog system.
China also needed to parlay with foreign firms for sales, development, and so on, they couldn’t just say “Hey wait, we don’t have any digital infrastructure”.
I guess the question is what specific cybersecurity software we're talking about and where it's being used. I agree regarding the civilian sector, it makes sense to use things like western anti virus software in these cases. That said, China's had parity in skills here for at least a decade. So, they definitely let things slide until the actual confrontation started with the US being openly hostile now.