Ubiquiti, a $33 billion tech empire, is led by Robert Pera, owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. He pledged to tighten controls on his products years ago — so why are Russian military units sending Ubiquiti vendors thank-you notes?

  • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    I’m curious on what your solution to the Nvidia problem is? Just stop selling to the market whose sales increased? Then the next, and the next?

    Knowing where the hardware is getting in from isn’t a solution. How do they know which orders are legit, and which are meant to go to the restricted area?

    And it’s already been pointed out that the Ubiquiti hardware in question requires no activation at all. In fact I don’t believe any Ubiquiti hardware inherently needs internet, never mind activation.

    Some features may, but that’s different than requiring activation for the device to work.

    • Rekall Incorporated@piefed.social
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      19 hours ago

      I’m curious on what your solution to the Nvidia problem is? Just stop selling to the market whose sales increased? Then the next, and the next?

      For one, you need to understand whether Nvidia is acting in good faith or not. If they are not, then one needs to create legal incentives for them to start acting in good faith.

      A basic evaluation of sales dynamics is done irrespective of sanctions (remember how the example I described was tied to defining a functional bonus system). Nvidia has an understanding of their sales flow into Singapore. If you have a long standing partner that sees an increase in shipments that aligns with internal demand forecast (which are developed anyways), there is no red flag.

      If you suddenly have an unknown entity placing orders larger than the total sales in Singapore for the last quarter. That is a clear red flag. You need to ask them who their end-customers are and whether they have validated that their own end-customers aren’t working on sanction workarounds. If they don’t cooperate, then you blacklist the entity and owners and don’t send them any more shipments.

      If Nvidia (or a suspicious new distributor) isn’t doing, then they are acting in bad faith.

      And it’s already been pointed out that the Ubiquiti hardware in question requires no activation at all. In fact I don’t believe any Ubiquiti hardware inherently needs internet, never mind activation.

      That’s why my example referred to a competitor of Ubiquiti (i.e. you don’t actually need activation data to run the calculations as described in my reply to you).

      What outlined is just one tool in a toolkit that is regularly used outside of any sanction compliance.

      Sales (especially for high-margin high tech items) isn’t done an intuition basis since as far back as the 60s/70s. With modern tech you can very much track your sales flow and identify suspicious sources that are almost certainly working on sanctions work around.

      It’s all a matter of motivation (and lack of incentives).

      I curious, do you have any information to suggest Ubiquiti has been acting in good faith?