NSA, Snowden and US brands and profits. Idle thoughts.

I had some idle thoughts the last few months about the impact of the Edward Snowden's disclosures concerning the NSA, security, phone records,and global spying in general. And what additional impact this may have on the US economy.

Watching posts on forums and news articles about not trusting the smartphones (or even landlines) I'm perceiving an opportunity being taken by non-US governments to promote their own domestic brands of products under the guise that 'us products' can't be trusted. It seems that articles float up, mostly implicating the iPhone, but not exclusively, since Google is implicated too, and almost any US based software or hardware entity is suspect.

I'm guessing that I'm not alone, since the CEO of Cisco recently noted it also.

Presuming that people believe that the hard drive may be infected by the NSA.

CISCO

China, which has heavily promoted its version of Google's search engine has killed Google business in China; and the chinese controlled press also promotes every story (some unbelievable ) of exploding iPhones batteries. In Russia there was a incredulous story promoting its russian smartphone over the 'insecure iPhone'.

My opinion is that, whatever you believe about Snowden, and his good or bad affect on privacy issues nationally or internationally, is going to hurt US brands from Cisco, Apple, IBM, Google and down the line. And hence the US centric flow of technology in other countries. I think the Euro Union, China and Russian look at this as a gift for them to use.

The ironic part is that every government collects information domestically and internationally. Including government endorsed corporate espionage. Why does this surprise us (its on TV all the time ) The lie, or question though, is whether citizens in some countries (like China or Russia) really believe that those governments are more trustworthly?

I think in other western countries, the trustworthy level is the same as the US. But it will be a great sales pitch to promote domestic hardware and software brands. And that will have a greater impact on our economy than any concerns about personal privacy in the long run.

P.S. for my own opinion, why are people not concerned about banks, department stores or telephone company employees snooping on friends, family, ex-spouses or enemies bank statements, spending patterns and phone calls.

It did turn out that the 12 or so NSA internal violations that were followed through were nearly all about a girlfriend, boyfriend checking phone calls on the 'other women' and so on. Mostly soap opera stuff. In fact if it was an american citizen, they were blocked and caught...but not if it was the french mistress.

I'm sure some relative of mine, in a bank, may be curious about my net worth. What checks to banks have on that? Personally, I believe that bank records or Target records are more likely to be hacked than the government. Just my opinion.

What's yours?

 

RR, the Cisco CEO seems to disagree with you here.

Most likely Cisco servers or parts of it are made in China already. China's Telco are far larger than US telcos. I could see China now purchasing only Huawei systems now that their eyes have been opened by Snowden.


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Good article. It seems to be saying that the Snowden affair has accelerated and justifies the reasons for a domestic based technology in China. This only accelerates the business loss for US tech and our economy. I wasn't saying the motivation wasn't there, it always is, but now that a level of trust has been lost via the Snowden revelations, it is accelerated and perhaps for inaccurate reasons.

The question, which you properly state, is where will they go? Some changeovers are easier than others.


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At first reading it seems that Ericsson is operating with a small pair of swedish meatballs here. That is how you let economic bullies win. Better brush up on your Chinese RR

But reading the whole article, Ericsson is complaining about the way the EU is handling the problem with China. The article states that Ericsson would prefer the EU to follow how the US is handling the dumping issue with China...and use that as a global model.

China, and most developing countries will let importers in, and then copy or mimic the best practices to grow their internal products. In China's case, I seen that personally happen. Then China exports the product below cost (with the government's help) to capture the market and take over the business internally. Indeed Ericsson should be worried.