How the NSA Is Harming America's Economy

anagama writes "According to an article at Medium, 'Cisco has seen a huge drop-off in demand for its hardware in emerging markets, which the company blames on fears about the NSA using American hardware to spy on the rest of the world. ... Cisco saw orders in Brazil drop 25% and Russia drop 30%. ... Analysts had expected Cisco's business in emerging markets to increase 6%, but instead it dropped 12%, sending shares of Cisco plunging 10% in after-hours trading.' This is in addition to the harm caused to remote services that may cost $35 billion over the next three years. Then, of course, there are the ways the NSA has made ID theft easier. ID theft cost Americans $1.52 billion in 2011, to say nothing of the time wasted in solving ID theft issues — some of that figure is certainly attributable to holes the NSA helped build. The NSA, its policies, and the politicians who support the same are directly responsible for massive losses of money and jobs."

Buy Chinese...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let Brasil and Russia buy Chinese then. They deserve only the best.

Misleading Title

[thoth]

Harming America's economy? This is more about affecting Cisco's profits. And color me unsympathetic, as they are an "American" corporation (in scare quotes since it shifts as it suits them) when it comes time to complain about something, but they are apparently Swiss http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-28/biggest-tax-avoiders-win-most-gaming-1-trillion-u-s-tax-break.html [bloomberg.com] when its time to pay taxes.

Poor Cisco

[frovingslosh]

I feel really bad for Cisco. They went out of their way to build all those back doors into all of their equipment for the NSA, and now people don't want to buy their products. Does that seem fair?

Re:Misleading Title

[larry bagina]

And they're Greek when it comes to sex, if you know what I'm saying.

Edit: for those that don't know what I'm saying, Cisco likes to fuck you in the ass.

True at least partially

[Dega704]

You could make the argument that this is overblown, but you cannot deny that it is true at least to some significant degree. The ironic part is how the U.S. government has been warning us about the coming cyber-apocalypse, and it turns out that they have done more to stoke those flames than anybody else.