Cisco's NSA Problem Is Going To Whack All Of US Tech's Growth Plans - ZDNet

[Xithras]

3. What it will do is encourage drop shipping.

Hardware will go from Cisco's manufacturing plants (Mexico, China, Czech Republic, IIRC) directly to the overseas clients. This kind of behavior simply encourages U.S. companies to keep their inventory out of the United States entirely (bye bye warehouse and distribution jobs) and keep their distribution channels as internationalized as possible. In theory, if they can keep the product out of the U.S., Cisco's equipment should pose no more risk for their customers than any other manufacturers devices.

At that point, the only real hurdle is image. I'm sure that Cisco, with its billions and billions of dollars of yearly profit, can put together some effective media campaigns.

The real victims of the spying aren't the hardware companies like Cisco that can route around the country, but the software and cloud services people who can't. I work in this business, and I know that most providers are already seeing business losses over it. My own employer has had contracts from overseas clients cancelled because they no longer trust Americans to access their systems. It was a sad day when one of our former financial services clients in Singapore bluntly told us that they were no longer allowed to give Americans remote access to their systems...and that they'd given our contract to a company from Russia. Apparently, the Russian's are considered to be more trustworthy.