This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
NSA Spying Blowback Continues - Boeing Loses Brazil Jet Order
First CSCO cited Government (NSA)-related cuts for its dismal results and now Boeing, considered the front-runner, has lost a $4.5 billion contract to provide jets to Brazil because, as officials exclaimed, "the NSA problem ruined it for the Americans." Sweden's Saab won the contract instead for 36 new fighters to be delivered by 2020. As Reuters reports, one U.S. source close to the negotiations said that whatever intelligence the spying had delivered for the American government was unlikely to outweigh the commercial cost of the revelations. "Was that worth 4 billion dollars?" the source asked.
Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal.
...
Aside from the cost of the jets themselves, the agreement is expected to generate billions of additional dollars in future supply and service contracts.
...
The timing of the announcement, after more than a decade of off-and-on negotiations, appeared to catch the companies involved by surprise.
...
Until earlier this year, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet had been considered the front runner. But revelations of spying by the U.S. National Security Agency in Brazil, including personal communication by Rousseff, led Brazil to believe it could not trust a U.S. company.
"The NSA problem ruined it for the Americans," a Brazilian government source said on condition of anonymity.
A U.S. source close to the negotiations said that whatever intelligence the spying had delivered for the American government was unlikely to outweigh the commercial cost of the revelations.
"Was that worth 4 billion dollars?" the source asked.
...
"We are a peaceful country, but we won't be defenseless," Rousseff said on Wednesday at a lunch with senior officials from Brazil's military, where she said the announcement was forthcoming. "A country the size of Brazil must always be ready to protect its citizens, patrimony and sovereignty."
It seems the NSA Spying blowback is just beginning...
- 22152 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -


A fish rots from the head.
The events of the last decade or so will not be forgotten by the rest of the world.
Just wait until the jackboot is on the other foot.
We sure couuld use some Hope and Change here. Especially the Change part
Hopefully this happens to a lot more U.S corporations and they come to realize that they do have a vested interest into what goes on in the world. Who am I kidding ? They are responsible for this mess.
haha, us magnates of bidness. how is all that 'inside info' paying off now?
why not compete head-to-head, mano a mano, like you should be doing, assholios!!!
Oh, this was just the beginning.
What the fuck have you done with Big Duke?
btw BD, if you're reading this, still haven't had a drop all year.
Message from CIA to Brazil:
It would be a real pity if those jets didn't make it to Brazil for delivery. You are in need of some protection. We wouldn't want to see anything bad happen whilst you host the World Cup.
Good for Saab !!!!
The Swedes have made some of the BADDEST ass jets ever. I know.....hard to believe.
They are probably getting the JAS 39 Gripen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAS_39_Gripen
Here are some of the older Saab jets.....all WAY ahead of their time
Saab Draken - 1955 (that's right....1955) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_Draken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tkRxq0E4f8
Saab Viggen - 1967 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_Viggen
This is so bad ass. The Viggen was one of the only fighter jets ever to have reverse thrusters so it could do STOL before STOL was cool. Remember...Russia is VERY close by....so the Viggen had to be able to land and take off ANYWHERE including public roads....even hide in the hillside along a public road in order to take off quickly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIErhm2y7wY
It took this Viggen 54 seconds from the time it touched down to the time it had turned around and was wheels up again ! Amazing !
Here is a pic of one in a bunker in a hillside ready to go at a moments notice.
http://www.pinterest.com/pin/340584790541445892/
And finally the newest jet....the Gripen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeclSBTxg6Y
Grippen: Controlling the Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3-PeY-heho
Fighters are SO yesterday. They could buy 60 drones for the same price, load them up with the same armament, and fly them from lounge chairs on the nude beaches.
Exactly.
Drones are not as flashy as the jets for stuff like stadium fly-overs.
Drones are a democratizing technology. Almost anyone could build a pulse jet DIY drone for under a couple grand, with autonomous flight. So for under 20 grand, anyone could have their own drone Air Force.
Arduplane - autonomous flight : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshtI2gH2DY
400KPH pulse jet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RmEtfQ81zA
Missiles are the thing and I think Putin and Russia knew this 10 years ago. This is why a lot of people probably will not F with Putin or Iran or Russia's other allies. I am not just talking about ICBMs but anti-aircraft, anti-ship and anti-missile.
How did that work out against an opponent who's only slightly more technically savvy than your average afghan goat herder (according to some)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident
1993 Gripen airshow crash eye witness begs to differ.
Almost got raped by aggressive teenage Swedish girls during the water festival but never forgot that freaking plane either !
hey, their stuff may be just as good as uncle scam's!
i bet the russkies do not want to dogfight them.
Well.....that's debatable......but in the end it comes down to the skill set of the tool user.....not so much about the tool.
That said......it seems the Swedes took a page out of the Russian's play book in terms of making it easy to service and robust.....not to mention MUCH cheaper to produce.
Our philospohy seems to be to overwhelm with sheer technology......whereas the Russians and Scandanavians think in terms of robustness and ease of service in the field.
And all these years later......when our guys are down and out in the rice paddies of Viet Nam or the deserts of Iraq or Afghanistan......when given a choice.....they leave the M-16 on the ground by their dead buddy and pick up the dead enemy's AK-47.
"in the end it comes down to the skill set of the tool user- not so much about the tool."
Dead-on, balls-accurate spectacular! That simple statement is a profound truth that many may "agree with", but few will truly understand.
I am fully aware of all the ridiculous faux warriors, wanksta military experts, and pseudo-militiamen on ZH, but anyone who has seen the elephant prefers a simple, functional piece of equipment than some complicated gee-whiz POS with complicated and difficult technological features.
I concur with, and subscribe completely to the entire post.
We Are Gripen Pilots......We Fly !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9J72JqMyE8
This is just the beginning. The NSA's policy is a death sentence for the US tech industry.
Nah, they're just twisting the seppuku blade.
Embraer came from
out of nowhere.
You screwze,
you lose.
Funny you mention Embraer. According to the promotioal video of the SAAB Brazilian deal.......Embraer will be 100% responsible for export sales of the Gripen. In fact.....this is sort of a merger between SAAB and Brazil as 40% of all the Gripen's parts will be developed and made exclusively in Brazil.
And Embraer and SAAB have co-developed what looks like a AWACS style jet as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv5qnFeMK5g
BTW....I have flown back home on Embraer jets a few time. On one flight we hit 40,000 ft. I actually began to see the curvature of the earth just a bit, Tiny plane. But smooth......particularly at that altitude.....LOL !
Now that is a real Taper.
that's okay, the NSA will make it up to Boeing by ordering a few thousand drones they can fly over Brazil.
That's nothing. Wait until they find out that many US laptop cameras and microphones can be accesed remotely without user knowledge.
who wants a fighter with built in access to its 6oclock
ummmm...SAAB jetfighters??? Laughed so hard that milk shot out my nose.
Sucks for Boeing, but I think it's going to suck more for the Brazillian fighter pilots when they're constantly either getting shot down or having to eject due to catastrophic mechanical failure. LOL
Brazil had her own state owned jet making ambitions under air force oversight which got culled in the infamous late nineties. Lot`s of bribes from foreign companies were discussed in the press and the air force chief resigned
in protest.
You .... understand what SAAB stands for? No?
With the Gripen you get the avionics source code, it means you know the opponent can't just "switch it off" from underneath you. It's also smaller, faster, more maneuverable, cheaper, and more flexible than the F18, which is what they were comparing against.
Till drones make them all obsolete couldn't say it's a bad choice.
... Not to mention all the controls and displays are in Swedish, and the annunciator alarms all sound like the Swedish chef on the Muppets.
Tyler, Cover this one...
Edward Snowden doesn’t show up once in Google’s list of top 2013 searches
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/12/17/edward-snowden-doesnt-show-up-once-in-googles-list-of-top-2013-searches/I've also recently noticed that a lot of HOT trending topics are void on youtube, even after selecting most recent uploads, most hot topics replaced by erronious (unlinked topic ads) or "No video results for “x”"
Back in 2006-2007 youtube was a great research tool, now it has become almost useless.
...EDIT
Pretty sure this guy femr2 got whacked a couple years ago. He was doing some of the best work out there on 9/11, ironically his channel is still up, but no search results if you go looking for him, or his website which has been locked out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcR_UPLH-LY
Thank you Snowden :)
Snowden could have released audio tapes of Congress & their staffers "negotiating" Obamacare, or Obama's birther lawyers discussing strategy, or DiFi negotiating contracts for her hubby, Snowden is a propagandist with an agenda other than protecting America.
Snowden could have claimed asylum in Vermont or SF and still protected himself, he isn't being protected by Putin, Snowden is protected by his document cashe, Putin is our buddy, remember Saddam? Remember Gaddaffi? Assad? Putin sided with them-then stabbed them in the back for us, he let us turn off Iraqi air defenses.
Putin is a hand puppet for our banks the same as Obama
Smitty: You been drink'n, crank'n, snort'n? I've watched your comments for years. Did somebody just hack your account or are you having an out of body experience?
Obama's support of NSA is insane. You can't spy on the whole world and expect them not to react. Microsoft and many other companies are next in line, as Europeans will shift away from US software over fear of spying, and the US congress doing nothing to curttail NSA.
Magnum: I shit you not, I am already getting Granny & Gramps switched over to some easy Linux combined with OpenOffice and other such things. They didn't have much of a clue about using MS EvilWare so it's not much of stretch to get them to change over.
The joke with Microshaft is they changed Office so many times that I prefer using any open-source version because I don't have to relearn everything on a a spreadsheet or word processor.
Freddie: I maintain 6 computers for family/friends along with my own stuff. I am so sick and tired of MS junk. I refuse to even migrate any machines to Win8. Fuck, don't get me started, lol...
Just waiting for the Brazilians to start talking out loud about UFOs.
http://devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/13731/brazil-on-the-brink/
Perhaps that's the real reason Obama pulled Podesta off the bench.
maybe they have video of backdoor barry exiting a saucer. it woul explain the BC issue....
I always thought our undoing would be triggered by some unforseen external event that roils the financial markets.
Little did I know that the very people that are trying to keep the status quo, are the ones that will create it's demise, of their own doing.
Yen: Wow... a Brazilian nut kick to the NSA for a mere 4.5 billion one time purchase while QE/TAPER is still $75billion per MONTH?
I'm losing my mind!
Every Chip (the 'big chips') has a 'Backdoor' if made in China, USA, Israel, Lil' China Island, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Korea and Vietnam
This episode is just an excuse to knock the price of the Jets down. When Boeing said no, the collapse is spun.
That said, prepare and expect that when closing a Deal, this straw dog will be used every time.
All these countries need to start dropping the line about the joint "secret project" and driving US monitors nuts.
They won't know wether it is economic or military.
Nothing more then paranoid, glorified eavesdroppers with high tech tools.
Brazil ordered a whole bunch of Russian tanks and air defense systems a few months ago, and 2 or 3 years ago their Veep mumbled something about wanting a nuke program, the Cold war never ended, Brazil is on the list of countries to be depopulated by Socialist policy and its assets transferred to....., the Socialists will do to Brazil what they did to Russia and in 1/10th the time, the dancing samba mob will gleefully welcome the coming Socialist orgy of death and looting with cheers for MOAR
Doesn't matter at all, for as long as they've got that sweet Carioca booty.
This comment is closer to the mark that one might think.
I visited Brazil a few months back and was appalled by how much the country has slipped down the Socialist slope. The free-shit army in Brazil is arguabl bigger than in the US.
A few examples:
- taxpayer funded vet hospital for dogs and cats in Sao Paulo;
- Fully subsidized ("free") drugs for diabetes;
- Anonymity is outlawed by the Constitution;
- No purchases of gold over BRL10000 (USD 5k) cumulative without documentation;
- and this is the country which in the early 90's confiscated all citizen's savings accounts.
Future for Brazil looks dark.
This is good news for my family. Thank you NSA. I have an uncle nearing the end of his career as a manager at the Swedish jet engine builders.
This story has already hit China, where the US software giants are losing contracts hand over fist.
This story has already hit China, where the US software giants are losing contracts hand over fist.
Hope & Change. Obama and NSA/MIC/CIA killing more American jobs. Priceless.
"reggie, i tell ya, I never thought wiping out an entire american financial system would be so easy!"
"you show 'em, dumpling!"
That only means that China spies on them instead.
If you had to pick between a First World country(The United States) and a Third World country(China) spying on you, it's going to be a lot better if you had the NSA there instead of Huawei.
'
'
'
Now, we'll see the real fascism!
Watch the NSA try to punish Brazil for doing this!
Thad'll never happen…
•J•
V-V
el presidente, we went to pay the swedes, but the banking system crashed. the billions are all gone! no jets!
caramba!
Injuries directly related to actions. Sounds like a big ass lawsuit to me.
Thank you Brazil, thank you for kicking the fascist police state in the teeth.
If you like your fighter jet contracts, you can keep your fighter jet contracts.
big deal
barry will get the printing presses active for another day.
get are jewish zionist puppets in saudi to press some more black juice.
get are cia to fly in afghan heroin on a couple of extra c130s from camp bond steal.
sell the japans and the french more drones un missiles.
lord rothschild not loosin any sleep over dem fat assed cocacabana beech bums.
not when deres syria and the phillipines to rape.
Waa HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
"And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore , and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire."
I take it that has been through google translate a few times.
LOL
Well, now there is no other choice but to bomb the living daylights out of Sweden, and Brazil.
While we're at it, let's let loose a few missiles on strategic sites in... wait, let me spin the wheel... ah, good, Venezuela.
What's that, Iran, you feel left out? Not to worry, our zionista friends in Israel will make you feel all warm and fuzzy, hahahahaha!
And Germany, no gold for you!
The irony is that this plane still has lots of US content.
Eg., the HUD comes from the US, and is in both the US and the Swedish planes. Ha, ha, ha. The Americans and Israelis have cornered the HUD market, for all intents and purposes. Integrate/build accordingly.
Remember this: http://www.blindbatnews.com/2012/02/world-war-3-usaf-cancels-deal-with-b...
I wonder if this is the real reason for Brazil going to SAAB?
I don't give a flying fuck about Boeing and why does Brazil need 4.5 billion dollars of fighters when half the people are living in urban garbage cans. Why don't they cut down the 5 remaining trees in the Amazon and make the fighters out of them?
How can you ask such questions??? If Brazil doesn't have a decent defence force, how will its leaders be able to assure its citizens that if they like their garbage cans, they can keep their garbage cans?
.......perhaps Canudos is rising....
An unknown unknown is a fat tail to the foresight-deficient, where the bs is expected to last forever and outliers and out-and-out liars are blurred into the memory hole. The truth can get kicked down the road until the marching band kicking gets directed to a boxed alley.
Stay tuned...
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
"Screw you, uncle Sam" will become an increasingly common refrain from around the world. Count on it.
All you big honking "American" companies. You made your bed by never complaining about the USA being turned into the USSA, and overt tyranny and police-state being established.
So too late to save yourself with disingenuous PR now. You made your bed, now you get to go broke there.
AMEN - Cisco being one of the most prominent.
That makes the jets that much more easy to shoot down if the need arises.
Facism.......not as profitable as was likely projected, eh. Too bad for CSCO........NOT!
Bottomline is Brazilians don't need no stenking Boeings! Embraer is the world's third largest airline manufacturer after Boeing and Airbus, so Brazil doesn't need to buy Boeing aircraft, any more than the Russians do. And Embaer aircraft are all top-shelf kit, they've got all the bells and whistles the Boeings have.
Which also means other countries are more likely to turn to Brazil's Embraer jets as well for regional needs.
SAAB CAN BRIBE ..... BOEING CANT
and when was the alst time brazil used its military in hostile conflict.. and therefor would want the superior product and tech backup... i hear the natives in the rainforest are now upgrading to crossbows versus blowdarts...
got nothing to do with the nsa... bullshit
now if BA greases the right palms in the USSA that is another story...
excuse me ... makes the correct political contributions, kisses the ass of the unions and participates in crony capitalism ... all is well
how much money did nancy pelosi and family make on insider trading in master card... how much money does barbara boxer's husband make with exclusive non compete contracts... how much money does mcichelle oabma's ex schoolmate make off obamacare non compete contracts....
Saudações de Brasil / Greetings from Brasil
I know this thread is a little buried and cluttered by now, but I did not have time until now to chime in.
Brasil was correct to reject the US offer for a lot of good reasons. Not the least of which is not to reward bad behavior. Bugging the President and picking off Petrobrás' economic data was pretty crass. Even more crass was to deny that this had anything to do with supporting the interests of insinuated US companies in the petroleum sector.
Not to be ignored anymore is the much higher risk (probability?) that the avionics and communications systems of the F18 would arrive compromised to the advantage of the US. -- just like servers, PCs, cell phones, routers and any other electronic appliance emanating from US electronic technology companies. To be fair, the US are not alone in this and, yes, the Brazilian authorities also certainly have the capability to do things like switch on cell phones remotely to eavesdrop, track cell phone location or record your web antics.
This apart, SAAB had a better deal for the CapEx, a much richer technology transfer package, and much more reasonable operating/maintenance costs for a plane that suited well anticipated conditions of use. Sweden also has no history of attempting to manipulate Brasil - politically, financially or otherwise, which is to their favor.
Parafuso
Parafuso, I am glad to see someone from Brazil throw their view into the mix. For what it is worth, I agree with your take and have made similar points to yours in this thread.
Fique tranquilo...