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US Espionage Blowback: China Drops Apple, Cisco From State Purchase Lists
Another quarter of leaks of ubiquitous US espionage in every corner of the world, and sure enough we get another quarter of China just saying no to spending any more money on companies which are, as far as Beijing is concerned, a natural extension of the NSA. According to Reuters, China has just dropped some of America's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists, chief among them Cisco (which already was hammered a year ago due to the Snowden revelations), and everyone's favorite $1 trillion market cap or bust cell phone maker, Apple.
At the same time China shifted production focus away from foreign production approved thousands more locally made products. The reason according to Reuters, and pretty much anyone else: a response to revelations of widespread Western cybersurveillance.
Expect more guide-downs, especially from Apple, for whom China is now seen as a key variable in the doubling the company's forward PE over the past year.
Chief casualty is U.S. network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc, which in 2012 counted 60 products on the Central Government Procurement Center's (CGPC) list, but by late 2014 had none, a Reuters analysis of official data shows.
Smartphone and PC maker Apple Inc has also been dropped over the period, along with Intel Corp's security software firm McAfee and network and server software firm Citrix System.
The number of products on the list, which covers regular spending by central ministries, jumped by more than 2,000 in two years to just under 5,000, but the increase is almost entirely due to local makers.
Thank you NSA: "The number of approved foreign tech brands fell by a third, while less than half of those with security-related products survived the cull."
The official story is the usual politically correct mush: "An official at the procurement agency said there were many reasons why local makers might be preferred, including sheer weight of numbers and the fact that domestic security technology firms offered more product guarantees than overseas rivals."
The reality is far simpler: Edward Snowden unleashed a can of worms that has and will lead to billion in loss profits for companies which were instrumental in granting the NSA unfettered access to all things Chinese:
China's change of tack coincided with leaks by former U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden in mid-2013 that exposed several global surveillance program, many of them run by the NSA with the cooperation of telecom companies and European governments.
"The Snowden incident, it's become a real concern, especially for top leaders," said Tu Xinquan, Associate Director of the China Institute of WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. "In some sense the American government has some responsibility for that; (China's) concerns have some legitimacy."
Cybersecurity has been a significant irritant in U.S.-China ties, with both sides accusing the other of abuses.
China has taken this action despite the recent complaints of the same companies who will now have to bring the bad news to their shareholders, while blaming it on the weather, or the West Coast port shut down:
U.S. tech groups wrote last month to the Chinese administration complaining about some of its new cybersecurity regulations, some of which force technology vendors to Chinese banks to hand over secret source code and adopt Chinese encryption algorithms.
The CGPC list, which details products by brand and type, is approved by China's Ministry of Finance, the CGPC official said. The list does not detail what quantity of a product has been purchased, and does not bind local government or state-owned enterprises, nor the military, which runs its own system of procurement approval.
For now the companies on the receiving, or rather non-receiving end of China's incrasingly more overt espionage protectionism, have nothing to say:
"We have previously acknowledged that geopolitical concerns have impacted our business in certain emerging markets," said a Cisco spokesman.
An Intel spokesman said the company had frequent conversations at various levels of the U.S. and Chinese governments, but did not provide further details.
Apple declined to comment, and Citrix was not immediately available to comment.
Expect that to change in the coming weeks, as the reduced guidance press releases once again hit the tape.
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Apple products are made in China, so good luck with that idea.
NSA: I spy with my big brown eye.
..crapping all over tech exports.
Usa NEXT UP...
GDP revised LOWER... Snow And Snowdon blamed...
SSShhhhhh.....don't tell them about the Samsung SmarTVs
All US technologies will be banned in China, just give it a few more years.
Let a thousand flowers bloom! Print money to fund startups for everyone.
Well, whaddya expect what with the NSA etc., demanding access, backdoors to all the equipment, FFS, folks.
That's right, blame it on the Commie Bastard Chinks, not our very own leadership's misdeeds for which they have become pariahs, globally
What?! Its the chinese who are assembling those Apple/NSA devices.
this is all propaganda. I happen to know that the Chinese have always known about the backdoor capabilities of voip phones and they know how to hack Cisco, Avaya, NEC, etc. phones. It was all part of the old Telecommunications Act and giving China most favored nation status. Our government deliberately gave them the ability to hack into phones.
That what criminal traitors do when they sell out their country for power and money.
Well, the good news (for China) is that now they have a few million electronic and computer science engineers and most of the west’s tech R&D and manufacturing technology.
This is no accident.
ChApple, Chamsung, Choterola,
coming soon
One of the lowest blows to the Chinese i think was when they discovered nsa was spying even on their Tsinghua University grad student's telephone converstaions. Pretty strange if you ask me.
Hey Snowden - never mind telling us the NSA is spying on us. We already fucking know that.
.
Spill the big -world altering/mind changing- beans.
.
Tell the masses who really did 9/11, Sandy Hook, Boston Bombing, Titanic, Vaccines, whatever...Something BIG.
.
Not limited 'controlled' shit.
+1 (no /s)
I've always thought that eventually China would use all the tech it has its hands on to copy those companies' products. They've got all they need. I'd add: Chintel, CHP, CHIBM, Chicrosoft, Choogle etc
Yeah. NSA "steals" encryption keys from world's leading phone SIM card maker. China installs listening s/w on it's LENOVO systems, etc.
It's hard for a brothah to figure out who he can trust!
Oh!
No one!
got it
I think one can trust the chickens in one's farm.. if one has to trust 'someone'.. provided the chickens are surveilled 27/4
Indeed. But even the chickens are always hatching something or other. Layer 2 over Layer 3/4 in a distributed P2P network is looking better and better all the time.
#ThanksNSA for protecting Americans at home and abroad..."thank you for your service" you #Selfless #Assholes
According to the budget documents, the DoD plans to spend around $58.7 billion on classified programs (fondly known as its “black budget”) in fiscal year 2015, a 1.5 percent increase from the previous year.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/06/inside-the-pentagon-s-5...
#hashtag #bitches !
Bullish!!! ...for Apple.
Actually bullish for Huawei and Xiaomi
These two are among the first to actually market successfully with their Chinese name rather than a synthetic one... if you haven't heard of them, you don't get around much.
It will be spun this way:
The headline will be Apple 'decides' to exit the Chinese government market, because they demanded too much information about trade secrets. 'Analysts' see it as a 'winning strategy' to keep their comptetitors at bay.
And watch the stock go up, up, up.
+1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 HRYVNIA.
That might be enough to buy one share of Apple stock, but you better spend it...NOW.
That's bumper sticker revenue
Almost all electronics are made in China but very little of it is sold there. The Chinese government is rightfully paranoid because they know that we will do whatever it takes, just like they would.
Jerry Garcea.
Our war criminal US Government can't even manage Crony Capitalism. They shit in their own beds.
they shit into their own mouths... and they seem to like it... ;)
Apple can go to hell or whereeven Apples go. These bastards have dodged paying their due in America yet cry like babies to the US Government to protect them. Apple lies to Americans for a pence. No man who even breathed air was more rotten then Steve Jobs. Apple care not one snit about America or Americans who made them what they are, so congradulations China and it is about time.
See americans buying their products everyday with big smiles on the little fat faces...
Crisco. Deep fried routers...
Yep...CSCO has taken such a hit to their stock price since the Snowden leak. https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1424898000000&chddm=122651&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:CSCO&ntsp=1&ei=0Q_uVMnZBMr1sQf4tYCYBw
P/E don't mean shit when Yellen's got your back.
Yes, China can come out with a "world computer" $120 per pop retail, with good reliable software and hardware.
(He, he,hehehe...)
Yep, and it'd have some usefulness for citizens living in western tyrannies.
Jump you [Foxconn] fuckers... Oh Wait!
Foxconn is an Taiwanese company. You know, Taiwan, the US friendly Chinese. The fact that some of their manufacturing facilities are on mainland China does not negate the fact that American interests are at play with what they manufacture and their treatment of the employees.
They have something to hide, otherwise why would they care about someone spying on them?
/sarcasm
How very un-American of them, er, wait....
"Inside every Gook, there's an American crying to get out." -- Full Metal Jacket
Any Government official in China using an Iphone will be susceptible to spying charges.
Apple gains $100 billion market cap on the news.
Seems I made a comment just a few minutes ago on another topic - something about the Russians and the Chinese deciding the fate of the U.S. economy/monetary policy, vis-a-vis U.S. foreign policy...
They stole it in the first place....
if they think that no other form of computer hardware has backdoors built in they are sadly mistaken. they will have to go back to using smoke signals and morse code or some shit.
Imagine a beast with a billion eyes, a billion ears, a billion little brains, and plenty of server space, and infinite funding. I thus give you APPLE COMPUTER.
yes, and i will bet that not 1 in one million know that the Saudi Royal family bought heavy into Apple ( 12 plus %) at 5.50 back in the 90's, with Mr. Steve paying them many trips to kiss their golden toes to get the mp3 ipod going. You know what they say...small world, long fingers.
Ask any musician if they still love Apple.
Beast, you got that right and everyone needs to wake up.
And soon to follow will be the Chinese Government advising Chinese consumers to dump Apple phones since they can spy and thus are a threat to Chinese security and the welfare of the people.
dat you Hiawatha?(909)
Long typewriters and slide rules.
They got us to the moon, where have we been since?
Blowing shit up as we race to the bottom.
Race implies competitors. Against whom are we racing?
Where?
in the A**hole.
Next up Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. In reality how hard would it be to copy every thing that all these companies have made/produced? China will eventually make their own everything to spy on their own people.
Speaking of spying, that Barbie Doll that records audio and video sure seems like a fucked up pedophiles wet dream. Like Facebook isn't bad enough, now we have a doll that will invade your child's privacy. Fucking repulsive.
Some possible names:
Snitch Barbie
See Something Say Something Barbie
DHS/HHS Barbie
Wifi Barbie
spyfi barbie?
See Something Say Something Barbie.... fucking hilarious!!!
Google and Facebook are already totally banned in China. You can not access them. Also if your page has any Google or FB plug-ins, either the page won't load or it takes forever to load.
It will be that way here too within 5 years after they pass this net neutrality shit. Except it will be sites with conservative ideals that will be banned or be loading slow.
What I get a kick out of are sites like "Free Republic" who claim to be the bastion of conservative ideals but the bimbos posting and moderating are all "big-government-waste-via-lets-fund-all-wars-israel-sells-us" kind of conservative (eg the fucking moran conservatives first to bankrupt the treasury).
Free Republic is the AIPAC short bus.
Its pathetic, actually. Didn't seem quite so bad ten years ago, or more likely I was still asleep back then...
Exactly!
China will surely be followed by Russia and other countries. But really USSA has only itself to blame for this... they went too far with this. I mean intercepting shipments to deliver "upgraded" gear to customers, hacking into hard drive firmware and intercepting SIM encryption keys... WTF...
...corrupts absolutley.
Silicone (glass) valley. No water and no biz.
Spies do what spies do. I'd argue not that they went too far, but that they went too broad.
The US and Russia used to (and probably still do) bug the shit out of each other's embassies, and place doctored hardware in sensitive facilities, and tap into key undersea cables.
What they didn't do was infect every damn thing in existence with spying equipment. In general it was spy v. spy, not spy v. the population of the spy's own country. That's where the NSA fucked up -- people were fairly pro-NSA when they were only spying on the other guys. Spying on us, not so much. They got greedy and power-mad and burned a huge amount of political capital for something with very low value for national security, but a very high value for local politics.
I think the key issue is that they got caught...
You're correct, the right word is "broad", i.e. they went way overboard. I perfectly understand that spies need to do their work, intelligence does similar work be it in US, China, Russia or elsewhere, that's what they are expected to do, but that is rather limited scope (e.g. embasies, specific facilities etc.) However, the main problem with this MASSIVE spying on on the part of USSA is that most of it is used not to catch the "bad guys" but rather to gain advantage at maintaining the military and financial hegemony over the entire world, this is all part of that "full spectrum dominance" crap they've been pursuing and it will come back to bite them in the long term. The decline will not be felt right away, but I'm pretty certain there will be serious repercussions for US tech/IT sector in the long-run since they have been compromised and it's very easy to lose trust but extremely difficult or nearly impossible to regain it.
I don't feel bad about China, they have stolen EVERYTHING from the West to bring them into the twentieth century. Touché' motherfuckers.
Given,,, not stolen..... sorry!
wat'dya expect when everything was handed to the in the name of corporate greed.
nothing personal, just business.
I just fucking love it! Blowback. Thank the NSA for job losses. Why would China, Washington's Target for take down, go out and allow NSA designed software and hardware to be used in it's country?
Job losses? Isn't this stuff manufactured in China?
No it's manufactured by US Corporations and US Government collusion that gives them tax breaks for doing it.
like the State of China is buying apple shit in the first place
I like the new TVs that will listen to your home conversations with direct link to NSA data storage units. Also, be aware, any speaker in any electronic device that uses software and has an internet connection, can be turned on as a microphone. Same for these camera eyes in your phones and lap tops. Software is always hackable, and any link to the web is an open door to control your device.
I put masking tape over my laptop camera. A $.01 piece of tape defeats all that technology. Might so the same over the microphone, although you might need double-layered duct tape for that.
Alternately, tape a picture of Hillary Clinton nude over the camera, and pipe a mp3 player into the microphone playing Miley Cyrus.
And then there is monitoring of websites such as ZH. They mapped all of us by now.
Dont forget, the mike on an old fashoned telephone is always hot, even when hung up.
Until Microsoft gets put on that list, it makes no difference (maybe it already is). ANd good luck with Linux. Sounds like they have already sold out, too.
Linux is a big family. There is a lot of options to choose.
With linux you can bootstrap from source code. If you are methodical and patient enough, you can make sure every step is free from spyware.
You will have to build everything, of course, libraries, etc and would have to bootstrap with somebody's executable, which of course might try to keep the spyware hidden, but if you invest some cleverness you can keep it out. Would probably require a cross compiler - binaries don't do well when trying to execute on a different architecture!
I'm sure the Russians and Chinese have done just that... and infected their distribution with THEIR spyware.
I recall that windows 8 was already blocked in China for " backdoor", like Germany did long time ago.
windows 10? who knows? Unless and until microsoft can assuage, make that squash, any doubt......it will be blocked as well.
This is what happens when you become indispensible and exceptional.
Thanks to FATCA, American innovators in small business are unable to do business overseas (think it's an exaggeration? Look into FATCA). Now giant US corporations are suffering the same fate thanks to Uncle Sam. Way to go government. Freedom isn't free! USA USA USA!
And Apple dumps a whole 1 point.
Speaking of points. Talk about missing the point.
Together Apple and Cisco can buy China.
Unlike the US, which has been captured by Financial and Transnational Corporations, who have in fact bought the US, and who willing sell off its assets, China is a sovereign country, which makes your statement highly improbable.
hahaha
APPL always has Cuba to move it's sweat shops to... The last 3rd world country in the northwest hemisphere, and it's only 90 miles for APPL execs. to ship /store their loot offshore. /s
Funny you mention that. My client with extensive Ukrainian holdings just left for a Cuban
'vacation'.
NSA only interested in spying on merikans. CIA will handle the foreign nations as always.
ussa .gov will buy what China doesn't buy with freshly minted digitized Yellenbucks.
China has been manufacturing the equipment. There's enough Chinese engineers working for Foxconn.
Surprised that China just doesn't manufacture all the hardware themselves internally.
If the NSA has so many electronic avenues to information why in the fuck did they blindsided by Putin/Russia taking over the Crimea?
We use typewriters for important documents...Snowden and so on...
Oudinot "why in the fuck did they blindsided by Putin/Russia taking over the Crimea?"
Dude, Crimea has been a part of Russia since Catherine the Great. Kinda like sayin' Obama "took over" Florida last year.
Apples, Hazelnuts, Bananas, Raisins, Coconuts, Sultanas . . .
Seems like related news
-
- LEFT GROUPS NOW FEAR: GOV'T NET GRAB GOING TOO FAR!
- Commissioner: 'Independence of agency has been compromised'...
- Lawless?
- FCC CHAIR REFUSES TO APPEAR BEFORE CONGRESS AHEAD OF INTERNET TAKEOVER
- FCC plan could give 'government wider authority over television programming'...
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/25/us-china-tech-exclusive-idUSKB...
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/black-history-biden-veep-calls-for-ema...
- IRS Lois Lerner Received $129,000 in Bonuses...
- While targeting conservatives...
The Chinese have known this for awhile, I'm sure. But that they decided to make an announcement is the significant thing.
Another gauntlet being thrown down...
Perhaps in preparation for the bigger announcement to come. Which will have the effect of 'banning' the dollar and launching a new currency designed to replace it, since the US is not to be trusted anymore. It would be easier to get everyone on board for what would certainly be a disruptive event if you put the idea in their minds that the US has become a dangerous, treacherous country.
How many Chinese will continue to purchase American tech going forward? As has been said, many of the products are already being made in China...all they have to do is take control of the facilities, and make their own.
Outsourcing may have provided the Chinese with all the facilities and personnel to do this, paid for by the very companies who did the outsourcing...which would be delicious irony...They get us to pay for and build all the infrastructure, then throw us out..."Thanks guys! You're the best! Now get lost!"
Its OK, they will compensate those companies, paying with UST's of course.
Fair is fair.
this is actually bullish for Apple, gives Apple the badass "banned" rebel cachet', Apple is just too Capitalist too decadent, a $800 phone outragious!
It's an NSA-China snooping race, to see who can snoop the most, while not being snooped upon.
China's been secretly placing backdoor entryways into Cisco routers for years, and has been doing same with Apple products.
So this is just a move to keep those products out of Chinese govt contracts, 'cause now China knows NSA is doing the backdoor shuffle too.
WELL GOOLLLY! The NSA puts backdoors into US tech products, and the rest of the world decides not to buy those products because of the backdoors! Well, who coulda known that would happen?
BTW, i assume US military hardware has the same backdoors ....so when i really need my brand new fighter aircraft to perform, suddenly it stops working! ooops....better not purchase US fighter jets ......lets see, what else do the US manufacture that will have backdoors?
Well golly gee, just about everything the US makes will have backdoors.
This is a great selling tool for Murican interests.
Bonfire of the vanities was prophetic in detail.
Economists use the term Clapperized.
The rate of change at any point on the Clapper Curve shows the extent to which a publicy-traded US company has fucked itself in the ass with this Faustian horsecock.
it is depressing to think of the Russian and Chinese are more honest than the current US government...but sadly true.
Oh and EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!
I am saddened that Russia has now fallen from the productive member of the world ecnomy, it is getting more and more depressing living under our current leader who has raped our country only to provide riches to his fellow oligarchs. He thinks that we are too stupid to understand that we are being used as sheep to be herded in the best formationto financially benefit him.
I am truly saddened what Putin has done to my Country..it is a shame
Now we are all abling to be shitting by the road sides in 'america'
This is just the first wave...the compromised hard drive manufactures are next.
The more collaborators with the predators-that-be are trashed, the better. Frankly, foreigners should refuse to buy any product from a US or western country that has the potential to be a spy device or part of any critical system. Why? Because EVERY large western corporation will do whatever the western predators-that-be tell them to. Ten years ago I thought maybe a few would make decisions to be "good guys", but I was wrong. They are ALL utterly corrupt. Obviously some honest small companies exist, but that barely matters in most of these fields.
The world of human beings is fatally sick.
does anyone here know when all of these back doors started being put in place? like, if someone had a 10+ year old computer (with a 10+ year old Motherboard, network card and hard drive) running, say, winblows 95 or an old linux distro ... would that still be vulnerable?
If your company sells anything to the State, they will make any effort to compromise your product for their ends. That's the policy.