Reply to post: Re: Don't buy US kit

Cisco posts kit to empty houses to dodge NSA chop shops

thames

Re: Don't buy US kit

Anonymous Coward said: "But they potentially get your finances, the identifies of your customers and potential customers, your plans for your next kit...."

Yes, the Americans and the Chinese can theoretically both do that. The Americans however already have sales and service networks set up here to take advantage of it, while the Chinese don't. This means the Americans can steal your data, outsource production to factories in China, and then undercut you.

On the other hand, in most industries, the Chinese are simply acting as outsource contractors for western companies. They don't have their own sales network or well known brand names. This is assuming we're even talking about manufacturing rather than services, where the Chinese are almost non-existent.

So given the balance of probabilities, for most companies the Americans are the bigger risk. We know that the "five eyes" are conducting economic espionage and sharing the results between them. This came out in the Snowden documents with respect to the Brazilian mining and oil industries.

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