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Some equipment might come from Israel (it's just guessing though), but I do not like your implicit hinting that Israeli developers are somehow less moral than U.S developers (because of "cultural" differences?) - especially since you don't know much about it. You seem to be forgetting which government and agency is at the center of this debacle, don't try to share the blame on other nations or cultures for developing those spying system

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He isn't saying Israel is less moral at all. The book mentioned above specifically points out there are a good handful of companies that sell hardware/tech to the US government that have originated in Israel.

I think the point being that Israel happens to excel at this type of thing due to the simple fact that they have been surrounded by countries who have wanted to wipe them off the map for a long time. This has happened to breed the talent that is very useful to the NSA / surveillance industry.

In the context of the comment he was replying to, and the allusion to "cultural differences" it doesn't seem to be just about technical proficiency. Otherwise, the second the part of his reply is meaningless, and the entire comment seems out of context.

Living in a country where wars with immediate neighbors and rocket attacks are frequent over 10 year time spans, especially in one much smaller and more culturally diverse than the US (at least among relatively antagonistic cultures), sounds like enough of a "cultural difference" to give some engineers a more "us or them" lens on morality and drive them to passionately work on defense driven technologies. Combine that with a culture that prizes education and a government with access to NATO equipment and know-how (also makes trade in military tech the other way easier too) and it's not a surprise some SIGINT and defense equipment comes from Israeli companies.

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