It's official: NSA spying is hurting the US tech economy | Hacker News Reader

It's official: NSA spying is hurting the US tech economy

zdnet.com

7 pointsrdl4 comments

Someone toned the title down just a smidge from the original, which is still in the URL:

> another-reason-to-hate-the-nsa-china-is-backing-away-from-us-tech-brands

Anyways, the equation also isn't that simple. The "black" budget of the US is $50-$60 billion a year. A significant portion of that is on tech, especially with the NSA. You don't store exabytes and have the world's most powerful supercomputers without buying a lot of hardware.

I'm not saying there isn't damage done, but this is just clickbait. It's light on specifics (outside of Cisco), and some of the issues have nothing to do with the NSA. HP is struggling in China because China is favoring local companies. China has had a history of backing away from foreign companies to bring tech in-house. This is actually what the original, non-filtered-through-zdnet article says: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/25/us-china-tech-excl...

The Reuters article has far more information. The ZDnet article is just someone filling their allotted articles for the day.

An interesting note at the end of the Reuters article:

> "The danger for China, say experts, is that it could leave itself dependent on domestic technology, which remains inferior to foreign market leaders and more vulnerable to cyber attack.

> Some of those benefiting from policies encouraging domestic procurement accept that Chinese companies trail foreign competitors in the security sphere."

Alternatively, NSA spying causes knee-jerk reaction in China government to source locally, paradoxically, leaving China more susceptible to hacking.

Long term it has the potential to do two things: Great jumpstart to local tech companies, or emergence of mediocre technology due to low competition.

They forgot to factor in all the industrial espionage the NSA is no doubt doing. Sure, there might be a little fallout here and there, but who's to say the US isn't still miles ahead?

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