Did Snowden's NSA papers hurt American Business?

Did Edward Snowden's NSA Papers Really Hurt American Business Interests?

Chinese authorities officially don't trust American computer systems right now, largely thanks to Edward Snowden's NSA and Prism disclosures. How deep is the damage?

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Did Edward Snowden's NSA Papers Really Hurt American Business Interests?

By Anders Bylund | More Articles
August 16, 2013 | Comments (1)

It seems only yesterday American leaders were wary of Chinese computing equipment. The congressional Intelligence Committee said Chinese telecoms and networking-equipment vendors "can't be trusted," and American network operators with government contracts were steered away from vendors like Huawei and ZTE. Yep, that was last year.
The shoe is on the other foot today.
China's Ministry of Public Security is diving into American computing giants over security concerns. Database software specialist Oracle (NYSE: ORCL  ) is on the list, presumably due to its big bet on server and storage hardware. So is storage systems expert EMC (NYSE: EMC  ) . Even jack-of-all-trades IBM (NYSE: IBM  ) is under investigation.
"At present, thanks to their technological superiority, many of our core information technology systems are basically dominated by foreign hardware and software firms, but the Prism scandal implies security problems," said Chinese media services, according to Reuters.
This is in reaction to the data security scandal that NSA contractor Edward Snowden uncovered at great personal risk and cost. It's not the first sign of Chinese eyebrows being raised; it's just the most formal backlash so far. In June, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO  ) presumably lost a major contract with massive telecom China Unicom over similar concerns.
With at least one Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI  ) member in the Ministry's sights right now and another losing business over the Prism surveillance system controversy, Snowden's disclosures are having a real effect on American business interests.
But just how important is the Chinese market to our networking, big-storage, and computing vendors? Well, some supposed targets care more than others.
EMC sees China as a rapid growth opportunity, but the market isn't a major factor in current results. Losing Chinese sales might slow down the company's expansion plans but won't hurt short-term results all that much.
China is a bigger deal to IBM. The Asia-Pacific region accounts for 24% of Big Blue's total revenue, and China delivers the lion's share of that. The company also has a hundred-year legacy to defend, and I find it unlikely that IBM would risk its global reputation by building government backdoors into its equipment. Maybe I'm naive here, but it just doesn't compute, so I'd expect Chinese investigations to come up empty-handed here.
I have somewhat less confidence that Oracle has sparkling-clean hands, but then, Asia overall only adds up to 16% of the company's sales. So any lost business here won't be very painful. The same theory holds for Cisco as well: Asia accounts for 15% of the company's revenue.
So Snowden and his Prism disclosures might put a slight damper on American computer-sector business in China until the whole affair blows over. But it won't be a game-changing backlash for any of these companies. The Dow will survive this storm in a teacup. In the end, I'm still convinced that Snowden did America a service by unveiling shady policy moves, and he's not a business-breaking pariah.
end quote from:
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/08/16/did-edward-snowdens-nsa-papers-really-hurt-america.aspx

I think it's kind of silly to ask this question. American Government and American big business have never been completely separate, especially big American Businesses working around the world as long as anyone alive can remember. Government agents have always used positions in big business as a cover for their travels around the world. So, I think to assume anything else is going on is just naive.

So, did Snowden's NSA papers hurt big business? The likely answer is "Yes". This is one reason why Obama doesn't consider what Snowden did as patriotic. Because it may have helped the American citizen in the U.S. but it didn't help the government or American Big Business around the world which is an entirely different thing entirely. So, one way to look at this is what Snowden did likely hurt both the U.S.  economy, the U.S. government and U.S. Companies around the world. That's why you get the kind of reaction you do from President Obama and Senator McCain.  However, did he help U.S. citizens have more rights to privacy? Maybe. Did he help China and Russia? Of course. Did he harm U.S. Standing in all countries on Earth? Of course. So, is the average U.S. citizen financially diminished by what Snowden did? Likely Yes.  So, maybe the average U.S. citizen might have more rights and privacy temporarily but in doing so the average American citizen (and the U.S. Government) is further diminished financially as well as all overseas  U.S. companies.

The most harm (or good) done by Snowden's revelations is that it is separating China and the U.S. into different camps that could result eventually in some kind of sparring or war. I think this might have been inevitable sort of like what happened between the U.S. and Japan between the 1920s through the 1940s. However, the end result of all this with nuclear weapons and a smaller more interdependent world is far more troubling than World War II was then. So, hopefully cooler heads will prevail here on earth.