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US Spying Costs Boeing Military Jet Deal With Brazil
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a Reuters report shedding light on one consequence of increasing knowledge of the extent of U.S. government spying: "Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal. ... The timing of the announcement, after more than a decade of off-and-on negotiations, appeared to catch the companies involved by surprise. Even Juniti Saito, Brazil's top air force commander, said on Wednesday that he only heard of the decision a day earlier in a meeting with President Dilma Rousseff. Until earlier this year, Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet had been considered the front runner. But revelations of spying by the U.S. National Security Agency in Brazil, including personal communication by Rousseff, led Brazil to believe it could not trust a U.S. company."
Seems fair. The US government does the same to Chinese companies for the same reason.
You made the correct choice, Brazil! For more than one reason.
It's about time something like that happened. Now if only all European countries showed the same level of responsibility, maybe the USA would learn to treat their "friends" better.
Maybe the Saab is a better deal anyway, their latest plane is a newer design, and more agile.
I don't get it, FRA works for NSA so what's the difference?
The USA will eventually find itself alone, and without allies. And it's not just the spying, it's the drone attacks on soil with countries we are not at war with. Recently we blew up a wedding party in Yemen, killing over 13 which I'm sure included women and children. But oh no, we're not evil. We're the good guys. Uh huh.
Little by little, we are making enemies of the world, and until we change our ways, less and les of the world is going to want to do business with us because we have shown we're not trustworthy.
And to the poster who blames a 4.5 billion dollar loss on the economy to Ed Snowden, screw you. All Snowden did was CONFIRM what everyone knew already, but just couldn't prove. He will be shown to be a hero, this decade's Cindy Sheehan.
We are in the wrong, but people who wrap themselves in the flag are unwilling to admit it. And until we learn to act a little more humble, we're going to see more of this. We're making the typical over-exaggerated gestures of a failed empire. And as things get worse here, we're trying to take the rest of the world down with us.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This is not just a response to the NSA leaks. Everyone spies, we all know that.
The problem is American exceptionalism. No, not because we think that (every nation does), but because we can't shut up about it. The image we project is of spoiled kids, arrogant and rotten to the core. We shove our defensiveness in everyone's faces, and that makes America a very bad salesperson. We are the tight-ass at Macy's who thinks his feces doesn't stink, and won't even pay you any attention because you have the wrong shoes. No on wants to deal with that.
This isn't about who has the best warplanes. This is diplomacy. This is business. This is about saving face and national egos. It's about time we learned a little finesse in this area. It's something the Chinese do exceptionally well.
"The NSA problem ruined it for the Americans," a Brazilian government source said on condition of anonymity.
A U.S. source close to the negotiations said that whatever intelligence the spying had delivered for the American government was unlikely to outweigh the commercial cost of the revelations.
"Was that worth 4 billion dollars?" the source asked.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The main source of despots in Latin America has been US, which used despots to keep countries in severe poverty while it's multinationals shipped profits to US.
"Bolivarian socialism" has evolved to prevent this exploitation, and succeeded in increasing quality of life in the region significantly. Obviously at the cost of profits for multinationals.
A "First world" country is a country that was allied with either the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. during the cold world. You were "one of the 2" on one side or the other. The term "third world" came about as a way to refer to those countries unaligned in the conflict. They tended to be poor with little strategic influence and were ignored by the 2 super powers.
Being 3rd world is not a bad thing. It just means you didn't take sides in a war that never happened and has been over for decades. Rousseff has every right to be angry with the US. What the NSA is doing is criminal. We're currently the most powerful country the world has ever known. We have a military that could kill every human being with the flip of the switch. There is not threat to our sovereignty and there's no need for this ridiculous invasion of every person on earths right to privacy.
On the contrary, my point is that everyone the bully thinks is in the former group is actually in the latter. Once the bully weakens, his former "friends" will inevitably betray him.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz