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."

Comments

Boohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems fair. The US government does the same to Chinese companies for the same reason.

Re:Boohoo

[Nemesisghost]

But the US people will pay again for the arrogance of the government.

I, like the vast majority of the US, am neither a shareholder nor employee of Boeing. Explain to me how this costs me a lot of money.

You pay in a couple of ways. This hurts our entire economy. So any stocks you own(of which most retirement accounts are made up of) will lose value. There's the entire supply line that is now impacted, so further damage has been done(why else did so many support the auto bailout). You lose in that this lack of trust in one company means that the world might not trust another in which you are directly involved with, which will cost you. Don't think that a major country's petty BS that leads to them cancelling negotiations with a US company won't hurt you just because you have no vested interest in that company. The ripples are far bigger than you might think.

Re:Boohoo

[houstonbofh]

So when Boeing and it's suppliers lay thousands of people off, those unemployment benefits came from magic pixie faeries? And the money they no longer spend with your business has no effect on you? Just look to Michigan to see what happens in a state when major factories close. (Or Trenton, for that matter.)

About time

[toutankh]

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.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

By that logic, we should never punish people for crimes because they will only get better at committing them.

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

BRIC isn't the threat. The threat is multinational corporations aiming for short-term profit. And that's not only a US threat, that's what is going to collapse the world economy.

Probably more to it

[rossdee]

Maybe the Saab is a better deal anyway, their latest plane is a newer design, and more agile.

Sanctions have started.

[tekrat]

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.

This is not about spying or the best technology

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Yay!

[gl4ss]

gripen isn't shit and it has the cheapest TOC of jets of it's class apparently.

the engine is general electric and it can use weapons from all providers. it also has the modern radar now that usa stopped playing games with it as well.

it might fit their use profile better than the super hornets anyways... probably better for shitty airstrips and improvised runways too(assumption in nordic countries is that in case of conflict all the airbase runways are bombed within half an hour or so.. that's why finland and sweden is littered with suitable road straights).

it is a bit of a vendetta, in the sense that they had been in talks and considerations to buy the jets for almost a decade. maybe they just couldn't make up their mind who to buy from - now the decision was put on their lap. it's also likely that a sizeable chunk of the spying was targeted exactly to make the boeing deal happen!

mind you, usa has bought plenty of weapons from sweden as well. perhaps the swedes were more willing to share firmware to the planes too(basically a country is stupid to buy jets if not, finnish non-super hornets have had considerable firmware modifications in finland too..).

Re:This is only one tree in a big forest

[Luckyo]

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.