The damage that this does to US software and hardware manufacturers and service providers like hosting companies is incalculable. The NSA is providing a strong ongoing incentive to buy your hardware offshore and host your servers offshore. As an American entrepreneur I'm horrified by the long term implications of this. It seems for all the mathematicians they employ they're unable to see that the long term cost of these programs far outweighs the short term benefits.
The NSA also got Huawei's stuff too. I highly doubt a Chinese company was cooperating with the NSA. Really,it seems like the NSA just went after market leaders and developed exploits against those systems. As far as this article suggests, they had no internal help in doing so.
Not using US equipment probably does little. The solution is to make secure equipment that is harder to exploit. Moreover, the argument can be made that if the NSA can find these issues, so can others that the US government considers a threat to national security.
You don't think similar conditions apply to overseas manufacturers? That equipment made by companies in, say, France is considered sacrosanct by the French government?
