# Remember What Khrushchev Said About Selling Us Rope To Hang Ourselves?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-what-khrushchev-said-about-selling-us-rope-to-hang-ourselves/442050>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 20, 2008, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-what-khrushchev-said-about-selling-us-rope-to-hang-ourselves/442050 "2008-03-20T09:34:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2008, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-what-khrushchev-said-about-selling-us-rope-to-hang-ourselves/442050/1 "2008-03-20T09:34:12Z")

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[Someone in China seems to.](http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2008/03/04/229675/counterfeit-cisco-gear-threatens-network-security.htm)

> [@](#):
>
> Last week the US Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security seized more than 400 counterfeit Cisco network hardware and labels with an estimated retail value of more than £38m.
> 
> The equipment included counterfeit network hardware, in particular network routers, switches, network cards and modules manufactured by Cisco. Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher of the Criminal Division, said, “It is critically important that network administrators in both private sector and government perform due diligence in order to prevent counterfeit hardware from being installed on their networks.”
> 
> Penetration testing specialist, SecureTest warned that government and communications networks could be infected with malicious firmware imported from places in the Far East, such as China. Unlike current malware, machine level hardware such as the chipsets used in routers and switches and other computer devices are rarely tested and may already have established back doors in communications systems across the country, the company said.

This is why certain things should _always_ be produced domestically. Even in the case of trusted allies like the Brits, who would be highly unlikely to cut us off from anything sourced from them, we’ll no doubt find ourselves in a situation where it’s difficult/impossible to get some important components. I _know_ that this has happened in the past. In the days after 9/11 I had to design and build sat phone antenna mounts for a certain unnamed government agency because there were **none** to be had in the US. The factory which made them was in South Africa and there was no way to get them to the US in a timely manner.

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**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\
**Post date:** [March 20, 2008, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/remember-what-khrushchev-said-about-selling-us-rope-to-hang-ourselves/442050/2 "2008-03-20T11:45:11Z")

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1. [Stalin](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin). But it doesn’t matter as the reference doesn’t apply anyway.

2. If the _label_ says Cisco (or other domestic maker) but is phony, it will confuse at least some people.

3. Several domestic companies have built in strange “features” into products that many are quite suspicious of. A lot of programs “phone home” without notifying customers why and what data is being transferred.

Use open source-type software as much as possible. (Which is also produced and used for some networking devices.)