Cisco's exodus from Russia over Ukraine op signals to its customers that nothing is safe
Sputnik news agency and radio 6.3.2022
Cisco Systems, a US producer of networking hardware and software, on 4 March informed its staff that all business operations are being frozen in Russia and Belarus over Moscow's special operation in Ukraine. The US tech company holds a significant share of the Russian market. What message does Cisco's move send to other world players?
"The effort, not particularly well thought out, is intended to cripple Russian Internet infrastructure", says Dr Binoy Kampmark, senior lecturer at RMIT University. "It is true that such measures do pose a threat to Russian IT interests and effectiveness. But this would have been anticipated".
According to Kampmark, Cisco's gesture is part of a broader set of purges against Russian companies, personalities, figures, and interests from countries intent on punishing Russia for the operation in Ukraine, "not all of whom even have a stake in the matter". The goal of this purge is to isolate and ostracise Russia, labelling and punishing it as "the exclusive, unprovoked aggressor", according to the academic.
Although the effect of Cisco's move, in the short term, will be smaller than hoped, it won't be easy for Russian firms to quickly migrate to different technology, deems geopolitical analyst Tom Luongo. However, Chinese firms are likely to jump in in order to fill Cisco's shoes in Russia, thus alleviating some of the more critical issues, according to the observers.
"The issue is dependent on how much Chinese assistance and cooperation might alleviate this problem, and how far Russian innovation and alternatives in this sense can cope with such isolation. Russia is also connected to other backbone providers, so the effect will not be as crippling", says Kampmark.
Cisco has joined the exodus of a number of other prominent hardware and software brands, including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Nokia, Intel, and AMD. US firm Cogent Communications has also signalled that it's cutting Internet service to Russian clients.
"It signals that nothing is safe, corporations in the West are just extensions of the State, just like they accuse Russian and Chinese firms of being", says Luongo. "It is time to realise that globalists will strike with any weapons to stay in power. But it is moments like this that turn from one man's obstacle to another man's opportunity".
However, the West's effort "will ratchet up the so-called IP war for sanctioned countries like Russia to ignore US and European Patents and the laws surrounding them", the geopolitical analyst remarks.
Tech Company Has Taken Side in Conflict
Earlier, on 3 March, Cisco unveiled its effort, led by Talos - the company's "threat intelligence arm", to protect Ukraine.
"We extended a new offer to critical organizations in Ukraine: Talos would monitor their Secure Endpoint configurations, modify them based on our intelligence and aggressively hunt in their environments for threats at no cost", wrote Matthew Olney, the director of Threat Intelligence and Interdiction for Cisco Systems.
Olney revealed that the company kicked off the programme "more than a month ago" over reports of Russia's "troop buildup" near Ukraine's borders. These reports, repeatedly shredded by Moscow, started emerging in April 2021 and continued to catch mainstream headlines in November 2021 amid a massive Ukrainian Army concentration along the line of contact with the Donetsk and Lugansk republics.
The Cisco director of threat intelligence also noted that under the present circumstances, the company could resort to unprecedented moves such as blocking entire adversarial networks instead of just IP addresses. The company admitted that "this isn’t appropriate globally", adding that "when tasked only with making decisions for Ukrainian critical infrastructure, it’s an easy call".
"With every passing day Silicon Valley demonstrates its perception that it’s industrial clout is totally integrated with the hegemonic coalition that dominates the US - what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern describes as the MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academic-think tank) complex, or that I prefer to call the Great Incubus", says Joseph Oliver Boyd Barrett, emeritus professor at Bowling Green State University.
Upcoming West-East Split
Cisco's stance and de facto participation in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict indicates that Western states, and those allied with them, "have adopted a form of expansive cancel culture which will only further demonstrate to Russians that they are not interested in negotiation, engagement and resolving disputes", according to Kampmark. This will further convince the Russians that the West is hostile and is seeking to encircle and isolate Russia, he notes.
"For the West, the hope is that Putin will be rendered insecure and that opinions will turn in the country", says Kampmark. "This is fast becoming a form of regime change by stealth".
However, it is much more likely that the West's growing pressure will translate into "a fundamental split" between West and East, says Luongo. He does not rule out that this split may even manifest itself in the Internet with further "balkanisation of networks."
"Globalism is reversing itself very quickly and debtor nations like those of the EU and the US are running into still opposition from creditor ones", the geopolitical analyst concludes.
