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this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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This sounds like a lot of things were going wrong. Okay, first you had the guy committing fraud.
But why is the military sourcing its network hardware from random small resellers off Amazon? Like, even if the hardware were authentic, that seems like a route for potential trouble.
And it sounds like questionable stuff is getting into Cisco's official supply chains, too:
The military isn't buying from Amazon, they buy from "xyz hardware supplies ltd", who buy from Amazon and charge three times the price to the military.
Some will be companies that specialise in sourcing obsolete hardware, who just buy shit off Amazon/eBay and issue the correct paperwork.
I've read that the US government has to give preference in contract bids to small businesses, veteran owned, woman owned, etc, businesses, which is great in theory, but it can create situations like this.
It's insane to me all the different ways the government procures things.
Just get it straight from the manufacturer. Then if anything ever goes wrong there isn't the "who is REALLY to blame on this long chain of people" it's "hey this shit is broken, YOU are responsible for it"
Of course sometimes they do it as a form of opsec, if you distribute parts across many small time sellers it's easier to hide something than one big order from the primary source.
I suspect the plausible deniability of responsibility is a feature not a bug to many of the bureaucrats.
The beurocracy must expand to meet the increasing needs of the growing beurocracy.
And more complexity is always good for corruption, since every additional kind of complexity introduces gray areas where it's unclear who's to blame.
Did you not read the comment you're replying to? They mentioned obsolete hardware. Cisco does not sell obsolete hardware.
Only if proper vetting of the contractor isn't done. That part of the process should happen regardless of who the contractor is.
I'm sorry, but such things happen in countries with no preference to small businesses and veterans etc.
I'm almost confident that somebody involved in choosing that supplier got a cut.
After all, US military budget is so ridiculously big that not having such kinds of corruption would be weird.
I’ve bought Cisco equipment from verified vendor partners before, put in legit Cisco SFPs, router bricked itself and when I opened the TAC case they said it was mimic device and sent me a new one to arrive within 4 hours since it had been ordered from an approved partner. This shit happens somehow
Probably a fairly sophisticated espionage operation.