Thursday June 17, 2010

I've Been Thinking:

This week, Syria had some very interesting visitors from the United States.

According to SANA, the official Syrian state news agency, executives from Dell, Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec and VeriSign all paid a visit to Damascus. They met with the Minister of Higher Education.

These high level executives are courting Syria. They want to open offices in Syria.
Syria is coming out of the dog house, Wall St style or, more accurately, Silicon Valley style.

There is no good reason for these businesses to expand into Syria except to save money. Given what we know about Syrian higher education and technology, this will be a huge business mistake. It might also be a serious security blunder. Syria could become the easiest portal through which to launch a cyber attack against these companies. If not a cyber attack, then sabotage.

If I were a stock holder in any of these companies, I would be up in arms.

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