No idea about NK. But re: #2 - I believe that sort of trade is regularly transacted with Iran through resellers in UAE/Dubai. US companies with overseas subsidiaries. They are legally separate companies. The goods are manufactured in Asia and never touch US soil. The employees are citizens of a country without restricted trade. The end result is the same - what are essentially US-backed goods make their way to a country with enforced economic sanctions, but without violating US law or OFAC regulations.

I can't find it right now, but I've read that U.S. companies cannot do business with other companies that are within 2 degrees of separation from a state sponsor of terror under some crazy penalties. In other words, if I make a widget, sell it to somebody in Dubai who sells it to the North Koreans, I can be held responsible unless I break off business ties with my Dubai customer. So they'd likely need to be going through 2 or 3 middlemen for a reliable source. It's hard to enforce though, once your good go through Dubai and Beijing or wherever the U.S. ability to track a chain of ownership becomes impossible.

Exactly. Even if your product was bought on US soil, sold on eBay to someone outside of the U.S., and then sold to the 4th party via the black market or 2nd hand market again, now it's legal that a NK spy picks it up. That's the same effect as saying "I picked up this US Dell computer from a recycle shipment from US to China last week." Yeah a lot of electronics are "re-used" that way oversea.

The U.S. government is aware of this but for as long as their US companies are never directly selling to NK the sanction is enforced from the US's perspective. This including banks cannot do transaction (via multiple middlemen? yes sure! Money laundering, but the FBI will be looking at it).

Is this not a __good__ thing for the Americans since the NSA backdoored most Cisco routers (http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608141/internet-privacy/sn...). Much better the North Koreans running Cisco routers which they have backdoored then a Chinese competitor such as Huawei, which could be much harder to attack?

Even if number 2 happens often, the embargo would still be effective in that North Korea would have to spend more for the embargoed goods. Adding complexity to a transaction is not a small thing.

There is a huge market (In the Billions of dollars) for used technology hardware - I've seen some warehouses that had over $500million dollars (at list price) of used Networking and Server equipment. I can't believe it would be particularly difficult for places like Cuba, North Korea, etc... to purchase a bunch of containers of Cisco Routers or HP servers and have them routed through cut-out countries before final shipping to them.

Exactly! Which means the embargo isn't doing anything but enriching the cut-out countries.

It's making it more expensive for the embargoed to get goods.

> I've seen some

Please elaborate! If you're comfortable with it of course.

These guys (who I've worked with back when they were NHR) have massive warehouses of used equipment that you purchase for 70-80% off list. They sell about $250mm worth of equipment each year.

https://www.curvature.com

Here is their distribution center: https://www.curvature.com/DistributionCenter

Carrying inventory valued at $200mm.

You'd be surprised. There's a guy in San Jose with two giant warehouses full of Atari products.

http://www.bertelmann.org/atari-archive/be_en.htm

The actual hardware might easily slip by an embargo but not the service contracts. If you look at a typical IT contract, usually over 50% of the cost is in maintenance. This alone seems to justify an embargo as effective.

Third party support is still available. Many people with secondhand Cisco equipment, but no contract (and therefore no CCO login) rely on their own network of contacts to share things like firmware updates with them.

After I terminated my employment at Cisco Systems, some of my departmental coworkers started a consulting business to provide services related to the products that we used to work on, including maintenance services that duplicate and compete with professional services offered by Cisco itself.

I'm also earning a living as a thirdparty support provider, but not for Cisco products. All of my customers have been denied support by the original vendors for economic reasons (can't afford it) or corporate decisions to discontinue support. In addition to my own experience operating and reverse engineering the products I support, I have benefited from corporate leaks of documents and binaries as well as being passed material from paying customers.

I even generate licenses on my own for products that aren't sold anymore, without permission of the original vendors, but they know about it and haven't requested that I stop.

Therefore, I am certain that anyone subject to a government embargo would be able to procure these services from a third party or hire a local hacker to take care of these things.

#3 Dictates consequences for sure, http://www.NorthKoreaOffline.com

#NorthKoreaOffline #TangoDown #ChristmasParty

Cisco products are made in China.