Indian Outsourcers Target U.S. Defense Contracts

[OhioChick]

03:09 PM ET, Feb 20, 2007

The controversy over outsourcing U.S. technology and back office jobs to India has been fairly heated. But that may pale in comparison to what's surely coming given what some major Indian service providers are now chasing.

According to Monday's edition of the Indian daily Business Line, Tata Consultancy Services is in talks with Boeing and Lockheed Martin for pieces of the defense and aerospace contracts held by those companies. Related to that, the paper says TCS is set to increase the headcount in its aerospace engineering vertical at a clip of about 50% to 60% per year.

Meanwhile, Satyam Computer Services plans to register with India's Defence Offset Facilitation Agency, a body that's designed to facilitate cooperation between U.S. defense contractors and Indian tech firms, according to India's Business Standard newspaper.

You don't have to be psychic to predict that all this will further inflame the outsourcing debate. Accounting applications are one thing. The possibility of missile guidance systems and other key components of the U.S. arsenal being designed and coded in India is another and will no doubt provide more, uh, ammunition to those who argue that outsourcing undermines America' security.

http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/02/indian_outsourc.html

[lonestarnot]

1. Jump out of the port mess and into the Indian discount defense.

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. Greed is such a disease. And so is stupidity!

Outsourcing, ABOLISH IT!!!!

[Deja Q]

3. So when a politician talks of national security, who will believe?

:shrug:

[ChromeFoundry]

4. That is... Fucked Up

I don't really know of a better way of stating my feeling on this.

[Deja Q]

5. I don't think it is fucked up.

Just think of the viewpoint. One almost makes sense. :( Nor am I inclined to believe it; truth is stranger than fiction and such much going on is so strange right now it can't be anything but fiction.

I hope that makes sense, because I'm baffled by it all...

[ChromeFoundry]

7. next thing you know...

our defense software will be written by the Open Source community on sourceforge.net. Free defense software! Just imagine the money the top 1% could get back in tax breaks!

And this would certainly level the playing field in this "new global economy", when it comes to defending this country. Maybe there are some talented members of the Taliban willing to assist in this coding effort!

:sarcasm:

[OhioChick]

8. Fucked up?

That about sums it up.

[katsy]

6. This is horrible.

It used to be that corporations represented themselves in their own trade deals with foreign countries. Now they buy off politicians to not only pass favorable legislation, open doors, install favorable foreign regimes, make wars and give them corporate welfare to do it (read at taxpayers dime).

This is death by a thousand paper cuts. Sometimes I wish they'd all just get the hell out of our lives and just go. Leave. Take your jobs, poisons, greed and get out. We won't be able to afford their crap and maybe - just maybe we'd survive and thrive without them.

[Canuckistanian]

9. Why not? Everything else has been outsourced.

The "headcount vertical" has already been sold out in computer support and R&D.

Defense contacts are purely commercial deals, right?

So, why not "farm them out"?

Makes sense, no?

[EVDebs]

10. Ptech, the Saudi company related to 9-11 FAA, AirForce, WhiteHouse computers is the 'template'

""Ptech is used primarily to develop enterprise blueprints at the highest level of US government and corporate infrastructure. These blueprints hold every important functional, operational, and technical detail of the enterprise. A secondary use of this powerful tool is to build other smart tools in a short period of time. Ptech’s clients in 2001 included the Department of Justice, the Department of Energy, Customs, Air Force, the White House, the FAA, IBM, Sysco, Aetna, and Motorola, to name just a few. ""

from Dollars of Terror by Rachel Ehrenfeld
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17730

BTW, Ptech (now GoAgile) still has contracts in the DoD and White House. Go figure !

[lyonn]

12. Thanks for the reminder of the Ptech deal.

[lyonn]

11. Do ya think, outsources our military industrial complex

is insane. These type contracts to foreign countries boggles my mind. What am I missing here? We need jobs here. If we don't have the talent, which I doubt that, then it must be a matter of saving a buck. And if we don't have the skilled people here in the U.S. how about we make it easier to achieve a higher education with grants, etc (lower the cost!!!).

Why don't we just outsource our military, then we can at least save our young peoples lives and bodies.

[SayWhatYo]

14. outsourcing the military...

I was thinking about that the other day... I'm surprised that no one has said anything about giving a population dense country like India a few billion dollars to do our bidding in Iraq... In a war like Iraq, isn't 1000 solider considered better than one M1 tank?

Of course I'm not saying they should do that, in fact, I think all foreign troops should be out of Iraq... I'm just surprised that no one has ever suggested such a thing. I mean, over 300 billion dollars has been pumped into Iraq, right? How many countries would love to have 5% of that?

*The reason why I was thinking about that, is because I was listening to a debate about the "troop surge", and couldn't help but think that 20,000 troops won't do much good... Instead, it would probably require hundreds of thousands more... Which then lead me to think about the draft, but then I thought, nahhh, that wouldn't happen... Which then lead me to think about India and the billions of dollars being wasted.

[lyonn]

19. Insanity must be contagious! ha

Have we ever seen such a leadership in the U.S. make one major mistake after another for Six Years. We are all talking to ourselves, saying, what am I missing here? Why am I the only one that thinks we are surrounded by insane people running our country and there is No Relief in Sight.

Congress is becoming another big disappointment. Our presidential candidates to date have not inspired me with their brilliance either.

Edit: Welcome to DU and like your comment. After we are on this site for awhile and speak our mind we tend to repeat ourselves, or, I do anyway, but there are issues that cause me to rant.

[fujiyama]

23. The Indian government was asked to join the

"Coalition of the Willing".

They said, "no thanks". I'm sure the US offered some goodies like military aid, etc.

But Halliburton already outsources some of their service stuff to Indians. I heard several reports of Indians working in Iraq through a subcontractor of Halliburton. The Indian workers had their passports confiscated and were apparently treated like slave labor.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30F11FE3C580C748CDDAC0894DC404482

Maybe someone will try to get a bunch of mercenaries from India. They'd probably be cheaper than those from the US.

[UpInArms]

13. Bush economic report praises 'outsourcing' jobs

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04041/271362.stm

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The movement of U.S. factory jobs and white-collar work to other countries is part of a positive transformation that will enrich the U.S. economy over time, even if it causes short-term pain and dislocation, the Bush administration said yesterday.

The embrace of foreign "outsourcing," an accelerating trend that has contributed to U.S. job losses in recent years and become an issue in the 2004 elections, is contained in the president's annual report to Congress on the health of the U.S. economy.

"Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," said N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, which prepared the report. "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing."

The report, which predicts that the nation will reverse a three-year employment slide by creating 2.6 million jobs in 2004, is part of a weeklong effort by the administration to highlight signs that the recovery is picking up speed. Bush's economic stewardship has become a central issue in the presidential campaign, and the White House is eager to demonstrate that his policies are producing results.

In his message to Congress yesterday, Bush said the economy "is strong and getting stronger," thanks in part to his tax cuts and other economic programs. He said the nation had survived a stock market meltdown, recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was finally beginning to enjoy "a mounting prosperity that will reach every corner of America."

...more...

:eyes:

[OhioChick]

18. Yeah, Right.

And I'm sure those 2.6 million jobs created in 2004 were of a comparable salary. :sarcasm:
More like Walmart and McDonalds went on hiring sprees. :mad:

[lyonn]

20. And whose fault is it that we are in the mess we are in per bush:

"
In his message to Congress yesterday, Bush said the economy "is strong and getting stronger," thanks in part to his tax cuts and other economic programs. He said the nation had survived a stock market meltdown, recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and was finally beginning to enjoy "a mounting prosperity that will reach every corner of America."

bush hasn't a clue...... He appears to be impressed with Power (Washington and Papa's time on the throne) and feels entitled. No matter he is truly mentally incompetent. Those around him tell him he is doing a "good job" and to keep following their directions and he will go down in history as the "Greatest" and "Determined" and the "Decider". That's the only thing I can figure out with this idiot.

[Vidar]

15. The age of the robber barons was that of capitalistic feudalism==

evil, but you could easily identify & target the villains, as Teddy Roosevelt & other trust busters did. We have now regressed further to a capitalistic dark age, where it's every cutthroat & thief for himself under the dark cloak of corporate irresponsibility.

[The2ndWheel]

16. One integrated system

It's the same process that created the United States. From that perspective, outsourcing doesn't even exist. The more united and interconnected the world becomes, countries won't exist, it will be one state. Americans won't exist, Indians won't exist, America won't exist, India won't exist. It's not American security anymore. It's global security. It's the security of the system, the machine, whatever you want to call it. They're not American jobs, they're just jobs, human jobs. Even that aspect of it is becomming obsolete. We have machines that can make most things, and they're cheaper and more efficient than humans could ever be. Most of us are basically in the way, and so we mindlessly consume, because we have nothing else to do.

This is progress. Efficiency, predictability, sameness, perfection. Might as well get used to it. The future needs us less and less. People are too diverse, too inefficient, too unpredictable. This is what every empire/civilization/expanding center of power has always been building towards. Every time one of them crumbled, lost a war, died out, another was there to take over. This is just a continuation of that process. It's no longer an American empire, it's a global empire, or at least in the process of becomming one. Might be messy here and there, but that always gets taken care of.

[Bhaisahab]

17. Yes. I can agree with that assessment

This is how things will most probably pan out in the Globalized World (tm) - a corporate run planet instead of a nation-state run world. The old injustices and avarice will continue to prevail, except that the lines that determine who suffers and who gains will be removed. All hail GlobaCorp!

[lyonn]

21. Sounds like you just described world Communism

When you outsource critical elements of your society like the military for instance you are guaranteeing becoming insignificant and weak. Only people with all the money will control. That won't work, people eventually raise up against that kind of power.

We all like our identity, be it Indian, African, European, Muslim, etc., can't see that changing for a very long time.

[The2ndWheel]

22. Communism, Capitalism, Power

It's all the same in the big picture.

"When you outsource critical elements of your society like the military for instance you are guaranteeing becoming insignificant and weak."

Well if it's all one state, insignificant and weak compared to what?

"Only people with all the money will control."

Yup.

"That won't work, people eventually raise up against that kind of power."

Eventually. Until that point though...

If you rise up against that kind of power(America against Britain, for example), but don't actually change anything fundamentally(America expanded west, same as any other empire), you end up being what you were fighting against(America is now the empire Britain used to be, maybe a little less of one, but still an empire).

"We all like our identity, be it Indian, African, European, Muslim, etc., can't see that changing for a very long time."

I'm sure everyone has liked their identity throughout history. That never stopped any expanding center of power from trying to take it. Today, and in the future, we'll have our identity, but increasingly in name only. Identity can mean diversity. That's not what mass production and efficiency want. Those systems, which own more and more of life, want things identical. Wal-Marts everywhere, selling basically the same shirt, made by basically the same company. A McDonalds burger, the same the world over.

I agree with you on people not liking it though. That's part of the reason empires always crumble. But another thing that won't change any time soon is the consolidation and centralization of power, and the products it produces.