DoD will likely ban Zoom

Department of Defense will likely ban Zoom. It is my understanding that the Army already has…

I just think Zoom will never get over the stigma of being a Chinese company with servers in China. Guilt by association…

Cobra

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I just think Zoom will never get over the stigma of being a Chinese company with servers in China. Guilt by association…

A Chinese company? Where are you getting your info from?

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Founder is Chinese. Servers in China. It is currently viewed as a Chinese company/proxy whether you like it or not…

The investing thesis has changed to to its security flaws or even perception…

Cobra

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Department of Defense will likely ban Zoom.

Take that as a ringing endorsement of Zoom. DoD is far too regulatory driven, fractured, and legal-bound to use a newer product like Zoom. They cant react fast enough. Think of DoD as deny by default. Everything is denied unless its specifically procured through a multi-year process. All of DoD already has contracts in place for chat, voice, and video - and most of those products are ancient. There are some users on O365 of course, and benefiting from Microsoft Teams, but thats not the norm.

I havent read anything about this ban but if it does come, I suspect its for personal use. In other words, they have told the soldiers not to use it on their cell phones and personal laptops.

-AJ

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This is my last post on Zoom. Disclosure, I have sold all my shares that I purchased in the 60s/70s…

IMO, the thesis has changed with the security concerns and the increasing number of companies banning zoom. Chinese founder/Chinese data centers are bad optics right now. Additionally, I think most everyone (individuals) will never end up being paid users when things go back to normal…

I think ZOOM has done a good thing buy believe it will be a fad. Or, like TIVO…

Cobra

“I think ZOOM has done a good thing buy believe it will be a fad.”

Cobra,

I respect any investors’ opinion to either purchase or sell a position. On the other hand; I have to say that I am going to put this post on annual replay and pull it up every year, on this anniversary, to see where we all ended up as Zoom investors.

If you haven’t figured out by this point, I am taking the other side of the “fad” bet.

[Ref: Zoom Video Communications closed at $124.51 ($34.739B)on this date (April 9, 2020) in the midst of both the Covid-19 crisis as well as an attack regarding Zoom’s privacy and security policies and features.]

Harley

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Hey did you know that AWS has huge massive data centers in China. In fact most of Zoom servers “in China” run on AWS in China. You know who they serve with their China servers? Only Chinese Zoom users. They have 2 data centers or so in China and somewhere around 20 worldwide. Most are in North America where the majority of their business is.

It’s true they made a very temporary mistake while upgrading and didn’t geo-fence some data centers from load sharing. That was fixed in April 2 and they put procedures in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Zoom Chinese servers are entirely irrelevant to the DoD here’s why.

Amazon runs AWS Government Cloud, where Zoom for Government runs. Zoom for government is authorized by DoD and Air Force and FedRamp. Government cloud is closed off from all outside servers and will not load share. This is guaranteed by Amazon. And reminder AWS has Chinese Servers.

You know who else “has Chinese servers”.

Apple - FaceTime
Facebook-Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram
Google-Hangouts, Meet, Duo
Cisco-WebEx
Microsoft-Teams, Skype

Guess what. American tech does business in China. Where will DoD go to avoid a company that has Chinese Servers?

DoD will not find a way around that.

Zoom is having some non-existential stumbles, but they are a good American company with a CEO with as an American story as anyone I know. I hope they do not suffer from media hyped Chinese Xenophobia.

Darth

Darth

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Zoom is having some non-existential stumbles, but they are a good American company with a CEO with as an American story as anyone I know. I hope they do not suffer from media hyped Chinese Xenophobia.

Darth, thank you for post. Very informative and helpful. I’ve highlighted only the above statement because it echoes my thoughts about a couple of recent posts here about Zoom, and my concerns about Chinese Xenophobia.

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Understandable, Cobra.

I mean, it’s not like the NSA can read any email message they want, just because they all route through their HQ.

Oh, wait a minute …

Well, it’s not like the American DOD would ever hack into a company’s server.

Oh, wait a minute …

At least it’s not like the American police can instantly find out where your phone has traveled lately.

Oh, wait a minute …

Certainly the CIA never owned a popular, world-wide security company along with another country’s secret police.

Oh, wait a minute …

Methinks we should worry about our own house first.

Dan

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Like it or not but the media will continue its onslaught on Zoom. It has several reasons from cornavirus, ceo from there, and lastly foreign investors just lost everything on Lukin Coffee.

Don’t get me wrong, Zooms the best Video platform out there but it’s gonna take awhile to get the media off it’s back.

In fact most of Zoom servers “in China” run on AWS in China. You know who they serve with their China servers? Only Chinese Zoom users.

The problem with Zoom having lied about only sending Chinese data there previously is that it makes them much harder to believe when they say, ‘Believe us this time, NOW we’re telling the truth unlike last week!’

You would be a fool to believe everything a CEO tells you a week after he very publicly got caught lying about this very issue, as well as others involving encryption. They won’t even issue their transparency report for another ~85 days.

They may have actually fixed the problems this time. People may start to trust them again. This may all be forgotten by the end of the year if Zoom prints great revenues and earnings numbers.

But nobody, Chinese, American, Mexican CEO or otherwise gets their integrity back 7 days after they were caught lying and had to issue a new and improved PR about what they were doing with your personal or professional data.

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…Zoom having lied about…

Naj,
I’m reading your post and it all sounds familiar. In fact it IS familiar since you have said it all already two or three times in recent posts. We are trying to get off Zoom and on to other subjects. Please help out.
Thanks,
Saul

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