It's very important to clarify that the NSA didn't make them use it. The DoD required it as terms for future contracts. Juniper grabbed the money in knowing exchange for putting their customers at risk.
Why does that distinction matter? It dramatically increases Juniper's culpability in the scheme. If the DoD had actually forced them to use it, that dramatically reduces Juniper's culpability.
If a company refuses, they are making a decision (more of a gamble). Corporations will almost universally sacrifice customer safety for profit. Especially when they are making a decision between "for sure losing opportunity money" and "maybe losing money after a court case".
That does not mean they aren't liable when things go bad.
Nacchio simply tried to use it as an excuse. He was just throwing shit against the wall and hoping that some of it stuck. Here's his claim: he was not in a rightful state of mind when he sold his shares because of problems with his son, and the imminent announcement of a number of government contracts.
Yeah sure, I know exactly what he means. Whenever I'm not in a "rightful state of mind" the way I cope with it is to dump company stock that I'm restricted from selling. /s
Nacchio was nothing but a greedy scumbag, and he went to Federal prison because of it.
The Wikipedia article says, as do other accounts, that beam splitters were used to tap into fiber optic lines. That might in fact be how it was done, but I do not think that was necessary.
IIRC, Juniper core routers were (uniquely, at the time?) capable of duplicating traffic on a NIC to another NIC without performance impact on capacity as a whole. This would have made them particularly suitable for mass surveillance that would not show up in network management metrics.
“We want you to backdoor your product for ‘National Security’ and if you do, we’ll buy many millions of dollars worth of your gear.”
What doesn’t make sense about that?
It doesn't absolve the NSA of any guilt here either, but this is not a helpless Juniper giving in due to full weight and power of the government.