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US Tech Companies Expected To Lose More Than $35 Billion Over NSA Spying
Patrick O'Neill writes: Citing significant sales hits taken by big American firms like Apple, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Salesforce, Qualcomm, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, a new report says losses by U.S. tech companies as a result of NSA spying and Snowden's whistleblowing "will likely far exceed" $35 billion. Previously, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation put the estimate lower when it predicted the losses would be felt mostly in the cloud industry. The consequences are being felt more widely and deeply than previously thought, however, so the number keeps rising.
I haven't seen any estimates on the benefits/profits to US (tech) companies from the industrial espionage part of the NSA spying published anywhere? Would anyone have a number or a link to a source?
Just trying to get some perspective here.
There was a report issued by the European Parliament some years ago about how the NSA used the Echelon system on behalf of US corporations to spy on their competitors. That report cited somel successful NSA industrial espionage operations but it is a bit dated now. Back then the conclusion was that any company that did not switch all of its communications to encrypted tech and didn't hire security consultants was basically asking the NSA to hand its trade secrets to American competitors (and I'm sure the same applies to US companies vis a vis Russian/Chinese/European competitors). Of course very few people listened back then. I'll be disappointed if the NSA hasn't taken their industrial espionage operation to the next level since then. I keep hoping the the European Parliament will issue an updated second edition of this report.