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One of my coworkers actually expressed this sentiment to me. He's generally a smart guy but I don't know how you get across how damaging this is to basic commerce.

The NSA is destroying the American technical industry piece by piece. How do we approach this existential crisis, when the folks behind the NSA apparently don't give a shit what damage they do to America?

The money is what matters politically. Interestingly in this case, while that's one of the most sickening aspects of US politics these days (the extreme dominance of money), it's also the one we can count on here. Enough damage - which seems to be a matter of time now - and a lot more companies will stand up and 'force' their politicians to dismantle the NSA's programs.

Either that or the military industrial complex has reached a point of scale where it's basically going to end up destroying itself by bleeding out the economy and the tax dollars required to fund such a massive beast.

I'd argue that there's no scenario in which the military industrial complex survives intact going forward, short of WW3. That's particularly fitting timing wise, as America has reached all sorts of crossroads in its path forward (huge generation changing issues on debt, education, standards of living, war, jobs).

edit:

Another thought - it's also going to self-cripple the military by eroding the US technology sector (capital seeds tech companies in other countries instead of the US as a response, so more technology is created outside the US in the future, in a downward spiral, potentially depriving the NSA and military of all sorts of technology and access). The relative US technology lead has been a massive competitive advantage for the military for a century.

Isightful. And the follow-up question is: since the military industrial complex has probably already reached this conclussion, will they force war? I mean, in a more direct way than what we are used to ...

In this light, trusting the USA to responsably handle the nuclear arsenal may prove to be the biggest mistake that the international community has done since WWII.

The nuclear arsenal is for Russia and China and self-defense, it's useless in WW3 unless mutual assured end-of-civilization is desired (or as a one-off response to someone like Iran or Pakistan using a nuke or a small number of them). That arsenal is no more risky in the US hands than in, say, the hands of Russia or China or Britain or France.

The military industrial complex wants money and power, not global annihilation - always remember it's run by people, and they want what most people in power want. It's not a complicated beast, it's mostly about the world's largest slush fund, $700 some odd billion up for grabs every year, and they want all of it and more if they can get it. The military people want to play military, and the industrial people want to play industry, and they leverage each other to that end.

Yes, I think they'll force more wars. Something that big and powerful, in a state of desperation for survival, is scary indeed. I think that's what the play in the 'sandbox' (the middle east, aka where you can launch wars and suffer no domestic enemy retaliation and you can't hardly 'lose' in a classic historical sense) has been largely about, excuses to spend large amounts of money and build & experiment with shiny new war machines. If it had been about economics, oil for example, we'd already control most of the oil in the middle east (we'd have taken Saudi Arabia and Iraq's oil through force). I think that explains Wesley Clark's shocking admission about the Pentagon planning all the wars far in advance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSL3JqorkdU

Exacerbating this, emigration to other countries in an intellectual flight as employment overseas becomes ultimately more lucrative or desirable from a technical standpoint.

Not great...

Here's the thing:

Every country that CAN collect data IS collecting data.

If they are manufacturing anything that can be hacked to collect data and they can feasibly get away with it (read: there is no independent oversight), you can bet it is being done.

Germany is no different than France is no different from the US is no different than China etc. etc.

The only difference is they haven't had their Snowdens come out of the woodwork yet.

I can guarantee the US intelligence apparatus is right now trying to figure out how to out a few of these foreign programs so that the US does not look quite so bad in comparison without causing a diplomatic meltdown.

I think it's deluded to expect any country to come even close to what the US is doing except maybe China. The budgets of all are not anywhere high enough to pull such a thing off. The US has moved on a dark and lonely path after 9/11.. Not only in espionage, but also in remote killings, illegal imprisonment and torture. To say others do just the same seems deluded.

Europe outsources a good deal of their defense and intelligence to the US, and for good reason, why spend money on redundant systems when the West is working together.

http://cphpost.dk/news/denmark-is-one-of-the-nsas-9-eyes.761...

I can agree with your point that nobody quite reaches the scale of the US.

I mean, I am not suggesting Uganda has huge data warehousing and analysis compounds or anything absurd like that.

But I do suggest that every country is doing what they are capable. And countries like Japan, China, UK, Israel, Germany, Russia etc. are capable of quite a lot.

"Germany is no different than France is no different from the US is no different than China etc. etc"

What evidence do you have of this?

I'm highly suspicious of the fact that the German and French governments are spying on their populace as widely as the US government is on its.

Is there any possible justification under 'national security' for wiretapping Merkel or the president of Brazil?

Unless people think that Merkel is secretly in cahoots with some kind of extremist group, it's obvious that this kind of spying is done exclusively to get an economical edge when negotiating treaties.

Are you serious? National security != fighting terrorists. From Wikipedia for the lazy.

> National security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic power, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States after World War II. Initially focusing on military might, it now encompasses a broad range of facets, all of which impinge on the non military or economic security of the nation and the values espoused by the national society. Accordingly, in order to possess national security, a nation needs to possess economic security, energy security, environmental security, etc. Security threats involve not only conventional foes such as other nation-states but also non-state actors such as violent non-state actors, narcotic cartels, multinational corporations and non-governmental organisations; some authorities include natural disasters and events causing severe environmental damage in this category.

> The US will not perform economic espionage as long as the US has a technological edge

Spying on the head of the EU-anti-monopoly investigations against Microsoft and Google is already industrial espionage.

> Who says this?

Since you jogged my memory, here's one person who has said it: Richard Clarke, U.S. National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism 1992-2003 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3769442

> we can be sure that any country capable of doing economic espionage has been doing it, is doing it, and will continue to do it, no matter the rules, no matter if they get caught, no matter the hypocrital public posturing of their leaders.

Why can we be sure of this? Simply from a rudimentary game-theoretic analysis? Isolated incidents of industrial spying aren't enough to show that this activity is as ubiquitous and inevitable as you say it must be.

It is not only from a theoretical standpoint: rules get broken, whenever it seems convenient, there are resources to break them, and there is an advantage to be obtained to break them. From an outside observer, the rules get broken randomly: rules get broken continuosly, sometimes more, sometimes less. Would you deny that?

But the important point is that there is absolutely no consequence of breaking the rules. Will the US be kicked out from the OCDE? Will they be sanctioned? The mere idea is laughable.

The only pressure possible is money: we need to put pressure on the US economy to change its ways.

Not that we will ever believe them again ...