Over at Early Warning, economist Stuart Staniford has a cogent thought about the effect of PRISM on US exports, and by extension, US manufacturing, especially in the tech sector:
If I'm a buyer at a non-US company and I'm contemplating putting my data on Amazon's cloud, using Google Docs, buying a Cisco router, even installing Microsoft Windows on my PCs, I now have to assume that the US company I want to do business with is in bed with the NSA. I have to assume that my enterprise data, my employee's personal data, etc, may be compromised by this new equipment or software ...
in every internal debate about whether to use the American solution or some other homegrown option, this information is going to put a finger on the scale ...
"Made in America", or at least "Designed in California", just took a massive hit to the brand.
Worth contemplating. As Ben Franklin is reputed to have said, he who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.