"Prism" exposure drives US cloud computing industry to lose as much as $35 billion trillion

This is the first serious assessment of how cloud service providers, including Amazon, Google (Weibo) and Microsoft, will be affected after the US National Security Agency's electronic surveillance program has been exposed. More and more evidence that non-US companies are concerned that the U.S. National Security Agency, other U.S. law enforcement agencies and national security authorities may use the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act to obtain electronic data from third parties that are cancelling or reducing the use of services from US cloud computing service providers.

The report notes that, because "prism" projects and other monitoring projects have been exposed, if foreign clients believe that the risk of storing data in an American company is greater than the benefits, "this could have a direct and permanent impact on the competitiveness of the US cloud computing industry." The information Technology and Innovation Foundation points out that the US has been a leader in global cloud computing services, but the US is also the most profitable and most costly. "Many of the benefits of cloud computing services, such as jobs and income growth, depend on America's ability to export cloud computing services."

Because cloud computing services are booming, concerns about monitoring US cloud services companies are likely to be particularly acute. From 2012 to 2016, as the global IT market grew by nearly 3% a year, cloud services output was expected to grow by one-fold to around $207 billion trillion. "Until recently, the vast majority of expected growth in the global cloud computing services market was monopolized by US companies," the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said in its report. But because of the NSA's electronic surveillance program, it could change market dynamics fundamentally. ”

To complete the research, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation investigated the members of the Cloud Security Alliance (Cloud) (Alliance). Of the non-US companies surveyed, 10% said they had canceled collaborative projects with US cloud services providers and 56% said it was unlikely to use US cloud computing services. 36% of U.S. companies surveyed said the exposure of the NSA's electronic surveillance program made it difficult for them to do business in overseas markets.