American politicians may retreat from their obsession with spying on people after it turned out that the biggest losers were actually corporations.

Spying on people seems to be more of a knee jerk reaction against terrorism, which was just a smoke screen for poor economic performance by the last presidents. However, it looks like the snooping is getting in the way of the priority of the United States – protecting big business.

Apparently, the NSA surveillance programs are very damaging for the US technology industry – according to a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the companies providing cloud computing services may lose around $35 billion over the next 3 years unless the authorities take action to alleviate the fears of US people that they are being snooped on.

At the moment, cloud computing and storage companies are regarded as the savior for both business and the economy, as this industry is growing very fast and is predicted to be worth $207 billion by 2016. However, the National Security Agency sees the cloud as a place containing all the personal data where it can be easily collected. On the other hand, it makes companies less likely to go with cloud stuff. The US companies are currently dominating the international cloud computing market, which means that piles of foreign cash would be rolling into the country from foreign parts. But due to surveillance reasons, foreign companies don’t trust US cloud computer companies anymore and the local cloud companies may lose up to 20% of the market to international rivals, which is a loss of $22-$35 billion.

At the moment, 10% of international companies have cancelled a project using a cloud computing service based in the United States, while over 50% of companies admitted they are “less likely” to use such service. Finally, over 1/3 of American companies claimed they have found it more difficult to do business outside of the United States due to NSA spying.

So, if you factor all that in, large corporations are almost certain to remind the NSA that this spying lark is going to have to stop. Maybe it won’t actually matter if occasionally somebody blows something up in the name of their terror campaign, so long as the business isn’t harmed.