Charles Cooper reports that venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has called former NSA contractor Edward Snowden a traitor for leaking national secrets about US surveillance practices and says that foreign nations may use the disclosures as an excuse to promote their domestic technology suppliers over American rivals. "Obviously he's a traitor," says Andreessen. "Like if you look up in the encyclopedia 'traitor,' there's a picture of Ed Snowden. Like he's a textbook traitor. They don't get much more traitor than that. I will say that I'm in the distinct minority out here. Most people in Silicon Valley would pick the other designation."
Andreessen added that NSA leaks may well wind up getting used as a cudgel by foreign governments against American companies that depend on overseas sales. "There's a big open question right now how successful our companies will be when they go sell products overseas," says Andreessen. "I think there are a lot of foreign companies that are very envious of Silicon Valley and America's domination of tech and wish that they could implement protection policies. And they are going to use this whole affair as a reason to do that ... as an excuse."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LookIntoTheFuture on Saturday June 07 2014, @11:04AM
The problem isn't the leaks. It is the actions of the NSA. Stop blaming the messenger!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 07 2014, @12:21PM
Exactly. Lets flip this around. Had it been China that was caught doing something it shouldn't be doing and trying to hide it would we get upset them because they were unable to keep their actions a secret demanding that they try harder next time or would we get upset at them for doing something they shouldn't be doing in the first place?
If someone gets caught stealing something or cheating on a test do we get upset at them because they got caught and shouldn't have, demanding they try harder to get away with it next time, or do we get upset at them for doing something they shouldn't be doing and punish them to deter them from doing it again?