Yet more evidence has emerged about how damaging the NSA’s PRISM program has been for US tech firms since Ed Snowden first revealed its existence, but the question is now, do these same corporations have enough power to put a stop to it?

One undeniable fact about the United States of America, since it booted out the British all those years ago, is that most of the major political decisions have been made with an eye to furthering its corporate interests.

That’s not the case with the government’s decision to start snooping on its citizens. Rather, it was more of a panic-stricken, knee-jerk reaction to the threat of terrorist attacks – which in turn, some might argue, is really just a way of disguising how badly the American economy has been performing over the last few years.

Either way, PRISM was not launched with the best interests of US corporations in mind, and now we’re seeing evidence that it’s getting in the way of priority number one – which is to ensure that US businesses reign supreme over the rest of the world.

There are several indications that the NSA’s spying is having a very damaging impact on US tech firms. I speculated on this damage back in June, following calls by a German politician and others for Europeans to start boycotting US firms in retaliation for PRISM. Later, the first real evidence of PRISM damaging the US tech economy emerged in a report from Wikibon’s Scott Lowe, who warned that foreign companies were looking for alternatives (such as Artmotion in Switzerland) that were free from US law. The fallout has extended further in the last couple of weeks, with ‘secure’ email providers LavaBit and SilentCircle both closing down their services, lamenting the fact that email is impossible to completely secure. This was followed by the decision of Groklaw founder Pamela Jones to shut down her popular blog, citing the same lack of email security.

Now, a new report from Daniel Castro of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has emerged, warning the US cloud computing service providers stand to lose up to $35 billion in the next three years (around 10% of their total business), due to the loss of trust in the wake of PRISM. Castro cites the fact that already, as many as 10% of foreign firms have canceled projects that involve a US-based cloud service, while another 56% say they are “less likely” to do business with US-based cloud companies. The report goes onto claim that the only way to end this damage is for Congress to step up and take action to alleviate concerns that people’s private data is being spied on.

But Congress will only take action if its put under enough pressure to do so – the question is, do cloud computing companies have the necessary clout?

One thing that’s clear is that US cloud companies can’t be happy about the NSA spying on their client’s data. The likes of Google and Yahoo have come out publicly and said as much, pressing the government to allow them to reveal more about how they handle requests for user data, something they claim they’re unable to do lawfully. Another thing we know is that big money almost always talks – and as far as cloud services are concerned, this is likely to be a $207 billion industry by the end of 2016.

Today, US companies utterly dominate the world’s cloud computing markets, and they don’t intend on giving this up. Most likely, if Google, Amazon and others all team up and demand greater transparency, the NSA will be forced to put an end to its snooping free-for-all and start playing by the rules. That’s the only way to stop that $207 billion industry from slipping out of America’s grasp, and with that much cash at stake, the big wigs in Washington will surely start towing the line. After all, what does it matter if a few bombs start going off now and then, so long as America’s big businesses are not harmed?