As Americans I think we have reached some kind of milestone for irony when we are being (validly) lectured by the heirs to our cold war nemesis about privacy.

BTW, I think modern day Russia is pretty epic to visit, and there are a lot of brilliant engineers there.

Russia government is hypocritical. They criticize US government because of Prism, but at the same time they close and censor newspapers, TV channels, and websites. They also murder and imprison journalists and everyone else who disagrees with them.

US was, and still is much more free country than Russia.

>BTW, I think modern day Russia is pretty epic to visit, and there are a lot of brilliant engineers there.

Unfortunately most of the engineers emigrated to US or other European countries after break up of Soviet Union. Right now, science in Russia is only remnants of the past glory. Russia has declined a lot since the break up of Soviet Union. During Soviet Union, life sucked but there was huge amounts of research, and Russian engineering, chess and mathematics were as good as US counterparts.

During Revolution, most Russian intelligentsia either escaped to the west or got shot. By providing free education, Soviet Union steadily re-build the class. But when Soviet Union fell apart there was a huge brain drain. All the good scientists moved to the West. In Russia, it is much more profitable to be a criminal and steal from the people instead of contributing anything something.

Before, Russia was a country run by crazy, paranoid government, and now it is a country run by criminals.

Sounds like Bulgaria.

This smells like gamesmanship on the part of the Russians. I assume our State Department would do the same if the shoe were on the other foot. In any .case, I'm sure the Russians, and everyone else finds the irony delicious. As far as I am concerned, I welcome any negative influence from any source WRT spying on everyone, all of the time.

I can vouch for there being brilliant engineers.

I recently went to an ACM ICPC practice week in Zurich. The teams present were mostly evenly matched, except for the Russians. They kicked ass completely. They won every single day by a long way.

I suspect that's a math-heavy competition? This goes back to the times of Dijkstra, who - when visiting Russia - wrote quite unflatteringly about most stuff Soviet but the one thing he praised was that his Russian lecture attendees were uncommonly well-grounded in math and the theory of computation.

A friend of mine wrote a 'memoir' of his start in mathematics research as a schoolboy in St Petersburg: http://windowsontheory.org/2013/04/12/research-life-stories-...

Incidentally, he was on the team finishing in 2nd place in 1998 ACM finals.

> I think modern day Russia is pretty epic to visit

It is, but as an old joke goes - just make sure to not confuse tourism for immigration.

It's interesting that this event may spur countries into making their own electronics, rather than depending on multinational corporations which may include "special features" for the US government.

This encouragement of nationalism may be what we need to reduce the number of unemployed.

Good for consumers too. I wouldn't mind seeing... say... Indonesia's take on the app store concept. Growing middle class there that all want to teach their kids english.

These sorts of crises generate massive opportunities.

I think this gets filed under "Creative Destruction".

I don't see how it's good for consumers as prices will rise

I want to see "Made in USA" on more electronic devices.

Given the late surveillance system revelations...

I don't.

>It's interesting that this event may spur countries into making their own electronics

Or, more likely, some hand-waving policy that states "cooperation in fighting the thread of global terrorism" and more monitoring/gathering of data.

Self-sufficiency is the route to poverty.

so is dependency...

that's the great aporia.

Our only choices are slavery[1] or autarky[2]?

[1] Most of us are effectively slaves to the few companies that distribute food.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autarky

This is really just a distraction.

Currently Russia is using Syria and this as a distraction for much more low-profile energy consolidation moves in Eastern Europe. Russia doesn't care a white about NSA surveillance (they do the same thing after all with impunity) - what they do care about is keeping world focus away from moves to consolidate influence in their periphery.

Just like Qatar and its western allies are trying to use Syria… makes no difference to ordinary citizens in Syria…

lol: "NSA Is No Match for the FSB"

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/nsa-is-no-matc...