Well, to be honest, the PSC is a setting tool. SARP was once a shared setting with stuff like Derran Tyler's NDI being more active, along with the foes confronting the Nerimians. Wes sought to create systems which would allow his ships to not have blind spot in regard to defenses when compared to those other universe so his SARP material wouldn't come up short or disadvantaged.
However, once in the hands of a Game Master, PSC becomes as powerful as the Game Master's plot dictates. So, if the Game Master wants to spring a threat based on psionics, he might find a way around PSC. If not, but when dealing with opponents whom might have access to such, he might just as well showcase PSC's effectiveness by having it protect from something the players would not have wanted to be on the receiving end of.
Bear in mind that as far as the NH-17T is concerned, along with other psionics that I consider affiliated with the Daughters of Eve (this reflects mostly on the Miharu plot) that I do not content myself with brute psionics and mental tweaks as the only things a NH-17T can do. While I do intend to enforce the Psi rules in regard to players, any powerful psionic NPC I handle as a GM might be able to perform feats like levitating a shuttlepod, throwing gouts of flames around and the like.
SARP characters had such powers before, and if some of the characters I use might be old enough to come from the time when they were able to pull off such feats, I have no intention of crimping on what they were. Essentially, I do not consider the current Psi rules backward-compatible.