This activity is designed to influence sensitive economic policy decisions, obtain sensitive economic policy information, manipulate proprietary economic information (including trade secrets) or copy critical technologies. Economic espionage is clandestine or unlawful activity sponsored or coordinated by a foreign power. Cases of theft include technological advances in paint, Kevlar, and seeds and grain, as well as traditional targets such as military telecommunications.In late 2018, David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), told members of the Economic Club of Canada that espionage, and in particular state sponsored economic espionage, represented a “ long term threat to Canada’s economy and to our prosperity”. In one example, spies were targeting the manufacturers of sprinkler heads hoping to gain an edge in their market by stealing manufacturing techniques to make the company more efficient. The aim of economic espionage is to save a company the capital it would typically spend on research and development by just copying the processes of proven methods of production. “The playing field is not level” when a single company faced with relentless targeting by individuals or entities who have the backing of a foreign government, he said. “The Chinese government plays a significant role” in economic espionage, Evanina said. While the theft of corn seeds may appear innocuous, in reality the company that developed them spent tens of millions of dollars on research to perfect the technology. company to be pest and drought resistant. In one case, the FBI says Chinese nationals were caught digging in corn fields in Iowa in search of seeds developed by a U.S. There have also been recent cases of trade secret theft which included dumpster diving for intellectual property such as discarded prototypes. Social media and sites like LinkedIn are also being utilized in economic espionage where potential recruits can be found and contacted based on relevant knowledge and work experience. The FBI continues to see spear phishing attempts, when an email or link appears legitimate but is in fact a bogus message intended on tricking recipients into offering up personal information. And we only discovered later that he had downloaded a whole bunch of our data onto his own personal hard drive,” Ubel said. “One of our key employees, a lab director, quit one day, and wouldn’t tell us where he was going. “My company had first-hand experience dealing with an economic espionage case,” Andy Ubel, the chief intellectual property counsel of Valspar, said in an FBI-produced video entitled “The Company Man: Protecting America’s Secrets,” which aims to “raise awareness of the growing economic espionage threat,” the bureau says on its YouTube page. One of the most concerning means of obtaining sensitive industry secrets is through the use of “insider threats,” or employees who are familiar with the inner workings of a particular technology being recruited by foreign agents in exchange for large amounts of cash. In a survey conducted by the FBI, half of the 165 private companies that participated have claimed to be victims of economic espionage or theft of trade secrets, and 95% of those attempts originated from individuals associated with the Chinese government. Many of the tools used are the same as the ones used to track terrorists, he said. “Economic security is national security,” said Bill Evanina, the head of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and one of the agents leading the charge in stemming the threat to corporations. But the FBI not only considers this a threat to American economic prosperity, but to its physical security as well. economy, the FBI has launched a nationwide campaign intended to warn industry leaders of the danger they face from foreign actors. To highlight this growing threat to the U.S. He cited examples of large corporations successfully targeted in the past such as DuPont, Lockheed Martin and Valspar, who have since worked with the bureau to further safeguard their intellectual property. companies, with a vast majority of the perpetrators originating from China with ties to the nation’s government, authorities said Thursday.Īt a briefing at the FBI’s Washington headquarters, the head of the agency’s counterintelligence division, Randall Coleman, said the bureau has seen a 53% increase in economic espionage cases, or the theft of trade secrets leading to the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars, over the past year. The FBI has seen a sharp rise in economic espionage cases aimed at U.S.
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