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In Depth

Nation States' Espionage and Counterespionage

An overview of the 2007 Global Economic Espionage Landscape

By Christopher Burgess

Page 15

As said above, the FBI went so far as to place an advertisement in various Chinese language dailies, soliciting volunteers with information about Chinese interest in U.S. firms, and especially those who may have information about the activities of the Ministry of State Security. Brazen and unprecedented, but perhaps quite effective, although we'll never know just how successful. One can only assume the noise factor of MSS activities in the U.S. had reached such a level that the leadership of the FBI had decided that the political fallout of their advertisement far outweighed the potential positive results of their efforts—the verification and identification of Chinese espionage activity in the U.S. against public and private entities. The FBI should be commended for being proactive.

One doesn't need a dowsing stick to divine from where the nation-state threat originates or exists. Corporations everywhere have arrived at the correct conclusion: They are potentially up to their hips in deep water with respect to protecting their intellectual property from a number of interested nation-states.

As evidenced from the aforementioned examples, the protection of corporate technologies and intellectual properties has become a global phenomenon, the need for which shows no signs of abating. It is clear, however, that two countries lead the list of those most invested in the illicit acquisition of advanced technologies from companies, research institutes and enterprises to both advance their own economies, as well as provide data points with respect to their own national security strategies, and those are China and Russia.

The cacophony of complaints and call-outs both from the countries that are discovering the handiwork of others, as well as their own self-described interest in the activity, are both clear and concise. If you do business with or in either of these countries, be aware.

The U.S. National Counterintelligence Executive Joel Brenner offered his opinion on what he called "acquisition risk" in his October 24, 2007, speech to the National Reconnaissance Office/National Military Intelligence Association Counterintelligence Symposium on strategic counterintelligence issues of the 21st century. The topic of acquisition risk â¬ and especially product manipulation, according to Brenner, is one of significant and strategic counterintelligence import to the U.S. government but clearly applicable to all governments and corporations. "What are we buying?" he said. "What does "Made in USA" mean when components come from overseas and the software in the electronics may have been written by God-only-knows-whom? Unknown or sketchy provenance raises the risk that a foreign government or organization could program vulnerabilities into our most sensitive information systems."