Former CIA head confirms US industrial espionage

Scott Martens Scott.Martens at eng.sun.com
Mon Mar 13 10:52:06 PST 2000


Heise Online (German computer zine) has an article up in English about US economic espionage against Europeans. Apparenet James Woolsey has confirmed it all before Congress. The article is at http://www.heise.de/tp/deutsch/special/ech/6662/1.html

The juiciest bit:

He [Woolsey] claimed that economic spying was

justified because European companies had a

"national culture" of bribery and were the

"principle offenders from the point of view

of paying bribes in major international

contracts in the world".

I find it incredibly amusing in light of the nature of US election campaign financing that anyone would claim the Europeans have a "culture of bribery."

I suspect the justification of spying on allies because of bribery is pure nonsense. If European companies really are notorious corrupters (by comparison to American companies), it's still probably cheaper to match the bribes than to run an espionage system.

Another good bit:

[Woolsey] claimed that the US had little

need of high-tech espionage because "in

a number of areas ... American industry is

technologically the world leader".

However, this was "not universally true. There

are some areas of technology where American

industry is behind those of companies in other

countries. [But] by and large American companies

have no need nor interest in stealing foreign

technology in order to stay ahead".

Well, I know that aviation and aerospace is still pretty competitive, and the US isn't always winning. Despite Silicon Valley, Japan is still pretty competitive in electronics, and biotech is pretty strong in Europe and Canada. True, American companies aren't suffering in terms of technology, but I don't think America's lead is as big as all that.

Besides, the most useful information to steal isn't always technology. Plans and strategies can be even more useful.

Does anybody know why Woolsey is talking about this now? THOMAS isn't telling me anything, but its search is notoriously useless.

Scott Martens



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