Whereas during the Cold War, espionage took the form of infiltrating government facilities, recruiting agents from within the government to hand over information, now the threat is economic espionage, where private corporations are being infiltrated by agents from all over the world. And they don’t even have to be a double agent (spying for two governments as in the Cold War), but they simply need to get hired or work as a contractor within a private corporation.

So much of what makes this country (and other major super powers) run is economic and corporate. We are no longer in an arms race but a world-wide economic race. This priority has replaced the arms race of the Cold War now for this country. Economic stability and prosperity is the foundation of what makes this country tick. Therefore, for other countries like China and Russia in particular, to get a hold of the secrets corporations possess for how they do business, making them so effective on the world market, is invaluable information. And unfortunately, this kind of information, as opposed to the kind during the Cold War, is much easier to obtain than infiltrating top secret government facilities, and may turn out to be much more dangerous.

The FBI is increasingly confronting the problem, particularly with the rising problem of Chinese spies within corporations (as cited in the articles listed below), but there are more and more agents coming from all over the world, taking advantage of this new found espionage. We seem to be at an even greater risk of losing our world-wide economic foothold now than in the Cold War with this type of espionage. If we can have our foundational foothold uprooted, our influence may diminish and China’s may increase (since they seem to be the primary agents we are catching). Interesting …

Here are some articles on the subject I have archived:

http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/secu … h%20spies/
http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/secu … e%20spies/
http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/secu … s%20Forum/
http://www.westerfunk.net/archives/secu … vel’/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline … spy/spies/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technol … 19656.html