Espionage Essay, Research Paper

Many people just don’t realize what espionage is. It involves Industrial, Economic, and just plain old fashion spying. In order to better understand this phenomenon, we must review the history, briefly, of espionage and define the types and impacts of its modern versions.

“The end Of the Cold War has caused an evolution in the definition of national security.”(Diane C. Snyder 1.)

Economic crime and corruption has caused companies to lose over $260 billion dollars a year from the United States alone. And in foreign companies have lost over $140 billion dollars. To this day there are 23 different countries practicing Economic and Industrial Espionage (spying) against the U.S. In some cases, countries take the information that they have stolen from United States companies and sell the secrets to their own domestic stores/companies to compete with U.S. companies and companies around the world. The top three offenders are Russia, which is going all out on spying for its own marketing befits, Japan is the one country who stole the Microchip industry during the 1980’s, and France who is a major ally to the U.S. France has been spying on us for a long time and it is starting to skyrocket.(Diane C. Snyder)

“On the offensive side, the United States should adopt a more aggressive “Macro Level” intelligence policy.”(Diane C. Snyder 1)

It is against U.S. policy to conduct espionage. The people who think we should develop a new policy should recognize that the U.S. “will fight fire with fire” (Diane C. Snyder). There is a huge phenomenal, growing pain in the economy, the reason why is we are targets because the United States has the most advanced technology. And maybe the secrets we steal now have already been stolen from us.(Diane C. Snyder 1)

“On the defensive side, the intelligence community (IC) should continue its efforts to improve counterintelligence .” (Diane C. Snyder).

The Economic Espionage Act of 1996 is a step in the right direction because it protects U.S. firms . The act protects trade secrets and this is what our companies and our government wants. The law should not be justifiable for the U.S. alone. “The United States should also continue its effort to level the Economic playing field, altering foreign governments to their knowledge of unfair bids. This practice often results in at least a partial awarding of a contract to an American firm” (Diane C. Snyder 2).

The Brown commission says that the IC should lower their level of economic info. because the government tends to copy. The government should be careful what they duplicate because it can not serve as intelligence. Information that we steal could serve as a useful engine. This could be good for confirming and disclaiming what is out there. The CIA should give the IC most of its info, because there is no reason for the CIA to take their funds somewhere else. Intelligence could prove to be the best way to improve our economic well being. Since Economic Intelligence has replaced military use for spying this is the best time to start getting involved in the intelligence community.(Diane C. Snyder 2)

Industrial Espionage is “use of, or facilitation of, illegal clandestine, coercive or deceptive means by a private sector entry or its surrogates to acquire economic intelligence” (Diane C. Snyder 3). Our government doesn’t support the idea of stealing trade secrets to compete with the competition abroad. And the U.S. government will not conduct any spying activity against foreign firms to better the United States firms. To put in a simple terms it is wrong to the government if we steal and spy against other nations. For a number of years the NSA has collected secrets and has bugged conversations to help policy makers make and format new laws against stealing secrets from U.S. companies.(Diane C. Snyder 3)

“Economic espionage has aided the profit of the private sector”(Diane C. Snyder 3).

The M15 and M16 Agency

The M15 was one of the most successful counterintelligence agencies in the world during the 19th and 20th century. The agency was created in 1909 under Vernon Kell who was its chief, a position he kept until 1940. M15 is in charge of keeping national security in Great Britain. M15 is much like the U.S. FBI. However unlike the M15 the M16 agency has no jurisdiction in Great Britain. It is in charge of gathering worldwide intelligence. It had evolved from the SIS (The Secret Intelligence Service). The service is very secretive but gets its funds from the British Government each year. During the 1960’s the service was redone because of some defective agents to Mother Russia. The agents who went to Russia were Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess. (http://members.xoom.com/_XMCM/1spy/M15.html)

Gestapo

The Gestapo was Adolf Hitler’s secret police during World War II. This secret force of police was created on April 23, 1933 after Hitler came to power in Germany. The police was made up of Police officers who were dismissed for beatings, and killings of the German people. They were also composed of army officers who had committed huge crimes. They only said their allegiance to

Hitler.(http://members,xoom.com/_XMCM/1spy/Gestapo.html)

What I think the United States should do is go all out on spying because we need the information. We need to stop all of these foreign foes who steal are most detailed secrets. The people of the U.S. should put pressure on the government to start a counter intelligence agency. We can’t stay out of the “spy” world for very long. I bet in the next 50 years the U.S. government will wish they started stealing Economic Secrets from other countries. This is a major issue in the U.S. even though the Press doesn’t write about it and no one really cares.