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| France vs. US: Economic Espionage Worth $100s of Billions |
| 2005-05-02 |
| Overshadowed since 9/11 and the age of spectacularly explosive acts of terrorism, economic espionage against businesses, industries, technology, and trade interests continues to erode American economic strength and, consequently, U.S. national security. The notoriety of a French school dedicated to teaching the finer points of what is called 'business intelligence,' may be drawing more attention to a type of warfare that, pre 9/11, was considered a grave threat to America. Al Qaeda's 2001 strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon dealt a serious blow to the nation's economic wellbeing in direct losses and in a profound ripple effect nationwide. Economic espionage wields the potential to cause greater damage, experts fear. It can serve to destroy the rewards of investment and, hence, "to destroy the incentive to innovate," in the words of Peter Schweizer, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The U.S. economy is the world's leader in no small part because of the tremendous innovation that goes on here. In fact, the very socialist underpinnings of European economies tend to stifle innovation. As former CIA Director R. James Woolsey explained in a March 17, 2000 Wall Street Journal op-ed, "[European] governments largely still dominate [their] economies, so you have much greater difficulty than [the U.S.] in innovating, encouraging labor mobility, reducing costs, attracting capital to fast-moving young businesses and adapting quickly to changing economic circumstances." Unable to change their economic foundations, Europeans have found that "[I]t's so much easier to keep paying bribes." What makes the threat of economic espionage against the U.S. unique from other security concerns is that the culprit nations are, by all other accounts, America's strongest allies and trading partners. In a world of increasing globalization, competition, and economic integration, however, they have become our biggest rivals. France, in particular, has emerged as perhaps the most serious practitioner of economic intelligence against the U.S. As one Clinton Administration official told the New York Times in 1996, "when it comes to economic espionage, no one is any better." France is "one of the most aggressive collectors of economic intelligence in the world," according to Schweizer, who authored the 1993 book "Friendly Spies: How America's Allies Are Using Economic Espionage to Steal Our Secrets" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1993). Utilizing espionage methods normally associated with traditional intelligence targets, the French government has been accused of infiltrating numerous American companies including IBM, Texas Instruments, and Corning, which, among other things, produces cutting edge fiber optics, semiconductors and advanced materials for the telecommunications industry. According to Schweizer, these operations, mainly aimed at stealing American technology, were carried out by France's "well-developed intelligence service," the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (DGSE). Parallel to these state-run efforts, however, France has also, in recent years, been cultivating a controversial academic approach and institutional framework intended to develop a strategic edge in the current climate of intense economic competition between countries and between firms. In 1996, the Ecole de Guerre Economique (EGE) or School of Economic Warfare was established by Christian Harbulot, described by the French daily Liberation in November of 2004 as an "ex-Maoist of the proletarian Left." He still heads the school, located in Paris... Some of these tales of espionage are blatant and crude: the theft of laptop computers on Air France flights, the bugging of Parisian hotel rooms where US businessmen stay, and continual efforts to invade US corporate COMSEC. |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |