Corporate Security Crossroads by Richard J. Chasdi

Author:Richard J. Chasdi
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440832864
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

Figure 6.2: Continuum of Radicalization Types

Acts of purely apolitical or pecuniary industrial espionage are undertaken by private firms, usually domestic firms, to cut corners in research and design (R&D) efforts. This is done to reduce the requisite amount of time and money involved to acquire intellectual property and technologies to maintain or increase competitive advantage. In addition, what Nasheri calls “inevitable misappropriation” can happen when disaffected workers who either resign or are terminated move to new firms and take proprietary information or other sensitive information with them to be used later by new firm executives or, secondarily, by hackers who might be interested in personnel information data that do not qualify as trade secrets. The transfer of a firm’s confidential data can also occur when suppliers or vendors have contracts terminated by a firm and their employees provide data to that firm’s competitors in retribution.44

By contrast, industrial espionage with political dimensions is found starting at the middle of the radicalization continuum. It includes the designations domestic industrial espionage, international industrial, and international “plus” industrial espionage. Domestic industrial espionage might result from employees with activist predispositions opposed to certain practices endorsed or undertaken by firms. For example, one form of political domestic industrial espionage would involve a nuclear plant worker taking confidential information about what she believes to be an unsafe regulatory or security system to a newspaper and she is paid for those documents. Another example would be a worker alienated by inhumane animal experiments in the cosmetics industry, where political industrial espionage could combine some level of political grievance coupled with greed motivation.45

At the same time, those political grievances are frequently narrower in scope, sometimes so narrow as to constitute a specific issue, such as animal rights, in ways that mirror single issue terrorism. Toward the center of the continuum, international industrial espionage is found. International industrial espionage encompasses multinational corporation theft of sensitive proprietary information, such as the case of former General Motors executive José Ignacio López De Arriortúa who left General Motors for Volkswagen in 1993. At the heart of such actions are efforts to strengthen (or weaken) the competitive advantage or core competencies of competitors. To the right of the international industrial espionage designation is international “plus” industrial espionage. International “plus” industrial espionage involves a more integrated set of nation-state political grievances that reflect efforts to improve a country’s international position. For example, Chinese-supported acts of industrial espionage in the automotive and aviation sectors reflect that government’s desire to improve its economic, political, and military power position relative to other countries. The focus here is often on proprietary information associated with dual-use products, with applications in both the military and private sectors, such as computer navigation and communications systems.

This conceptualization touches on an important point—that if industrial espionage involves a firm from a foreign country, the likelihood that political dimensions are involved increases because economic power is increasingly a core component of military power in the contemporary world. In addition, the type of intellectual property targeted

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