“Espionage, spying, is not a game. It costs our country secrets and millions of dollars in stolen technology. It can also cost lives and threaten our national survival.”
-President Ronald Reagan
Radio Address to the Nation on Efforts to Prevent Espionage Against the United States
November 30, 1985
I’d say that the monetary cost of espionage is in the billions of Dollars at this point. I also feel that we don’t protect secrets like we used to. Increasingly, they are used as a political tool. Do you think this statement is still relevant today?
When we have people who are willing to leak information because the Army won’t pay for their gender reassignment surgery, I’d say it’s definitely relevant.
Or politicians in office releasing the names of units involved in highly dangerous ops taking out noted figureheads of the enemy.
yeah because god forbid you whistleblow on war crimes. just sweep that shit under the rug and “horrah horrah, she’s a grand old rag!”
Maybe if government would stop spying on us regular people, we would be more receptive to their calls for secrecy.
Or politicians who have over 200 marines die, then cut and run with their tail between their legs….only later to give missiles to the groups who did it via Iran.
When Politicians use secrets and classified info to forward an agenda it is treasonous, yet it is happening more and more frequently with little attention.
We as a whole have lost our sense of not only national pride but at the level of where we reside(state level). When Americans forget that we are a free people responsible for our actions and become more self absorbed than responsible for how we impact our environment(our nation) then we are susceptible to influences that are damaging. Espionage is more than serious, we as America have become the best because we cultivated an environment that not only rewarded free thought with the promise of earned reward but that we took care of ourselves before we took care of the rest of the world. There are those that do not care about nation, they care only for what they can grab. Unfortunately these people do not create, they do not offer up, and they do not add to; they only take. American exceptionalism has been earned and if we care to be free and able to succeed then we need to relearn how to protect it, at all costs.
that was well said.
“I’d say that the monetary cost of espionage is in the billions of Dollars at this point. I also feel that we don’t protect secrets like we used to. Increasingly, they are used as a political tool. Do you think this statement is still relevant today?”
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. And more in the Corporate Sector than ever.
Roger that! Counter Economy\Industrial Espionage is a big business this days.
When i worked for a big european chemical company as a security supervisor for a few years we had a case of industrial espionage almost every month… and 1-2 cases of economy espionage every year.
Sad thing is Europe and the USA also play this game against each other.
I lecture on Counter Espionage here in the UK. Espionage is larger now than ever before and is booming business, mostly state sponsored coming out of the Far East.
I have written/featured in some interesting articles on the subject that may be of use: http://www.intelligent-holdings.co.uk/media.html
I viewed your website, if you could please contact me at toby@badcompanytactical.com. I believe we have some products that would be VERY beneficial to your company. Thanks.
I will indeed drop you a line Toby.
My area of expertise was telephone and email interception. Many people forget the basics of security and social engineering is one of the areas that I see most expansion in.
I have written many articles on the subject, so feel free to ask away if you have any questions. I can also be contacted via bomberg@international-intelligence.co.uk
If SSD is interested I would be happy to pen an article for publication here.
Complex topic to comment on in a limited amount of space. However, I’ll start by saying that I was in Silicon Valley throughout the 80’s and there was not a tech company involved with VLSI (Very Large Integrated) circuits that did not have issues with state sponsored industrial espionage. The targets were processor development and multi-layered printed circuit boards. By today’s standards ancient technology. This was particularly true in the r.f. world. China for example had students at Stanford and UC Berkeley that actively participated in the collection of trade secrets. It was less expensive and put China much higher on the learning curve that anything they could achieve from their own R&D efforts. That became less of a problem with continued profit pressures from Wall Street. In spite of what may get verbalized, Wall Street has no national allegiance and the Chinese were quick to oblige by artificially holding down labor costs as well as not allowing their currency to float. On the military side, when the Cold War ended in 1985 there was less emphasis placed on OPSEC. Military personnel are using smart devices to photograph and create videos that in the 80’s would have carrier a TS (with compartmentalized intelligence) and uploading same to You Tube. I think to a great extent that happened because we were up against a “relatively” unsophisticated adversary. As a country we allowed media coverage to reach a historically unprecedented level, which created a false sense of “right to know”. We see that in the Snowden situation, where an imbecile, with a self motivated concept of patriotism, has done incalculable damage not just to our national security but to the security of all of our allies. Snowden, also sparked, through misstatements or outright lies, a voracious media appetite to undermine what the NSA does on a day-to-day basis. Failing to recognize, for nothing more than ratings, that everything the intelligence community does focuses on the preemptive and/or tactical. Intelligence gathering has always been an important part of our national security fabric but I think it has been trivialized, and that is a huge failing. It’s going to take quite a while to get our house in order, and a financial sector that recognized the intangible costs associated with outsourcing for the sake of meeting earning expectations (underscore).
After having a Dept of Energy Q Clearance and being part of the Human Reliability Program, I see how easy it would be to leak secrets. Honestly people would not believe me if I did tell the truth.
However, money, spite, and ego are now the key to sensitive information and secrets. There is rarely a penalty for divulging classified, and when our own political leaders can do it, why should anyone else hold back?
This nation went from American Patriots during WWII, to anti-government, to W.I.I.F.M. (Whats In It For Me?)Now money/revenge/ego are all keys to getting the info, or someone will just tell you. Exploiting this weakness is way too easy, and I am amazed we are still able to operate as a super power.
On the comments regarding politicans leaking information. Often overlooked but (IMO) far and away the most damaging leak for operational purposes in as long as I can remember is the outing of the Pakistani Doctor who tried to acquire the OBL DNA. If I had been the Case Agent running that asset, I literally would have been compelled to go find the guy who leaked that info and make things right.
I can only imagine trying to acquire assets these days after that debacle. No, no, really, we will protect your identity…
I’d like to mention one thing, that is not mentioned yet, regarding methods of counter-espionage and ways to keep secrets.
Government agencies (I’m using plural, because it affects many countries), who are responsible for keeping secrets, are tended to shift their focus from targeted actions and precautions to general actions. It’s not only questionable strategy in aspect of effectiveness (while it’s pretty effective in spending funds to build colossal surveillance systems, for example), but in the same time, it strongly affects the attitude of people.
It’s easy to say, that people have bad attitude to, say, NSA or security department of company they are working for. But it’s really hard to change this attitude by treating everyone as potential spy (or just make a click with your finger and turn everyone into security-concerned person). People are always hard to change. General actions making people pissed off (look at Mr. Snowden), while do not prevent leaks effective enough. I’ve seen some extreme cases of this way of counter-espionage overseas and it’s better to learn from their mistakes instead of repeating it.
Relevant but sadly futile. The technology is unsecurable (legacy models to entrenched to replace, markets too demanding to change, etc.) and the culture that begets leaks, informants, and agents is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
I’m struggling to find a comparable model in history where secrets weren’t really feasible and having a hard time imagining how we’ll compete with other nation-states that aren’t impacted by disclosures. I’ve become very bearish on long-term prospects in recent years.
It all happened with the pussification of American society. We need to publically hang more traitors! But it will never happen. So just be okay with people being hurt and distrust at the expense of “open source”.
This is 21st century America. If you want public hangings, somewhere more appealing to you might be Iran or Pakistan.
Statement is absolutely relevant today. American lives will be lost due to the rampant leaking taking place these days, to include the ongoing efforts of the traitor Snowden (who should be shot). Also consider that Russians, Chinese or others looking to work for our intelligence services (spying on our behalf) are much less likely to do so if they do not feel like they can be protected. The best Cold War Soviet walk-ins picked the Case Officers they would approach after observing their tradecraft or reading their files. They wanted to know they would be handled professionally and securely. After all, their lives and that of their families were on the line. With such a rush for traitors and the supportive media to publicize classified information (to include sources and methods) for a naive and idealistic public, we will long pay for these crimes… we have come a long way from “loose links sink ships”.
Espionage is just so much easier these days. Computers connected to the net, bloated complex SW with security holes, ‘globalization’ (foreign students, workforce etc) and a lot of the high-tech manufacturing moved to China and elsewhere East Asia.
What comes to Snowden. Yes, stealing and leaking classified information has caused significant damage to the security of the US and allies. Unlike Manning, Snowden has however not leaked information indiscriminately, but chosen to expose – criminally by himself – criminal and highly questionable practices within the NSA.
While Snowden can rightly be seen as a traitor, some of the exposed activities of NSA show amazing lack of judgement, and have definitively been against the best interest – security and otherwise – of the US. The most blatant example perhaps being bugging the phone of the German chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany is an important ally. In NATO, and in the war against terror. NSA should strive to maintain and improve the security co-operation with important allies, not endanger it. And, especially, risking to piss-off the Germans by treating their (conservative, btw) head-of-state like she was suspected for being working for Al-Qaeda is just plain dumb beyond comprehension.
And here is a classic example of naivete. The NSA did not behave “criminally”. If you have an issue with how the NSA operates, take it up with your elected representatives. Bi-partisan members of the SSCI and HPSCI provide oversight of the collection programs and have consistently signed off on it post 9/11. The programs are legal. The real question is, how far are we comfortable going? I am sure you will be one of those piling on our intelligence community for “not connecting the dots” next time Americans are killed on US soil by terrorism.
As for Angela Merkel. Again, more naivete. Spying is one the two oldest professions in the history of man. Our national interests should be priority number 1. Understanding the plans and intentions of allies who can affect our national interests is FAIR GAME… always has been and always will be. Collecting foreign head of state talking points has always been something our executive branch has tasked the intelligence community with collecting. US President’s want to know what to expect. In the current example of Russian in Ukraine. Much hinges on how the Europeans will move forward vis a vis the Russians. This, in turn, impacts the USA! The only problem with collecting on Merkel and the Germans is that we got caught thanks to some self-absorbed punk who continues to release STOLEN US intelligence from RUSSIA!
Well said
I am scared reading some of the comments. You have lost the real war.
Interviews with defected KGB agents show that they were seldom involved in direct military or industry espionage but were involved in something much more sinister. Few if any at all were even remotely like 007.
They Soviet union was a closed society, ALL types of information was controled by the Government. It is hard to invade a country like this with ideas. It is on the other hand very easy to take over an open country like the US. All they had to do was send in and recruit agents in labour unions, universities and newspapers etc. Some agents just placed out leaflets in waiting rooms about feminism, equal rights, minimum wage. Things that are not each by one overtly socialism which could cause alarm when reading. All they needed was for each of these even ideas to take hold in seperate people and when these ideas spreaded out in a fan pattern the “fans” cross over in people. This is how socialism was spread by the KGB in western countries. My country was totally dominated by Soviet this way. What is funny is that we had a massive defense (for our size) against Soviet but they never invaded us militarially because they never had to.
By the time the Soviet union is defeated a new union very similar to that is created in western union and my country joins in.
Socialism is far from dead. Looking at the world today it is stronger than in all of history. We live in HG Wells world. A famous and extremely clever socialist.
Collecting on foreign nations isn’t new. What is new is that they have proof we are doing it that they can use as leverage.