By nature, both industrial and economic espionage, are simultaneously aggressive and defensive. They are aggressive in the sense that steps are taken to pursue and achieve a competitive advantage over competitors by utilising methods of operational intelligence gathering, as well as methods of sabotage and subversion.
Both types of espionage are also defensive, and this is seen in activities that concentrate on the use of deception of competitors and/or foreign intelligence services by utilising methods such as information warfare and counterintelligence processes.
Industrial and economic espionage are considered illegal activities. However, it would be an inaccurate characterisation to say that most industrial and economic espionage activities that take place are, strictly speaking, illegal.
The majority of such activities are performed using methods that are mainly legal. For example, collecting information about a competitor or product via open-source information, friendly discussions with a competitor’s employees, purchases of a competitor’s product (which are then used to attempt to reverse engineer its design), or head-hunting key employees in the hope that they can be enticed into breaking their exit contract with their previous employer.
Countries and States will utilise illegal means to conduct information/intelligence gathering operations regarding the economic capabilities of other countries, as well as the products of private entities, so long as doing so is to their benefit and it is deemed an acceptable risk relative to the potential gains afforded.
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