Economic Espionage: Information on Threat From U.S. Allies

GAO provided a statement for the record on allied foreign governments' economic espionage activities against the United States. GAO noted that: (1) one country conducts the most aggressive economic espionage against the United States to help develop its own defense industrial base, and to sell or trade information with other countries for economic or political purposes; (2) another government conducts aggressive and massive economic espionage against the United States because its primary goal is to achieve self-sufficiency in arms manufacturing; (3) another country conducts industrial espionage against the United States for the same reasons, but at a lower intensity; (4) a country that has no foreign intelligence service uses its private-sector companies to obtain economic intelligence from the United States; and (5) a fifth country has not targeted the United States or its defense industry for espionage, but has begun to move toward more overt collection of economic intelligence, which may be diverted to countries to which the United States would not sell defense technologies.