Your first citation [0] does not actually provide evidence for the claim that the US government is engaging in IP theft and passing that IP to US companies - sp

Your first citation [0] does not actually provide evidence for the claim that the US government is engaging in IP theft and passing that IP to US companies - spying on a defense minister (even though it's something that shouldn't happen given that the US and France are allies) is categorically different, and is something that you would expect countries to do (even if be disappointed at them) for defense and strategic purposes only, without any IP theft. You'd need additional evidence to indicate IP theft. Your second citation [1] links to no sources and makes the massive error that the NSA is a department of the CIA. I don't think that it's trustworthy, although I can look up the story later and if I find other sources we can see if it's plausible. > Perhaps more importantly, you have to assume that every intelligence agency in that same group are constantly (re)compromising and extending their foothold in their peers' communications systems as much as they can. Yes, I think this is a reasonable assumption - I'm not saying that it's right, but it's reasonable. However, that's still categorically different from the IP theft being discussed, in the context of being able to trust your knowledge workforce and having good cyber security. Thanks for the analogy to the Great Game, this is interesting!