And that first duty surely indicates that any government should do its upmost to pry into the business of anybody where doing so will offer advantage to its cit

And that first duty surely indicates that any government should do its upmost to pry into the business of anybody where doing so will offer advantage to its citizens. Here you are going wrong because this implies every other country should do the same and therefore harm you. This is nothing but war just without shooting people. Every right you claim for you, you have to grant to everybody. You want to perform industry espionage, then don't call it an act of war if they are spying at you. This is one of the deepest roots of all the mess in this world - not being willing to treat everybody equally. I actually have a nice Gedankenexperiment. Just imagine for one moment Iran would contact the US government and tell them they fear that the USA may be hostile to them and they are concerned about their atomic weapons. Therefore they would like the USA to denuclearise and grant them access to all their nuclear facilities to oversee what they are doing. Can you imagine the laughs?