I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK GCHQ has this sort of activity explicitly as one of its three principal mandates - it's something along the lines of "p

I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK GCHQ has this sort of activity explicitly as one of its three principal mandates - it's something along the lines of "protect the economic interests of the UK". You can imagine the applications to the UK's huge arms industry, for example, which has historically had very strong ties to the government.