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The best bit here is right in the first paragraph: "and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses." Spying on

The best bit here is right in the first paragraph: "and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses." Spying on foreign governments because you think they might present a threat to you in terms of war/foreign policy is generally defensible (although many on here would disagree with that), while using the apparatus of the state to support select private enterprise through espionage is not. The US government has still not appreciated the full impact of the leaks or they would be far more concerned about cleaning things up fast as the economic consequences threaten to be huge.

sentenza 13y ago
The US has really dropped the ball here. We, here in Germany, have a mainstream political party whose leaders are blindly americophile. The last and current government are dominated by that party. From the beginning of the crisis, these people loudly blamed the victim, accusing NSA-critics of anti-americanism and telling us that "the NSA discussion is over". Then, with time, the industrial espionage stories started to emerge (and it became known that Merkel's phone has been bugged since 2002). Turns out, there are quite a few instances where German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors. So now even the most blindly devoted atlanticists in government know that they must do something against the NSA problem, and to make it worse, they have to do something that actually works (as opposed to feel-good measures).
- bananacurve 13y ago
  > German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors Do you have a source for that? As far as I can tell Germany wants tighter intelligence integration with the US and howls at the slightest mention of even reducing the size of US military bases on German soil.
  - wil421 13y ago
    >German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors. I have yet to see anything like this in the news. Thats crazy to think the NSA is helping companies with trade secrets.
    - mcphilip 13y ago
      Innocent until proven guilty applies, of course, but there's an irony in the dismissal of a notion as crazy when juxtaposed with all the other Snowden revelations.
      - wil421 13y ago
        I am too naive...
    - vidarh 13y ago
      So crazy that the EU parliament was probing US intelligence abuse via ECHELON already 13-14 years ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820352.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820352.stm
    - tobltobs 13y ago
      "Thats crazy to think the NSA is helping companies with trade secrets." For Americans Europeans are crazy, aren't they? For me and a lot of other Europeans (most I think) it would be crazy (stupid) not to believe that the NSA is spying for american companies.
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    "Do you have a source for that?" Yeah, I get the reason for asking that, but as a question, its rather devalued these days as far as the US and its TLA's are concerned. Given the disturbing unrestrained scope of US spying its reasonable to start with the assumption that the US has stolen any information that exists and used it to promote itself at the expense of even its allies. Problem is, when the likes of the NSA boldly claim to be able to access literally anything, anywhere, we must assume that all information and data are compromised. Doing anything different would be negligence. Now the USA is in the same position Iraq was prior to the illegal invasion. It now has to prove a negative. Here is why: Iraq was accused by the US and its lap dogs of having WMD (which incidentally was redefined to stitch up Iraq. Prior, WMD was understood to mean nukes. It got re-defined to mean bio and chem), and was expected to prove that it did not have them, or face the consequences. It failed in US eyes, and the US responded by killing many thousands of Iraq's people in its OTT invasion of "shock and awe". This was impossible as it is impossible to prove a negative. Iraq could not win in any way. Now, I think, the rest of the world, including its allies, would be reasonable in suspecting the US of having anything it likes in data terms, and must now prove it has not in order to regain any level of confidence. The US has to prove that it has not literally stolen money, IP, and business form non US companies by using stolen data to its advantage. The US has been stinging in its fines for banks acting illegally and defrauding government and public, acting like a moral god. Well, the same standards must apply to the US. If the US cannot prove its innocence, the rest of the world has every right to act in response. Unfair, and very difficult, but the US did set that standard. Like Iraq, the US must now some how prove its innocence. Or admit to its wrong doing. The UK had no defence here either. We conspired in this. And I as a UK voter would like to know what we got out of it. Or did the US steal our information too? I wonder what Aussies and Kiwis think. Are we willing partners who knew what was really going on, and getting something valuable out of it, or were we all duped by the Americans? Also, given the fact that the NSA is government organisation, it could be argued that what the US has engaged in is literally an act of war. There for its reasonable for countries like Germany, or regions like the EU, to investigate the US and if found guilty, demand reparations. IMHO, its getting close to cards on table time, or the US get treated like an outcast. Or, do we do what we always do, and ignore it? I say it time to take a stand. If we dont, we all might as well make our countries US states and be done with it.
- wil421 13y ago
  Could you provide some information where the NSA conducted Industrial Espionage? Merkel is a politician so I could see why she was targeted. As far as I know China is the only one being blamed for Industrial Espionage. NSA is snooping on citizens and interest groups. Note: I am no way in favor of any snooping on any countries citizens foreign or domestic.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    Snowden revealed NSA hacked into Petrobras ahead of an important oilfield auction. The only use for that information would be setting bids. It's no small thing. Bids with insider information could cost Brasil tens of billions of dollars.
    - wil421 13y ago
      That could be a side effect of tapping into a network hub or something. Does Petrobas have any ties to organized crime? I dont see where it says they passed that info to American companies. Please dont think I am downplaying this I am just trying to understand why. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-braz...
      - mladenkovacevic 13y ago
        It's funny how you peg the Chinese industrial spying as very clear-cut and obviously malevolent, but grasp at straws to justify the Pertobas spying as somehow motivated by good-guy American trying to bust some organized crime ring.
        wil421 13y ago
        Show me the slides I want to see the evidence myself. All I am seeing now is the words of various reporters. I am trying to grasp at something that would justify it. Its beyond belief that they are actually doing this. Who's the good guys in this world or are the "people" the only good guys left?
- 4354325425 13y ago
  > Turns out, there are quite a few instances where German companies had their trade secrets stolen by FRENCH [1] intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to FRENCH competitors. Fixed that for you. Please produce the articles about US companies benefiting from economic espionage. [1] http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espionage-economy-germany-russia-china-business/ http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espion...
  - malandrew 13y ago
    You know that the NSA doesn't have to give information to US companies for industrial espionage to have occurred. Any of the hundreds of thousands of Americans indirectly employed contractors providing services to the NSA could have committed industrial espionage. If you don't think people at Booz Allen, Stratfor and other companies largely staff by psychopaths are unlikely to engage in such unethical activities, I have a bridge to sell you. Individuals are to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, but organizations being made up of many individuals, some of which are likely guilty to to statistical frequency of guilty people in a random population of people, are to be assumed guilty until proven innocent. If we know anything for certain from the last ~7 months, it's that "trust us, we're not doing anything wrong" is a bald-faced lie.
- gaius 13y ago
  I am awaiting the revelation that Boeing was privy to Airbus secrets. If forthcoming, that would be a bombshell.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Been there, done that. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm (Thursday, 6 July, 2000)
AndrewKemendo 13y ago
Spying on foreign governments because you think they might present a threat to you in terms of war/foreign policy is generally defensible, while using the apparatus of the state to support select private enterprise through espionage is not. I am genuinely curious why the former would be defensible while the latter not. The former in this case would trend toward causing (at some point) some level of death an destruction, the latter amounts to high level piracy. Is the basis for the former's defensibility the assumption that it is strictly defensive in nature? Why would a country not have a program to enhance it's own industry through espionage?
- gaius 13y ago
  Because who would be so foolish then as to invest in R&D?
  - AndrewKemendo 13y ago
    Seems like it would be the same as any other secret program and continue fairly unabated. Open R&D, as is 90% of basic research, would certainly stay the same as there would be no need for espionage in those cases.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >I am genuinely curious why the former would be defensible while the latter not. Because the one is (supposedly) defensive tactic, the other is offensive. >Why would a country not have a program to enhance it's own industry through espionage? Because the country being a superpower gives all other countries an unfair advantage. Even if you don't believe in morality and ethics, so you don't care about that, this can still get to bite its ass at some point. Second, because it's also hypocritical with said country paying lip service to "free markets".
  - coldtea 13y ago
    Oops: "gives [compared to] all other countries an unfair advantage".
flexie 13y ago
In the last 20 years several American tech companies have grown huge with very little challenge from European antitrust or tax authorities. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft... Rules regarding abuse of dominant position could have been applied much stricter. Some of these companies have 90-something percent market share on several of the geographic and product markets they operate in. But not one of them has been forced to split up. MS was forced not to include IE in Windows and MS and Intel were fined (fined!), but not one of them have been forced to open access to (or just make it possible to export) their social graph. Apple is still allowed to block other content providers from selling movies and music iPhone and iPad. The iphone costs more or less the same all over Europe as does the music and movies on it. Amazon has been allowed to apply predatory pricing for more than a decade. Tax laws could have been designed so that companies were taxed on their European profits, just like the European companies they compete against. These companies barely employ Europeans, barely pay any European tax, but they hold thousands of European patents and make hundreds of billions of euro in Europe and operate in markets where there is curiously enough still not/no longer serious competition from European companies. I don't believe for a second that NSA hasn't used their spying to improve American competitiveness.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 4354325425 13y ago
  What did all of that have to do with the NSA? How would US espionage force the EU from prosecuting or legislating against these companies?
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >How would US espionage force the EU from prosecuting or legislating against these companies? Well, how about evesdropping on EU meetings where such actions is discussed, and taking the appropriate actions / applying pressure to favor european officials that are against them or remove from office officials that are in favor?
rgarrett88 13y ago
Not only that, think about what a security contractor with no positive incentives was able to collect and publish without NSA knowledge. We honestly have no idea what state secrets might have been sold to the highest bidder.
coldtea 13y ago
>Spying on foreign governments because you think they might present a threat to you in terms of war/foreign policy is generally defensible (although many on here would disagree with that), while using the apparatus of the state to support select private enterprise through espionage is not. Exactly. And this is something that has been going on for ages, To be clear, it's not like they feel they promote "select private enterprises" by doing so. That is, it's not "let's help our pals at company X" -- it's more like "let's give the US corporations a leverage against Mexico / Brasil / France etc". It already is an unfair (and illegal in most cases) leverage because it's based on huge spying machinery. But when it's also combined with the kind of huge diplomatic, political and military pressure the US has, then it becomes a way to crush competition, in other words post-colonialism at its best. And no, not "all countries do the same" (a common counter-argument). A lot, maybe all countries do have spying agencies, but most of them are concerned with internal affairs (dissidents and such) and dangerous neighborhoud countries (feuds). And of course, their scale and scope is orders of magnitude smaller. Only someone watching too much 24 and Homeland would believe that countries such as, say, Chile, Argentina, Luxemburg, Czech republic, Albania, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, Colombia and such have the same kind of spying infrastructure and reach as the US has (and much much less the diplomatic might to take advantage of it, even if they had). It's not called a "superpower" for nothing.
- thisiswrong 13y ago
  > Only someone watching too much 24 and Homeland would believe that [...] You're picking up on something very interesting here. Sadly, you don't fully address the issue. Hollywood propaganda [1] could very well be THE reason why we have become so politically apathetic and hence THE reason why such tyrants have managed to gain power in the USA/UK. [1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and-the-cia/5324589 http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and...
bobbydavid 13y ago
Many industries (food, steel, electronics, energy, mining) are considered to have military strategic importance. For instance, Japan works very hard to grow rice even though it would be much cheaper to import rice from China. It's because not being able to feed your own population is bad in a war. Energy (oil) is the same way. The line between military and industry is often not very clear.
madaxe_again 13y ago
This little snippet is some mindblowing doublespeak - they know full well what they're doing. “We do not use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” said Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman. But she added that some economic spying was justified by national security needs. “The intelligence community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security,” Ms. Vines said.
nebulasri 13y ago
It seems the damage has already started, and deservingly so: Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2N0JX17W20131218 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2...

sentenza 13y ago

The US has really dropped the ball here. We, here in Germany, have a mainstream political party whose leaders are blindly americophile. The last and current government are dominated by that party. From the beginning of the crisis, these people loudly blamed the victim, accusing NSA-critics of anti-americanism and telling us that "the NSA discussion is over". Then, with time, the industrial espionage stories started to emerge (and it became known that Merkel's phone has been bugged since 2002). Turns out, there are quite a few instances where German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors. So now even the most blindly devoted atlanticists in government know that they must do something against the NSA problem, and to make it worse, they have to do something that actually works (as opposed to feel-good measures).

bananacurve 13y ago
> German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors Do you have a source for that? As far as I can tell Germany wants tighter intelligence integration with the US and howls at the slightest mention of even reducing the size of US military bases on German soil.
- wil421 13y ago
  >German companies had their trade secrets stolen by American intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to US competitors. I have yet to see anything like this in the news. Thats crazy to think the NSA is helping companies with trade secrets.
  - mcphilip 13y ago
    Innocent until proven guilty applies, of course, but there's an irony in the dismissal of a notion as crazy when juxtaposed with all the other Snowden revelations.
    - wil421 13y ago
      I am too naive...
  - vidarh 13y ago
    So crazy that the EU parliament was probing US intelligence abuse via ECHELON already 13-14 years ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820352.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/820352.stm
  - tobltobs 13y ago
    "Thats crazy to think the NSA is helping companies with trade secrets." For Americans Europeans are crazy, aren't they? For me and a lot of other Europeans (most I think) it would be crazy (stupid) not to believe that the NSA is spying for american companies.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  "Do you have a source for that?" Yeah, I get the reason for asking that, but as a question, its rather devalued these days as far as the US and its TLA's are concerned. Given the disturbing unrestrained scope of US spying its reasonable to start with the assumption that the US has stolen any information that exists and used it to promote itself at the expense of even its allies. Problem is, when the likes of the NSA boldly claim to be able to access literally anything, anywhere, we must assume that all information and data are compromised. Doing anything different would be negligence. Now the USA is in the same position Iraq was prior to the illegal invasion. It now has to prove a negative. Here is why: Iraq was accused by the US and its lap dogs of having WMD (which incidentally was redefined to stitch up Iraq. Prior, WMD was understood to mean nukes. It got re-defined to mean bio and chem), and was expected to prove that it did not have them, or face the consequences. It failed in US eyes, and the US responded by killing many thousands of Iraq's people in its OTT invasion of "shock and awe". This was impossible as it is impossible to prove a negative. Iraq could not win in any way. Now, I think, the rest of the world, including its allies, would be reasonable in suspecting the US of having anything it likes in data terms, and must now prove it has not in order to regain any level of confidence. The US has to prove that it has not literally stolen money, IP, and business form non US companies by using stolen data to its advantage. The US has been stinging in its fines for banks acting illegally and defrauding government and public, acting like a moral god. Well, the same standards must apply to the US. If the US cannot prove its innocence, the rest of the world has every right to act in response. Unfair, and very difficult, but the US did set that standard. Like Iraq, the US must now some how prove its innocence. Or admit to its wrong doing. The UK had no defence here either. We conspired in this. And I as a UK voter would like to know what we got out of it. Or did the US steal our information too? I wonder what Aussies and Kiwis think. Are we willing partners who knew what was really going on, and getting something valuable out of it, or were we all duped by the Americans? Also, given the fact that the NSA is government organisation, it could be argued that what the US has engaged in is literally an act of war. There for its reasonable for countries like Germany, or regions like the EU, to investigate the US and if found guilty, demand reparations. IMHO, its getting close to cards on table time, or the US get treated like an outcast. Or, do we do what we always do, and ignore it? I say it time to take a stand. If we dont, we all might as well make our countries US states and be done with it.
wil421 13y ago
Could you provide some information where the NSA conducted Industrial Espionage? Merkel is a politician so I could see why she was targeted. As far as I know China is the only one being blamed for Industrial Espionage. NSA is snooping on citizens and interest groups. Note: I am no way in favor of any snooping on any countries citizens foreign or domestic.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  Snowden revealed NSA hacked into Petrobras ahead of an important oilfield auction. The only use for that information would be setting bids. It's no small thing. Bids with insider information could cost Brasil tens of billions of dollars.
  - wil421 13y ago
    That could be a side effect of tapping into a network hub or something. Does Petrobas have any ties to organized crime? I dont see where it says they passed that info to American companies. Please dont think I am downplaying this I am just trying to understand why. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-braz...
    - mladenkovacevic 13y ago
      It's funny how you peg the Chinese industrial spying as very clear-cut and obviously malevolent, but grasp at straws to justify the Pertobas spying as somehow motivated by good-guy American trying to bust some organized crime ring.
      - wil421 13y ago
        Show me the slides I want to see the evidence myself. All I am seeing now is the words of various reporters. I am trying to grasp at something that would justify it. Its beyond belief that they are actually doing this. Who's the good guys in this world or are the "people" the only good guys left?
4354325425 13y ago
> Turns out, there are quite a few instances where German companies had their trade secrets stolen by FRENCH [1] intelligence agencies, which in turn gave those secrets to FRENCH competitors. Fixed that for you. Please produce the articles about US companies benefiting from economic espionage. [1] http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espionage-economy-germany-russia-china-business/ http://www.france24.com/en/20110104-france-industrial-espion...
- malandrew 13y ago
  You know that the NSA doesn't have to give information to US companies for industrial espionage to have occurred. Any of the hundreds of thousands of Americans indirectly employed contractors providing services to the NSA could have committed industrial espionage. If you don't think people at Booz Allen, Stratfor and other companies largely staff by psychopaths are unlikely to engage in such unethical activities, I have a bridge to sell you. Individuals are to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, but organizations being made up of many individuals, some of which are likely guilty to to statistical frequency of guilty people in a random population of people, are to be assumed guilty until proven innocent. If we know anything for certain from the last ~7 months, it's that "trust us, we're not doing anything wrong" is a bald-faced lie.
gaius 13y ago
I am awaiting the revelation that Boeing was privy to Airbus secrets. If forthcoming, that would be a bombshell.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Been there, done that. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm (Thursday, 6 July, 2000)

AndrewKemendo 13y ago

Spying on foreign governments because you think they might present a threat to you in terms of war/foreign policy is generally defensible, while using the apparatus of the state to support select private enterprise through espionage is not. I am genuinely curious why the former would be defensible while the latter not. The former in this case would trend toward causing (at some point) some level of death an destruction, the latter amounts to high level piracy. Is the basis for the former's defensibility the assumption that it is strictly defensive in nature? Why would a country not have a program to enhance it's own industry through espionage?

gaius 13y ago
Because who would be so foolish then as to invest in R&D?
- AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  Seems like it would be the same as any other secret program and continue fairly unabated. Open R&D, as is 90% of basic research, would certainly stay the same as there would be no need for espionage in those cases.
coldtea 13y ago
>I am genuinely curious why the former would be defensible while the latter not. Because the one is (supposedly) defensive tactic, the other is offensive. >Why would a country not have a program to enhance it's own industry through espionage? Because the country being a superpower gives all other countries an unfair advantage. Even if you don't believe in morality and ethics, so you don't care about that, this can still get to bite its ass at some point. Second, because it's also hypocritical with said country paying lip service to "free markets".
- coldtea 13y ago
  Oops: "gives [compared to] all other countries an unfair advantage".

flexie 13y ago

In the last 20 years several American tech companies have grown huge with very little challenge from European antitrust or tax authorities. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple, Amazon, Intel, Microsoft... Rules regarding abuse of dominant position could have been applied much stricter. Some of these companies have 90-something percent market share on several of the geographic and product markets they operate in. But not one of them has been forced to split up. MS was forced not to include IE in Windows and MS and Intel were fined (fined!), but not one of them have been forced to open access to (or just make it possible to export) their social graph. Apple is still allowed to block other content providers from selling movies and music iPhone and iPad. The iphone costs more or less the same all over Europe as does the music and movies on it. Amazon has been allowed to apply predatory pricing for more than a decade. Tax laws could have been designed so that companies were taxed on their European profits, just like the European companies they compete against. These companies barely employ Europeans, barely pay any European tax, but they hold thousands of European patents and make hundreds of billions of euro in Europe and operate in markets where there is curiously enough still not/no longer serious competition from European companies. I don't believe for a second that NSA hasn't used their spying to improve American competitiveness.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
4354325425 13y ago
What did all of that have to do with the NSA? How would US espionage force the EU from prosecuting or legislating against these companies?
- coldtea 13y ago
  >How would US espionage force the EU from prosecuting or legislating against these companies? Well, how about evesdropping on EU meetings where such actions is discussed, and taking the appropriate actions / applying pressure to favor european officials that are against them or remove from office officials that are in favor?

rgarrett88 13y ago

Not only that, think about what a security contractor with no positive incentives was able to collect and publish without NSA knowledge. We honestly have no idea what state secrets might have been sold to the highest bidder.

coldtea 13y ago

>Spying on foreign governments because you think they might present a threat to you in terms of war/foreign policy is generally defensible (although many on here would disagree with that), while using the apparatus of the state to support select private enterprise through espionage is not. Exactly. And this is something that has been going on for ages, To be clear, it's not like they feel they promote "select private enterprises" by doing so. That is, it's not "let's help our pals at company X" -- it's more like "let's give the US corporations a leverage against Mexico / Brasil / France etc". It already is an unfair (and illegal in most cases) leverage because it's based on huge spying machinery. But when it's also combined with the kind of huge diplomatic, political and military pressure the US has, then it becomes a way to crush competition, in other words post-colonialism at its best. And no, not "all countries do the same" (a common counter-argument). A lot, maybe all countries do have spying agencies, but most of them are concerned with internal affairs (dissidents and such) and dangerous neighborhoud countries (feuds). And of course, their scale and scope is orders of magnitude smaller. Only someone watching too much 24 and Homeland would believe that countries such as, say, Chile, Argentina, Luxemburg, Czech republic, Albania, Greece, Portugal, Denmark, Colombia and such have the same kind of spying infrastructure and reach as the US has (and much much less the diplomatic might to take advantage of it, even if they had). It's not called a "superpower" for nothing.

thisiswrong 13y ago
> Only someone watching too much 24 and Homeland would believe that [...] You're picking up on something very interesting here. Sadly, you don't fully address the issue. Hollywood propaganda [1] could very well be THE reason why we have become so politically apathetic and hence THE reason why such tyrants have managed to gain power in the USA/UK. [1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and-the-cia/5324589 http://www.globalresearch.ca/screen-propaganda-hollywood-and...

bobbydavid 13y ago

Many industries (food, steel, electronics, energy, mining) are considered to have military strategic importance. For instance, Japan works very hard to grow rice even though it would be much cheaper to import rice from China. It's because not being able to feed your own population is bad in a war. Energy (oil) is the same way. The line between military and industry is often not very clear.

madaxe_again 13y ago

This little snippet is some mindblowing doublespeak - they know full well what they're doing. “We do not use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” said Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman. But she added that some economic spying was justified by national security needs. “The intelligence community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security,” Ms. Vines said.

nebulasri 13y ago

It seems the damage has already started, and deservingly so: Brazil awarded a $4.5 billion contract to Saab AB on Wednesday to replace its aging fleet of fighter jets, a surprise coup for the Swedish company after news of U.S. spying on Brazilians helped derail Boeing's chances for the deal. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2N0JX17W20131218 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/brazil-jets-idUSL2...