Having seen something like this happen once, what probably happened was the person OP is referring to was trying to get IP in order to start their own private sector startup, and probably get some seed funding from a regional government (eg. Beijing and Hangzhou did this in the 2000s to jumpstart their tech industry)
It's similar to the Israeli program in the 90s (who's name I'm blanking out on EDIT: Yozma I before it was privatized) because just like China in the 2000s-early 2010s, there wasn't a notable private sector VC industry yet.
> It's similar to the Israeli program in the 90s (who's name I'm blanking out on EDIT: Yozma) because just like China in the 2000s-early 2010s, there wasn't a notable private sector VC industry yet.
Quite an allegation... any reference to them sponsoring/encouraging stealing IP or am I misreading and you simply meant it's a government sponsored startup accelerator program?
Israel never recognized American software or pharmaceutical patents, and most countries do some form of Industrial Espionage (France is fairly notable in the space as well [4]).
The wildest cases tended to be back in the 1990s, when Israel was trying to build a domestic armament industry, notably by stealing American IP and selling it to the Chinese [0][1][2][3] (most modern Chinese weapons systems today are based on that IP transfer in the 1990s).
This largely ended by the mid-late 2000s when the Israeli tech industry was much more established, and Ehud Barak (edit: Olmert - mixed up his surname and the Barak middle scandal) getting arrested on corruption charges, heralding the end of Israel's Wild West days in the tech industry.
Also, Tiannammen Era sanctions from the 1990s forced Israel defense companies to pivot to India, which doesn't allow vendors to sell SKUs to India which Pakistan and China have access to, and would leverage French and Israeli SKUs based on American designs.
I highly recommend reading this GAO report from the 90s [3]
Did you mean Ehud Olmert? I don’t believe Ehud Barak was ever arrested.
Also, not to nitpick, but would appreciate publicly accessible articles… from the abstracts I can only assume these are summaries made in the 90s of pre-90s shenanigans
EDIT: saw now the edits with 3-4, will look at when I have time (thanks!)
Yep. Brainfarted and merged Olmert and the Barak missles corruption case
> summaries made in the 90s of pre-90s shenanigans
Hence why I wrote "the Israeli program in the 90s".
It's significantly less egregious nowadays (imo de facto non-existent due to how integrated the Israeli innovation system is with the American system now and how simplified FDI is in Israel compared to the 80s-90s)
> appreciate publicly accessible articles
Internet based news wasn't really a thing until the post-Netscape era.
All you're stuck with are archives of print news or government articles, especially because this kind of behavior largely ended by the 2000s.
> EDIT: saw now the edits with 3-4, will look at when I have time (thanks!)
No problem! And like I mentioned before, most countries do this in some form to help domestic champions (eg. India and Pharma IP, France and Defense IP, socialist era Israel and Defense IP, 1970s-80s Japan and electronics IP, China and Defense+Software IP).
If a country allows almost 100% FDI, there's no reason for industrial espionage in that specific sector because foreign champions become integrated with domestic ones. Hence why Israeli and Indian companies don't steal hardware designs anymore because most Americans companies have design centers there that are closely integrated with domestic champions.
Funny that you mention France when the USA is #1 in the world for corporate spying. Having been involved in western Europe for deal where US competitor were given "advantage", USA spying was always number one concern over all other countries (and this is how counter spying agencies brief companies) as it had more direct economic damage and is more difficult to identify than Chinese spying.
The American government will spy, but will not explicitly spy to provide IP directly to a private company like Boeing or Lockheed, as this enters felony level corruption territory due to the Procurement Integrity Act, Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation.
The main difference is DGSE would explicitly attempt to steal American IP and then provide it to Thales or Dassault.
They may not provide direct R&D details but they will provide direct information about offers price, negotiation status etc. This is part of the Snowden leaks that people seems to have completely forgotten.
IANAL but Competitive Intel around pricing and SKUs isn't IP except in certain cases.
If they were, just about every single private sector company globally would be guilty of IP infringement, let alone Public-Private Partnerships like the ones I mentioned.
Intelligence agencies often have their own interpretation of the law, which coincidentally allows them to do what they want.
And if you don't like that, you can sue them in the special intelligence court where the evidence cannot be revealed, the proceedings are secret, and the judges are very unbiased.
I think if someone actually had government handlers asking them to do this, most of those people wouldn't blab about it to their school chums. But there's a subset of people with grandiose delusions / general behavior problems who feel a compulsion to tell everyone about their grand plans/machinations to become rich and powerful.
It most likely wasn't a Handler/MSS type espionage.
It was most likely trying to grab IP to found a domestic competitor, and raise a Seed round from local government accelerators like those Beijing and Hangzhou have.
I think you are underestimating how tough it would be to be playing James Bond and not tell anyone.
You wouldn't have to be a delusional braggart to want to tell a friend this. Most spies are not going to be as much of a compartmentalized lunatic like Robert Hanssen or someone at that level.
