|
There are some obvious measures that the US industry and government can take: improved cyber security, limited access to information, sophisticated employee surveillance, stiff jail term for offenders, background checks on employees with privileged access, etc. However, those measures are already in place in every company that has valuable IP to steal (and in many more companies that do not have anything of value, but like to pretend that they do). Of course, the US government can go all in, and require something similar to the "Top Secret" classification for all employees working in sensitive high-tech fields. This will certainly reduce trade theft, but that benefit is likely to be dwarved by the damage to the economy from the loss in efficiency, loss of access to foreign labor, and the change in culture: the smartest, most creative and most energetic people often shy away from working in organizations with military-grade security. Foreign labor is often mentioned as the root cause. Removing all foreign workers from sensitive areas will certainly make state-sponsored industrial espionage more difficult. However, history and common sense suggests there are plenty of US citizens perfectly willing to sell their corporate data to outsiders. So the benefits are unlikely to be dramatic. On the other hand, the economic cost to the US economy would be very high. Moreover, there's a chance this will backfire really badly. Today, it's hard for many countries to keep their best students from leaving for the US. If we solve that problem for them, it may be the very thing they need to close the technological gap with the US. In general, it seems that state-sponsored espionage can only be controlled with an agreement between states, which ultimately comes down to skillfully negotiating the terms. |