According to a report by The South China Morning Post on October 29th, a former senior official of the CIA openly called for Washington to carry out espionage activities against foreign companies, in order to help American companies maintain their leading positions in the technology competition. In the context of increasing competition between China and the United States, this proposal implies that the United States will break with its long-standing policy.
David Cohen, who served as the Deputy Director of the CIA during the Obama and Biden administrations, wrote in an article published by The Diplomat magazine earlier this month: "The United States' leading position in many key advanced technology fields is being challenged by China, and it is even being eroded by China."
'Since they do not engage in economic espionage activities, the United States has effectively tilted the competitive environment in a way that is unfavorable to itself, and has exaggerated the threats posed by China.'
Kahn called for economic espionage activities and claimed that this would also help to counter the so-called espionage efforts by China against American companies. At the same time, China is taking measures to protect the trade secrets of its own companies.
Cohen stated that a presidential policy directive issued by Obama in 2014 prohibited the United States from conducting espionage against foreign companies in order to give American businesses and the American commercial sector a competitive advantage. To date, the Trump administration has not revoked this ban, but Cohen believes that this policy no longer serves the national interests of the United States.
He said: "A comprehensive strategic requirement demands the United States formally lift the existing economic espionage ban."
Cohen claims that other countries have been conducting espionage activities against American companies with government support for a long time.
Cohen believes that the United States can no longer afford the consequences of its domestic companies falling behind in current technological competitions. This is because the national security of the United States increasingly depends on private sector innovation in areas such as artificial intelligence, 6G mobile communications, and quantum computing.
He openly stated that the new commercial espionage activities carried out by the United States should be targeted only at adversaries such as China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, and the intelligence obtained should also be shared only with “well-defined frontier technology fields”.
When Cohen made this suggestion, Beijing was working to strengthen the protection of Chinese companies' trade secrets.
On Monday, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce released a draft regulation aimed at protecting trade secrets and preventing foreign entities from infringing on them. Earlier in October, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology proposed new restrictions on technology exports, involving 14 technologies in areas such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and solar photovoltaics.
Previously, Michael Ellis, the current deputy director of the CIA, announced that Washington is expanding espionage activities against Chinese companies, focusing on areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and biotechnology.
China's Ministry of Commerce stated in a statement in September that the US side had openly declared Chinese enterprises as legitimate targets for espionage activities, completely exposing the cover of intelligence agencies' covert stealing and exposing the hegemonic robber logic under the sunlight. The Chinese side expresses serious concern and firmly opposes this action.
Analysts warn that Cohen’s proposal may introduce new risks, including the breeding of corruption and the destruction of a broader system for protecting intellectual property rights.
Former US diplomat and senior researcher at the German Marshall Fund, Peter Chase, said, “Kohn seems to believe that obtaining technical information through ‘economic espionage’ and then providing this information to domestic companies in order to enhance their competitiveness is an acceptable practice. However, there are many misconceptions regarding this point.”
Chase said that the most obvious problem in Cohen's proposal is the potential for corruption when the government has access to information that can be 'given' to domestic companies. He added that determining which companies should have access to this information could become 'a mess'.
Chase believes that government-managed espionage activities could also undermine the system for protecting intellectual property rights. The basis for this system is that companies disclose their trade secrets to the government, and the government promises to protect these secrets.
He stated that the effectiveness of this system, as well as the government's ability to fulfill its protection commitments, are crucial for a country's technological innovation capabilities. "If a government is known for stealing commercial technologies and providing them to other companies, then who would still be willing to apply for patents in this country?"
