Customer Reviews

War by Other Means: Economic Espionage in America

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Since first popularized by Winn Schwartau, the concept of Information Warfare has tantalized and titillated. It is a fascinating idea that the wars of an information society would be fought on a digital playing field. Certainly the practice of economic espionage is not new. Reduced political tensions worldwide means that cold warriors need something to do for a living, so today, it appears that resources that were formerly applied to defense-related targets are now being redeployed against American corporations.

Hitting so close to home, and being such a morbidly fascinating subject, it has tended to attract a lot of crank authors with populist approaches. While Fialka doesn't really pull his punches, his approach is much more even-handed than many writers. This well-researched and competently written book stands well above the junk being currently produced in this subject area.

Although this text is now over four years old, it is still relatively current. For example, one who has read this book could not have been surprised at the amount of Federal attention paid to a nuclear physicist of Chinese extraction with strong ties to his native land, which has a long-standing pattern not only of economic espionage, but also of using and abusing non-professional spies. The author also gives convincing evidence to support the consistent rumors that the French have a ongoing tradition of government-sponsored economic warfare against their 'allied' partners. (As someone who has benefited from the character-building experience of a long-term relationship with a Peugeot, I remain convinced that although the French undoubtedly engage in economic espionage, Gallic pride prevents them from actually applying anything that they learn.)

This is an excellent text for helping build a mental picture of one particular class of Information Security threat. Those involved in Infosec topics will also find value in the chapters "Virtual Justice," which explains why corporations are so reluctant to report incidents of espionage, and "Surviving" which describes the lack of attention that corporations are willing to pay to security issues. As someone who has been involved in the field for over ten years, I can attest that this attitude is pervasive, and that security failures do occur. But without a greater willingness to report incidents to the authorities, the true statistics will never be known.

Given that virtually all large corporations are highly-vulnerable to attack, and given the author's supportable contention that both motivated and resourceful adversaries exist, it seems imprudent to write this book off as mere scare mongering. Since the writing of this book, the problem has only worsened.

I am familiar with many of the cases described in the book. While the book is generally factual, it has an overall alarmist and overly paranoid tone. It jumps from case to case, suggesting connections where there are none. I was a little disappointed. Still, it could serve as a useful reference for those interested in the topic.

Fialka' work is an excellent primer on yester-year industrial espionage(The book is a little out-dated). In fact, it still goes on, and it is just as it has been described by the title - it goes on silently.

There are various incidents that are described in great detail about the Chinese, French, and the other "Allies" who constantly spy on their friends and other industrialised nations, and this book will serve as a jolting shock to anybody who runs a Company in a competitive economy.

Great book, lucidly written, and highly recommended!

John is a distinguished correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, their lead reporter during the Gulf War, and an award-winning investigative journalist in the fields of national security, politics, and financial scandal. The Chinese, Japanese, French and Russians are featured here, together with useful cross-overs into criminal gangs doing espionage on U.S. corporations, as well as overt data mining and other quasi-legal activities that yield far more economic intelligence than most business leaders understand.

I just finished War by Other Means. My background includes some Information Security work for the armed forces, an MBA and pretty good exposure to various parts of the world (having lived in Germany about 5 years during the height of the Cold War, but not the Far East).

My background includes the knowledge and life's experience from a number of diverse points of view, including one that involved my graduate education which took place at Central Missouri State University -- yes, the Chinese Communists were there, and so were others from Thailand, Taiwan, FSU, and so forth.

Let me tell you, if you are one of the 'commoners' (I mean that in a humourous way- it is part of the vernacular for those who are not practioners, and is not meant in a disparaging way) this book makes absolute sense. Yes, our brain pool is being examined and drained by foreign governments. No longer do we have warfare conducted in military terms on a vast scale such as WW II, but the massed hordes are now within our borders, slowly leaking our country dry (I'm surprised that Fialka didn't include the analogy of the frog being boiled alive, not realizing what was happening to itself). Reverse engineering and other methods are alive and well.

May God help us!

After showing that economic espionage is an age-old problem, Fialka quickly propels us into 1997, showing economic espionage occurring on a grand scale. The book is replete with examples and categorizes the major styles of this business. These are comprised of 1) those countries like China, Taiwan, and South Korea who target present and former nationals working for U.S. companies and research institutions, 2) classic Cold War recruitment methods which Russia, Israel, and Germany use to varying levels, and 3) the economic intelligence gatherers who prey on accessing company proprietary documents and data, the most successful of which is Japan. I very much agree with Fialka's assertion that the NSA, CIA, and FBI have hitherto shown they are not capable of dealing with this issue and, in my longer review (see http://www.sscs.net/bookstore/book-review-wbom.html), I discuss some of the reasons why. This book is an exceptional piece of work. Very rare indeed is the time when I find myself underlining, highlighting, and writing comments in the leaf.

This is an eye opener that is hard to put down. Many of the stories may sound familiar from news reports but you never heard the details that you see in this book. You will wonder why we don't protect our secrets better and why we don't take a harder stand on who comes into and leave this country. We are attacked every day and secrets are walking out of the US by the bucket fulls. This is a very interesting read. I highly recommend this to anyone concerned about protecting industrial and military secrets.

I think this book needs to be read by every business owner in America. It contains worrysome information on how overseas people are stealing and rapeing technology and trade secrets of American Businesses and what can be done about it.

A great read for anyone. Gives a glimpse of what's going on in this country. Highlights a problem that is taken seriously by some federal agencies, ignored by some politicians. You won't see this kind of stuff on the news.

I read this book when it first came out and have had some time to consider the viewpoints espoused. I believe the dissimenation of information and know how is inevitable, albeit this author does point out examples of unmitigated stealing of ideas, intellectual properties, etc. from U.S.-based businesses that should be curtailed.

In my view, the leaky bucket theory of developing technology and know-how described in the book does not give enough consideration to the rate of innovation in the U.S. Instead, a somewhat paranoid view of losing all the goodies to the bad guys comes across.

The people and money behind the innovation seem to be the real keys, not the specifics of any implementation. Most of the examples of copy cats or rip-offs the author uses to illustrate his point are technologies that have lived their life cycle and near zero margins anyway. Although the margins might have been diminished in a less timely fashion had better controls been in place. Innovation moves on to the next better thing with higher margins. Its natural -- get over it.