Why Businesses Need to Take Espionage Seriously

“American companies are in a bind.” So argue Bill Priestap and Holden Triplett, who have written a series of articles for Lawfare making the case that more and more state intelligence agencies are turning their attention to private businesses, using the tools of espionage in order to build their own economic power. Both writers are speaking from experience: Priestap ran the FBI’s counterintelligence division from 2015 to 2018, and Triplett led the FBI office in Beijing from 2014 to 2017 and was deputy head of the FBI office in Moscow from 2012 to 2014. Quinta Jurecic sat down with them to discuss why countries have started to use their intelligence services in this way, what dangers this creates for American businesses and why counterintelligence risks are hard to intuitively understand.