Ben Venzke, publisher of Intelligence Watch Report, describes how Mitsubishi filed c. 1500 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests in 1987 alone, in an effort to enter the space industry. The US Patent office is another great source of freely available proprietary information. Industrial espionage is not new. In his book, "War by Other Means: Economic Espionage in America", The Wall Street Journal's John Fialka, vividly describes how Frances Cabot Lowell absconded from Britain with the plans for the cutting edge Cartwright loom in 1813. Still, the phenomenon has lately become more egregious and more controversial. As Cold War structures - from NATO to the KGB and the CIA - seek to redefine themselves and to assume new roles and new functions, economic espionage offers a tempting solution. Moreover, decades of increasing state involvement in modern economies have blurred the traditional demarcation between the private and the public sectors. Many firms are either state-owned (in Europe) or state- financed (in Asia) or sustained by state largesse and patronage (the USA). Many businessmen double as politicians and numerous politicians serve on corporate boards. Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex" though not as sinister as once imagined is, all the same, a reality. The deployment of state intelligence assets and resources to help the private sector gain a competitive edge is merely its manifestation. As foreign corporate ownership becomes widespread, as multinationals expand, as nation-states dissolve into regions and coalesce into supranational states - the classic, exclusionary, and dichotomous view of the world ("we" versus "they") will fade. But the notion of "proprietary information" is here to stay. And theft will never cease as long as there is profit to be had. XVII. Russia's Idled Spies Also Read" The Industrious Spies Russian Roulette - The Security Apparatus On November 11, 2002, Sweden expelled two Russian diplomats for spying on radar and missile guidance technologies for the JAS 39 British-Swedish Gripen fighter jet developed by Telefon AB LM Ericsson, the telecommunications multinational. The Russians threatened to reciprocate. Five current and former employees of the corporate giant are being investigated. Ironically, the first foreign buyer of the aircraft may well be Poland, a former Soviet satellite state and a current European Union candidate. Sweden arrested in February 2001 a worker of the Swiss- Swedish engineering group, ABB, on suspicion of spying for Russia. The man was released after two days for lack of evidence and reinstated. But the weighty Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, speculated that the recent Russian indiscretion was in deliberate retaliation for Swedish espionage in Russia. Sweden is rumored to have been in the market for Russian air radar designs and the JAS radar system is said by some observers to uncannily resemble its eastern counterparts.