When online attackers operating from China or other countries steal corporate secrets, let businesses strike back and retrieve stolen information from attackers’ networks.
That gloves-off approach is just one of many recommendations for combating industrial espionage outlined in a new report from the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, which is headed by the former director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, as well as Jon Huntsman, who’s served as the governor of Utah as well as U.S. ambassador to China.
“China is two-thirds of the intellectual property theft problem, and we are at a point where it is robbing us of innovation to bolster their own industry, at a cost of millions of jobs,” Huntsman told The New York Times. “We need some realistic policy options that create a real cost for this activity because the Chinese leadership is sensitive to those costs.”
The report offers 21 specific recommendations, including increasing the budget of the FBI and Department of Justice to investigate trade theft and amending U.S. counter-espionage laws to allow businesses that suffer intellectual property (IP) theft to sue foreign organizations for damages. It also advocates longer-term measures, such as rating countries on their ability to protect IP, as well as ensuring that U.S. officials “push to move China, in particular, beyond a policy of indigenous innovation toward becoming a self-innovating economy.”