Economic Espionage Is A Growing Foreign Intelligence Threat To American Jobs And Homeland Security, Says Assistant FBI Director

C. Frank Figliuzzi, the FBI's Assistant Director, Counterintelligence Division, spoke to a Congressional committee about the threat of economic espionge.

For the past year and a half, I have had the privilege of leading the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division (CD). Our mission is to identify, disrupt, and defeat the efforts of foreign intelligence services operating inside the United States. In the FBI’s pending case load for the current fiscal year, economic espionage losses to the American economy total more than $13 billion. The health of America’s companies is vital to our economy, and our economy is a matter of national security. But the FBI, with our partners, is making strides in disrupting economic espionage plots. In just the last four years, the number of arrests the FBI has made associated with economic espionage has doubled; indictments have increased five-fold; and convictions have risen eight-fold. In just the current fiscal year, the FBI has made 10 arrests for economic espionage related charges; federal courts have indicted 21 of our subjects (including indictments of five companies), and convicted nine defendants. In the current fiscal year so far, we have already surpassed the statistics recorded for FY 2011 and expect them to continue to rise. With each year, foreign intelligence services and their collectors become more creative and more sophisticated in their methods to undermine American business and erode the one thing that most provides American business its leading edge; our ability to innovate.
 
As the FBI’s economic espionage caseload is growing, so is the percentage of cases attributed to an insider threat, meaning that, individuals currently (or formerly) trusted as employees and contractors are a growing part of the problem.

You can read the entire testimony via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/economic-espionage-a-foreign-intelligence-threat-to-americans-jobs-and-homeland-security?utm_campaign=email-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=congressional-testimony&utm_content=109928