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In today's episode we speak to Dr. Maria Robson-Morrow and Holden Triplett about the fascinating world of corporate espionage.Dr. Maria Robson-Morrow is the Program Manager at the Harvard Kennedy School's Intelligence Project. She worked as a global security intelligence analyst at Nexen Energy in Canada and then as an independent security intelligence consultant before returning to academia to study public-private intelligence cooperation. She earned a PhD in Political Science in 2021 from Northeastern University and holds a Master's in Military and Strategic Studies from the University of Calgary and a BA in International Relations, Economics, and History from the University of Toronto. Maria's research has been published in Intelligence and National Security, Harvard Business Review, and the Journal of Intelligence History. She teaches courses on Intelligence at Johns Hopkins University. Maria serves on the Board and Education Committee for the Association of International Risk Intelligence Professionals.Holden Triplett is the founder of Trenchcoat Advisors, where he advises clients facing sophisticated nation-state risks. He spent nearly 15 years with the FBI and has extensive international and domestic risk intelligence and security experience. He also spent several years in overseas assignments, notably leading the FBI's offices in Russia and China. Holden is conversant in Mandarin and Russian, and has unique understanding of the objectives, capabilities, and methodologies of the Chinese and Russian intelligence services. During his time in Russia, Holden coordinated U.S. government security efforts of the Sochi Winter Olympics, including establishing a first of its kind joint threat intelligence unit with the Russian security services. While in Beijing, he worked closely with People's Republic of China security services to plan for the joint security of the Beijing Winter Olympics. Upon his return to the United States, he served as the Director for Counterintelligence at the National Security Council, at the White House. In his last government position, Holden was the FBI Faculty Chair at the National Intelligence University, where he taught courses in Counterintelligence, National Security Law and Intelligence, and Chinese Intelligence and Information Warfare. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service.Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/EncyclopediaGeopolitica
By Adam Turteltaub Economic espionage sounds more like the stuff of a spy thriller than a day-to-day concern for business. Not so, as it turns out. To learn more we sat down with the FBI's Counterintelligence Division Unit Chief Matthew Charles and Cyber Division Supervisory Special Agent Michelle Liu. Economic espionage generally refers to stealing trade secrets for the benefit of an overseas competitor, often one aligned with a foreign government. An employee at your organization working on a sensitive project may be leveraged, frequently with the lure of cash and other payments. Typical targets include technology with potential military use and, of late, pharmaceuticals. To counter this threat, the FBI Cyber Division maintains partnerships with many private sector companies to identify nefarious conduct on their networks. Meantime the Counterintelligence Division looks upstream for actors coming into the US seeking access to US technology. So what should companies do? First, protect yourself. Encryption can be helpful along with limiting access to sensitive information only to key people. Make sure, too, to track who in your firm is accessing trade secrets. Also, be sensitive to unusual employee behaviors or changes in affluence levels. An employee suddenly downloading large files at night, emailing their personal email address sensitive information or whose debt problems have inexplicably disappeared could be engaged in economic espionage. Just don't jump to any conclusions. There could be legitimate reasons for these actions. Second, the FBI advises reaching out to them when an incident occurs. The FBI can't investigate without ongoing collaboration of the victim organization. They also advise that it is never too early to call them in, and if you do not want them there, they will pull out. Finally, take the time to leverage government resources. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the US Department of Justice's Criminal Division's Computer Crime and intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) website. You will find there information on reporting computer, internet-related or intellectual property crime. And, of course, listen in to the podcast to learn more about the risks of economic espionage and what you can do to mitigate it.
Monday March 27, 2023 Academic Economic Espionage?
Matt Malone, assistant professor at Thompson Rivers University's Faculty of Law Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A Hydro-Québec employee has been charged for allegedly operating as a Chinese spy in Canada. It's the first time the obtaining trade secrets charge has been laid under Canada's Security of Information Act. Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the independent think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation, tells us more.
90 percent of US tea is folks drinking black tea. But did you know the reason Americans drink so much black tea stems from the decisions by the British Naval Fleet?Economic espionage has been going on for centuries. So in today's episode, we're talking about how the British spied on China in the 17th Century helping them learn how to cultivate and sell black tea. Curiosity Stream Return of the Trade Wars episodeEverything is Logistics is hosted by Blythe Brumleve, founder of Digital Dispatch where we help freight companies get online and grow. Check out our top shows to fix your website and fix your marketing. Alternatively, you can search by topic and check out all our past episodes of the podcast—right on our website.Connect with Blythe on Linkedin, YouTube, and TikTok
Economic Espionage has been going on for centuries. So in today's episode, we're talking about it in two ways: first, how to spy on your competition using digital tools, and second, how the British spied on China in the 17th Century helping them learn how to cultivate and sell black tea. Also on the show, Nadine Nocero from Sync Show on the pillars of marketing to prove ROI, and Wasim Munayyer is back to tell us about the current job market trends-especially when it comes to Gen-Z. Connect with Nadine Nocero on Linkedin and her company Sync ShowConnect with Wasim Munayyer on LinkedInCuriosity Stream Return of the Trade Wars episodeCyberly is hosted by Blythe Brumleve and covers B2B marketing, the attention economy, and how it ties into the world of logistics. Airing every Thursday at 2pm ET, you can follow the podcast on Spotify and Apple while catching the video replays on FreightWaves TV.Connect with Blythe via her website or on Linkedin, YouTube, and TikTokPort X Logistics is your easy button for your drayage, transload, and trucking needs for all ports and ramps in the United States and Canada. Our four pillars of Culture, Service, Tech, and Trucks are what set us apart from the rest. We provide full visibility from the second your container leaves the origin port to the final stage of delivery.
Economic Espionage has been going on for centuries. So in today's episode, we're talking about it in two ways: first, how to spy on your competition using digital tools, and second, how the British spied on China in the 17th Century helping them learn how to cultivate and sell black tea. Also on the show, Nadine Nocero from Sync Show on the pillars of marketing to prove ROI, and Wasim Munayyer is back to tell us about the current job market trends-especially when it comes to Gen-Z. Connect with Nadine Nocero on Linkedin and her company Sync ShowConnect with Wasim Munayyer on LinkedInCuriosity Stream Return of the Trade Wars episodeCyberly is hosted by Blythe Brumleve and covers B2B marketing, the attention economy, and how it ties into the world of logistics. Airing every Thursday at 2pm ET, you can follow the podcast on Spotify and Apple while catching the video replays on FreightWaves TV.Connect with Blythe via her website or on Linkedin, YouTube, and TikTok
In this episode of Horns of a Dilemma, Dr. Catherine Lotrionte, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discusses state-sponsored cyber economic espionage, that is the use of state resources in order to obtain private intellectual property, not for the benefit of the state, but for the benefit of industries and companies.
DryCleanerCast a podcast about Espionage, Terrorism & GeoPolitics
On today's podcast we are joined by Ben West and we take a look at economic espionage past, present and future. Ben is a Senior Global Security Analyst with Stratfor, a RANE company. You can read Ben's reports here: Understanding Economic Espionage: The Future Understanding Economic Espionage: The Present Understanding Economic Espionage: The Past Our film “The Dry Cleaner” has been released! Check out the trailer here: youtu.be/j_KFTJenrz4 And you can buy the film here: www.drycleanercast.co.uk/watchthefilm Music Music on this podcast is provided by Andrew R. Bird (Andy Bird) You can check out his work here: www.monsteromnibus.com/?fbclid=IwAR0…BdNQbuCvt9KWU Please support this podcast Patreon Become a “Friend of the podcast” on Patreon for £3 www.patreon.com/SecretsAndSpies Visit our new memorabilia shop: https://www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/60934996 Connect with us here: TWITTER twitter.com/SecretsAndSpies FACEBOOK www.facebook.com/secretsandspies
The U.S. Department of Justice recently accused a Stanford University researcher of hiding her connections to the Chinese People's Liberation Army and misleading U.S. investigators. The researcher, Chen Song, is just the latest example of U.S. counterintelligence efforts against China and people accused of selling U.S. trade secrets to China. In this episode of the Essential Geopolitics podcast from Stratfor, a RANE company, Emily Donahue speaks to Ben West, who is Stratfor's Senior Global Security analyst at RANE.Follow Stratfor on TwitterFollow Stratfor on LinkedInConnect with Stratfor on Facebook
China has had a really bad week and former House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers says, this is likely the beginning of a very rough patch. Economic espionage, 5G, the Houston consulate closure, extradition treaties and trade limits are all facing China as the West shuts down its quest to dominate the world.
In this week's podcast, Alex interviews Christopher Burgess. Christopher served 30 years with the Central Intelligence Agency. He was also a senior security advisor with Cisco Aystems and is the coauthor of the book Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost: Preventing Intellectual Property Theft and Economic Espionage in the 21st Century. He is the founder of Securely Travel and Senior Online Safety. If you want to reach Christopher, visit his website at https://www.burgessct.com/. If you have any questions about this podcast or want to reach out to us, visit our website www.holistic-finance.com
In this episode, Alex interviews Christopher Burgess. Christopher has served 30 years with the Central Intelligence Agency. He was also a senior security advisor with Cisco Systems and is the coauthor of the book Secrets Stolen, Fortunes Lost: Preventing Intellectual Property Theft and Economic Espionage in the 21st Century. He is the founder of both Securely Travel and Senior Online Safety and he provides commentary and writes regularly on national security topics. If you want to contact Christopher, visit his website at https://www.burgessct.com/ If you have any questions about this podcast or want to reach out to us, visit www.beerandmoney.net
Fears about North Korean instability can wait until it’s determined that there’s actually instability. An economic espionage campaign targeted the oil and gas sector. Much phishing surrounds government COVID-19 economic relief programs around the world. The US Supreme Court will hear a case involving the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. And if you’re studying from home, don’t cheat. And teacher, maybe don’t spy. Ben Yelin from UMD CHHS on training facial recognition software to recognize medical masks, guest is Gonda Lamberink from UL on making product security transparent and accessible to consumers. For links to all of today's stories check out our CyberWire daily news brief: https://thecyberwire.com/issues/issues2020/April/CyberWire_2020_04_21.html
The monthly fraud, hacking, threat, technology, and management development recap framed through the lens of 30 years of experience in law enforcement, medicine, oil and gas, high tech, investment banking, and higher education.The FBI received 467,361 cybercrime complaints in 2019 including a detailed account of a case in Dallas Federal Court where the alleged perpetrators targeted corporations and lonely ladies.“... more than $3.5 billion in losses to individual and business victims. The most frequently reported complaints were phishing and similar ploys, non-payment/non-delivery scams, and extortion. The most financially costly complaints involved business email compromise, romance or confidence fraud, and spoofing, or mimicking the account of a person or vendor known to the victim to gather personal or financial information.”The wrap up concludes with a summary of a 2019 ransomware report and actual attack impacts on cities like Baltimore and New Orleans. It concludes with what you can do by way of prevention and incident response recommendations.Host: Matthew Hall, CISSP, CHFI, Security +Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/utterlymental?fan_landing=true)
The Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackOps Partners Corporation, Casey Fleming appears on this week's episode of Task Force 7 Radio to talk about China, what kind of threat they pose to the United States, and their competitive economic strategy of they must live, we must die as a world power. Fleming talks about the Great Power Competition; Asymmetric Hybrid Warfare, how it's being utilized today, and what that means to the United States; the Gray Zone and how the U.S. needs to learn to operate in it; Cybersecurity as a National Security Threat; Security Strategy and how it integrates into our overall competitive strategy; how Economic Espionage has damaged America's role as the world's lone super power; and turning Intellectual Property theft protection into competitive advantage on the global stage. All this and much, much more on this week's episode of Task Force 7 Radio.
In this episode, Editor-in-Chief, Jared Grubow speaks with Andrew Chongseh Kim about his article, published in Volume 40, Issue 2. They discuss Batman, Austin Powers, and the current state of Economic Espionage, indicating the disparate prosecution of those who are "researching while Asian."
A daily look at the relevant information security news from overnight.Episode 79 - 07 February, 2019Chinese economic espionage campaign - https://www.scmagazine.com/home/security-news/apts-cyberespionage/report-chinese-cyberspies-hacked-msp-retailer-and-law-firm-in-economic-espionage-campaign/Phishing behind Google Translate - https://threatpost.com/clever-phishing-attack-enlists-google-translate-to-spoof-facebook-login-page/141571/Video conference exploit - https://www.zdnet.com/article/security-vulnerabilities-in-video-conferencing-devices-could-be-remotely-exploited-by-hackers/Apps are recording it all - https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/06/iphone-session-replay-screenshots/MacOS zero day - https://threatpost.com/macos-zero-day-exposes-apple-keychain-passwords/141584/
Tiffany Lopez Winters, executive director of the National Trust Center, joins host Derrick Dortch to discuss economic espionage and how it is affecting small businesses, government contractors and federal agencies.
Thank you to Advisory Committee Chair Harvey Rishikof for appearing in this episode. The black letter law discussed in this podcast is: Foreign Spies: Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace (2011 ONCIX report) http://www.thecre.com/fisma/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Foreign_Economic_Collection_2011.pdf Economic Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. §1831-1832: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1831 And https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1831 E.O. 13694 (April 1, 2015), Blocking the Property of Certain Persons Engaging in Significant malicious Cyber-Enabled Activities: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/01/executive-order-blocking-property-certain-persons-engaging-significant-m U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Entity List: https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/lists-of-parties-of-concern/entity-list Update to the IP Commission Report, February 2017: http://ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_Update_2017.pdf Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974: https://www.trade.gov/mas/ian/tradedisputes-enforcement/tg_ian_002100.asp Full Trade Act: https://legcounsel.house.gov/Comps/93-618.pdf U.S.-China Cyberspace norms developed in 2015: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/25/fact-sheet-president-xi-jinpings-state-visit-united-states United States v. Wang Don, Sun Kailiang, Wen Xinyu, Huang Zhenyu, Gu Chunhui, Indictment: https://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/resources/5122014519132358461949.pdf Chinese national Sentenced to Prison for Conspiracy to Steal Trade Secrets, October 5, 2016: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-sentenced-prison-conspiracy-steal-trade-secrets U.S. and Chinese Defendants Charged with Economic Espionage and Theft of Trade Secrets in Connection with Conspiracy to Sell Trade Secrets to Chinese Companies, February 8, 2012: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-and-chinese-defendants-charged-economic-espionage-and-theft-trade-secrets-connection Chinese National Pleads Guilty to Economic Espionage and Theft of a Trade Secret from U.S. Company, May 19, 2017: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/chinese-national-pleads-guilty-economic-espionage-and-theft-trade-secret-us-company Kansas Agricultural Scientist Convicted in Theft of Engineered Rice, February 16, 2017: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/kansas-agricultural-scientist-convicted-theft-engineered-rice Chinese National Who Conspired to Hack into U.S. Defense Contractors’ Systems Sentenced to 46 Months in Federal Prison, July 13, 2016: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-national-who-conspired-hack-us-defense-contractors-systems-sentenced-46-months ZTE Corporation Agrees to Plead Guilty and Pay Over $430.4 Million for Violating U.S. Sanctions by Sending U.S.-Origin Items to Iran, Mary 7, 2017: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/zte-corporation-agrees-plead-guilty-and-pay-over-4304-million-violating-us-sanctions-sending Article: Cyber Crime Costs Projected To Reach $2 Trillion by 2019 https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemorgan/2016/01/17/cyber-crime-costs-projected-to-reach-2-trillion-by-2019/#7b255b873a91 The National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice can be found online: https://www.justice.gov/nsd
William J. Tucker, a regular contributor on counterintelligence and security topics for Blogs of War and Covert Contact, joins me for a deep dive on economic espionage. Organizations face far more risk from this threat than they realize, or want to realize, and most are no match for an interested foreign intelligence service. We discuss […]
In part two of our series, John Carlin shared with us lessons on economic espionage and weaponized information. As former Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Security Division, he described how nation state actors exfiltrated data from American companies, costing them hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and more than two million jobs. He also reminded us how important it is for organizations to work with the government as he took us down memory lane with the Sony hack. He explained how destructive an attack can be, by using soft targets, such as email that do not require sophisticated techniques. Transcript Cindy Ng: In part two of John Carlin's talk, we learn more about how nation state actors exfiltrate data from American companies, costing them hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and more than two million jobs. He also took us down memory lane, describing how the Sony hack showed us how successful an attack can be by using soft targets, such as email, that do not require sophisticated techniques. John Carlin: Let me talk a little bit about economic espionage and how we moved into this new space. When I was a computer-hacking prosecutor prosecuting criminal cases, we were plenty busy. And I worked with an FBI squad, and the squad that I worked with did nothing but criminal cases. There was an intelligence squad who was across the hall, and they were behind a locked, secured compartmented door. The whole time I was doing criminal cases, about 10, 15 years ago, we never went on the other side of that door. If an agent switched squads, they just disappeared behind that locked, secured door. I then went over to the FBI to be Chief of Staff to the director, FBI Director Mueller. And when I was there, that door opened and we started to see day-in, day-out what nation state actors were doing to our country. And what we saw were state actors, and we had a literal jumbotron screen the size of a movie theater where we could watch it through a visual interface in real time. And we were watching state actors hop into places like universities, go from the university into your company, and then we would literally watch the data exfiltrate out. As we were watching this, it was an incredible feat of intelligence, but we also realized, "Hey, this is not success. We're watching billions and billions of dollars of what U.S. research and development, and our allies, have developed in losses. We're seeing millions of jobs lost." One estimate has it at more than two million jobs. "What can we do to make it clear that the threat isn't about consumer data or IP, the threat is about everything that you value on your system? And how do we make clear that there's an urgent need to address this problem?" What we did is, when I came back to Justice to lead up the National Security Division, is we looked to start sharing information within government. So, for the first time, every criminal prosecutor's office across the country, all 93 U.S. Attorneys' offices now has someone who's trained on the bits, and the bytes and the Electronic Communication Privacy Act on the one hand. On the other hand, on how to handle sensitive sources and methods, and encouraged to see, can you bring a case? This only happened in 2013. This approach is still very, very new. The FBI issued an edict that said, "Thou shalt share what was formally only on the intelligence side of the house with this new, specially-trained cadre." They then were redeployed out to the field. It's because of that change in approach that we did the first case of its kind, the indictment of five members of the People's Liberation Army, Unit 61398. This was a specialized unit who, as we laid out in the complaint, they were hitting companies like yours and they were doing it for reasons that weren't national security, they weren't nation-state reasons. They were doing things like...Westinghouse was about to do a joint venture with a partner in China, and right before they were gonna into business together, you watched as the Chinese uniformed members of the People's Liberation Army, the second largest military in the world, went in, attacked their system and instead of paying to lease the lead pipe as they were supposed to do the next day, they went in and stole the technical design specifications so they could get it for free. That's one example laid out in the complaint. Or to give another example, and this is why it's not the type of information that is required to be protected by regulation, like consumer data or intellectual property. Instead, for instance, they went in to a solar company, it was a U.S. subsidiary of a German multi-national and they stole the pricing data from that company. Then the Chinese competitor, using this information stolen by the People's Liberation Army, price dumped. They set their product just below where the competitor would be. That forced that competitor into bankruptcy. To add insult to injury, when that company sued them for the illegal practice of price dumping, they went and stole the litigation strategy right out from under them. When people said, "Why are you indicting the People's Liberation Army? It isn't state-to-state type activity. Everybody does it, what's the big deal? Criminal process is the wrong way to do it." The reason why we made it public were a couple. One was to make public what they were doing so that businesses would know what it was to protect themselves. Second, what they were doing was theft and that's never been tolerated. And so, there's a concept in U.S. law of what's called an easement. This is the idea that if you let someone walk across your lawn long enough, in U.S. law, they get what's called an easement. They get the right to walk across your lawn. That's why people put up no trespassing signs. International law, which is primarily a law of customary law, works the same way. And as long as we were continuing to allow them to steal day-in, day-out, the Director of the FBI called them like a drunken gorilla because they were so obvious in terms of who they were. They didn't care if they got caught because they were so confident there'd be no consequence. Then, we are setting international law, we are setting the standard as one where it's okay. So, in some respects, this case was a giant "No trespass" sign, "Get off our lawn." The other thing that we did, though, was we wanted to show the seriousness, that this was their day job. And so, we showed that the activity started at 9 a.m. Beijing time, that it went at a high level from 9:00 to noon Beijing time, it decreased from noon to 1:00, it then increased again from 1:00 to around 6 p.m. Beijing time, decreased on Chinese holidays, weekends. This was the day job of the military, and it's not fair and it can't be expected that a private company alone can defend itself against that type of adversary. This single case had an enormous impact on Chinese behavior, and I wanna move a little bit to the next major cases that occurred. So, that's economic espionage, theft for monetary value. We also started seeing some of the first destructive attacks. Everyone remembers Sony, and many people think of it as the first destructive attack on U.S. soil. It really wasn't the first destructive attack. The first destructive attack was on Sands Casino by what the Director of National Intelligence called Iranian-affiliated officials. Those Iranian-affiliated actors, when they attacked Sands, they did so because they didn't like what the head of Sands Casino had said about Iran and the Ayatollahs called on people within Iran to attack the company. They did a destructive attack that essentially turned computers into bricks. And it was only, actually, because there was someone quick thinking in the IT staff who was not authorized by their policy, by the way, who spotted what was occurring and essentially pulled the plug, and in that respect was able to segment the attack and keep it confined to a small to a small area, it didn't cause more damage. That didn't get nearly the attention of Sony, so let's talk a little bit about Sony. You know, I spent nearly 20 years in government working on national security criminal threats. We did enumerable war games where we war-gamed out, "What's it gonna look like if rogue nuclear arms nation decides to attack the United States through cyber-enabled means?" And I don't know about you guys but we all got it wrong, because not once did we guess that the first major incident was gonna be over a movie about a bunch of pot smokers. It's the only time...I remember every morning I'd meet with the Director of the FBI, the Attorney General to go over at the threats. That Christmas we'd all watched the movie the day before, shared movie reviews. And it's the only time in my career where I've gone into the Situation Room to brief the president on a serious national security incident and had to start by trying to summarize the plot of that movie which, for those of you unlucky enough to have seen it, not that I'm passing critical judgement, it is not an easy plot to summarize. So, why did we do that? Why were we treating this like a serious national security event that had presidential attention? The attack had multiple parts. One was, just like the attack on Sands Casino, it essentially turned computers into bricks. Secondly, they stole, so this is like the economic espionage threat. They stole intellectual property and they distributed it using a third party, the WikiLeaks-type example. Using third parties, they distributed that stolen intellectual property and tried to cause harm to Sony. Nobody remembers those two. What everybody remembers, and this is the weaponizing of the information idea, is that by focusing on a soft target like email communications, it was the salacious email communications inside the company between executives that got such massive media attention. That and, of course, the fact that it's a movie company. That lesson was not unnoticed, and so there's a lot of focus on it and we'll talk about it later. And it was used again, clearly, in the Russian attempt to influence elections not just here in the United States with our most recent election cycle, but both before that in elections across Europe. You can see them trying to use similar tactics and techniques right now when it comes to the French election. They clearly stumbled on the fact that, "Hey, it's not the information inside a company that people put great safeguards around, like their crown jewel of intellectual property. It can be the softer parts like email, like routine communications that, if we gather them in bulk, we can use to weaponize and cause harm to the company." The reason why we treated that as such a serious national security concern in the White House was because of the reason behind the attack. Just like the attack on Sands Casino, this attack on Sony was fundamentally an attack on our values. It was an attack on the idea that we have free speech. And similarly, the Russian attempts are fundamentally an attack on the idea of democracy. That's why they're attacking democratic institutions not just here in the United States, but across the world. For you, in the private sector, as we're designing and you're thinking about, you need to have products inside your system that can allow you to monitor broadly what type of attacks are occurring within your perimeter so you can get ahead of a weaponized information-type attack. That means fortifying defenses beyond those that are under legislation or regulation. In order to do that, that means figuring out and using products that are business-friendly. By that I mean, you may be the best information technology folks in the world, if your business side can't understand the tools that you're using or the risks that you're trying to describe to them, then you can't engage them on what could really harm the company most. And that's what you need to do your job, to figure out what that is. Another thing that we can work on now when it comes to responding quickly is how fast these events occur. And these days, the best practice is to monitor social media. Now, I know a couple companies that they're monitoring social media. In part, it's not just for cyber crisis, right? Every crisis moves that quickly. Some are monitoring it because a certain president of the United States right now, occasionally, will tweet something out in the middle of the night that can cause a company, if he singles you out, he can cause your share price to torpedo by the time the market opens. So certainly, a couple of companies who've actually been though that have rapid communications plans in place, and we've other clients now that just as a best practice have, essentially, a team monitoring that Twitter account from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. so they can get a communication into the media mainstream before the stock market opens. That's the same idea when it comes to having systems in place, so you're monitoring social media for mentions of your company and then having a rapid response plan in place. That can also be majorly benefitted by you and your understanding of the system. If you spot where the data is that was stolen and think through with your business side how it can be used, you can get in front of it suddenly appearing somewhere on social media through WikiLeaks or some other site, just through Twitter and so that you're ready to have a rapid response that addresses your business risk. I want to focus a little bit, as we did, on this idea of working together, government and the private sector. I'm gonna go back to the economic espionage case for a second, the China case. When we did that PLA case, for years before when I was doing the criminal cases, I think companies didn't work with law enforcement because they figured, "What's the upside?" And I'll just talk about that China case, but that case, the indictment of the People's Liberation Army, it changed Chinese behavior, maybe not forever, but for now. It caused President Xi, I think that case, plus the response to Sony where we used the same type of response when it came to North Korea, which was...look, it was incredibly beneficial to Sony when we were able to say that it was North Korea. Until then, all of the attention was on Sony, "What did they do wrong? Why weren't their systems better? Isn't it ridiculous what their executives were saying?" After we could say that it was North Korea, the narrative changed to, "Hey, Government, what are you doing to protect us against nation-state threats?" That is why attributions can matter. And what did the government do? We applied now, for the second time, the approach that we'd applied for the first time with the People's Liberation Army of, number one, figuring out who did it. And that required working closely with the company to figure out not just what they took, but why they would have taken it, what could have precipitated the event. Number two, collect information in a way that we can make it public. And number three, use it, cause harm to the adversary. And that's why in Sony, unlike in the PLA case, we didn't have a criminal case available to us, so instead of using a criminal case you saw us publicly announce through the FBI who did it, and use that as a basis, then, to sanction North Korea. We realized sitting around the Situation Room table, lucky it was North Korea. If it had been some other cyber actor, unlike North Korea, who hadn't done so many other bad things, we wouldn't have been able to sanction them the way you could terrorists or those who proliferate weapons of mass destruction. So, going forwards, the president signed a new executive order that allows us to sanction cyber actors. The combination of that new executive order which significantly allows, to use the PLA example, you to sanction not just those who take it, but the companies who make money off of it, those who profit from the stolen information. I think it was that combination of the new executive order in place, the PLA case and the realization that we could make things public and would cause harm that caused President Xi, the leader of China, to blink and sign an unprecedented agreement with President Obama. He sent a crew, we negotiated with them day and night for several days. And they said for the first time, "Hey, we agree, using your military intelligence to target private companies for the benefit of their economic competitor is wrong, and we agree that that should be a norm that you don't do that." That caused the G20 to sign it, and since then we have seen in government and private group monitoring, there's a decrease in terms of how China is targeting private companies. Now, as some of you may be seeing, though, their definition of what's theft for private gain and ours might differ, and there's certainly sectors that are still getting hit and traditional intelligence collection continues.