A review of selected cases of industrial espionage and economic spying, 1568–1945

Despite current dire warnings, study of episodes in the history of industrial espionage and economic spying reveal that surreptitious collection of manufacturing and other business secrets has been a methodical, calculated and abundant practice. Widespread predation of commercial information in the sixteenth to twentieth centuries is illustrative of the insatiable appetite for proprietary information for both private and governmental interests, and cases as varied as those of pre‐industrial times to the sophisticated covers used by the Third Reich attest to the lengths gone to for obtaining a variety of industrial secrets. The patterns and tactics used in other eras are instructive for our own, and place contemporary commercial espionage activity in an historical context, asserting that current industrial spying is part of a larger legacy.