"US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all."

Sorry but they use their intelligence for economic reasons e.g. Airbus contracts. And Snowden leaks also revealed that spying is not only limited to security or political targets...

And to be honest with the current American President who is "hugely" (so yuge you could not believe it) untrustworthy and is certainly not a friend of the other western countries, I can't honestly say that it's very difficult anno 2018 to determine who you can trust.

I found lots of links saying US does 'industrial espionage' but no one says this helps US companies.

> The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it does collect information about economic and financial matters, and terrorist financing. "What we do not do, as we have said many times, is use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of - or give intelligence we collect to - U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line," it said in a statement

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/30/news/airbus-germany-nsa-spyi...

China has wide spread state sponsored stealing to help their companies. US does not seem to.

Plenty said that. The problem is that the reports are old with Google et al prioritizing new, ad-generating content. Even if you have links, many of those pages' links will be dead. It's online decay. I just spent an hour trying to find some reports of it from mainstream sources based on pieces of things I remembered. Here's two:

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-11-01/news/1996306048_...

https://nypost.com/2000/07/10/giant-u-s-spy-vacuum-sparks-a-...

A lot of it happened in the Advocacy Center and/or Office of Executive Support. The European Parliament's report on Echelon talks about some of it:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/EPRS_STUDY_538877_Affaire...

Far as that last part, the U.S. does something quite different: a corrupt Congress makes patent and copyright laws so ridiculously strong that they make compatability/competition with big, U.S. companies anywhere from difficult to impossible. The best examples are in smartphone market where Apple tries to block Chinese and Korean products. Microsoft also pulled in about a billion in Android royalties despite not contributing anything to Android's success.

Also note that a lot of Silicon Valley heavyweights started out with big funding from the government, esp DARPA. Kind of similar to state-sponsoring of companies in China. From there, the U.S. companies legally rob or block competition via vaguely-worded, broad, long-lasting patents. Recently, competition blocking API rulings. The Chinese do it via spies and suppliers that iterate fast. I don't see one having moral high ground over the other if they're both doing things that harm the many to benefit a tiny, rich few legally backed with bribery or other corruption.

we'll take his work for it then.

because, you know, the us does not steal trade secrets, which proves that trade secrets are not stolen, by the us.

> US does not seem to steal for economic purposes at all.

Is that a joke? https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Former-CIA-Director-Says-US...

Then you haven't read any of the various books about the CIA. "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" or "Inside the Company - CIA diary" make a good read. It's only about economic purposes. On a much larger scale than China.

I have not read those books. It sounds the CIA pressuring third world nations to do things not in their economic interests. I don't support that.

That is bad but different to stealing technology using hidden back doors which China reportedly does. I have no evidence either way.

But pressuring third world nations to do things not in their economic interests is not that different to what the One Belt One Road program is doing using loans on uneconomic projects.

Both are bad but US does not seem to steal technology through hacking like China does. I am not sure why

"Both are bad but US does not seem to steal technology through hacking like China does. I am not sure why"

Maybe not through hacking but historical a lot of the industrial revolution that happened in the US was by means of "stealing" British technology, improving on it and don't have any regards for their patents at that time.

There is really some irony somewhere in there.

I have heard that was not state sponsored but people memorizing schematics. I am not sure though. I am interested in learning more.

China does innovate. But it is a nation sponsoring technology stealing on a huge scale. I don't think USA ever did that. I am happy to be proved wrong.

That was 200 to 300 years ago. Nobody alive today was even alive during the industrial revolution, so I would not consider this to be a relevant indication of current activity.

History has a consequence to current activity. Take China. They had to open their borders in 19th century and then saw the British flood the market with opium and thus making millions of addicted chinese. Years of shame that all Chinese still remember, and that's why they don't allow single western companies come and sell any product. They know western companies have a history of abuse and won't let history repeat twice

It's a little hard to say which is worse. Not aware of the 'One Belt One Read' program. But in terms of technology stealing by nature they are mostly stealing from bigger guys and lessening their advantage/power. CIA basically preyed upon the weak, destroy countries stability and makes life hard or impossible for millions.

The strong will always prefer to steal from the weak, those who cannot fight back. I'm not saying Chinese are good or they aren't doing the same or the potential horrendous impact them stealing some powerful technology. But one have to agree in most cases it's not preying upon the weak and defenseless.

Its just an interesting observation really.

Great observation, which links to something I have been trying to communicate for some time: the biggest "sin" of the US is not that it has illegaly invaded countries, or killed civilians, or spied, or stolen. The biggest sin is that it has squandered a huge moral, technological and economical lead, and instead of having lead with it for a fairer and multipolar world, it has, at every opportunity, tried to profit from the relative weakness of the "adversaries".

Now nobody believes in anybody, because when it was needed, principles were traded for strategic advances.