"The rest of the world" is an interesting way to frame a response to my comment, which you appear to be stipulating is correct. I'm saying that on the matter of economic spying, there is no rest of the world.
Please stop using words like "excuse" to respond to me, by the way. You put words in my mouth when you do that; I didn't make an excuse. There's a world of difference between "is" and "ought".
Virtually every major city in the US has a street named after MLK, but there are still cops here that single black people out for beatings.
But let's not assume that the Dutch government is therefore off the hook. I would not be surprised if Dutch diplomats extract trade information (through pacts, treaties and simple espionage) that gets passed on to Shell.
We might be low on the James Bond style intelligence signals, but as a country that's an order of magnitude richer than we should be by any sane measure you can bet we've got our trademark smiling men in suits wherever the money flows.
I think that this is a legitimate moral position to take, but I think you will find that it is less widely held than other legitimate moral positions you might take (for instance spy agencies spying on their own citizens is more broadly recognized as bad).
Further, it seems to be a moral position that doesn't have much basis in practice. Industrial activities are fundamentally linked with traditional espionage targets such as diplomacy, military technology and military operations. To deny an intelligence agency access to those things seems no different than to deny them the ability to operate at all. Which is another legitimate moral stand to take, but one that has even less broad acceptance.
An instance of the more general value of "personal privacy" which has nothing to do with such abstract constructions as "nations".
If we value personal privacy, then spying always involves intrinsic harm, and the question is whether we should tolerate that harm for some greater good.
... and whether we want to go down the path of seeing ourselves as the sort of people who will tolerate harm to innocents for the greater good.
That's definitely not a proven item, in fact you could easily argue the opposite. Faulty intelligence has led to quite a few wars, and is worse than no intelligence at all, also, what intelligence there is tends to be cherry picked to support foregone conclusions.
They would if they could (and I'd bet that one has at one point).
Probably any country that can devote resources to industrial espionage does it.
> I'd be very much ashamed of this
"Playing nice" puts you at an disadvantage against actors that are more uninhibited. There is a reasonable argument to be made about scale and proportion; eg, the use of overwhelming capabilities in extremely asymmetric situations. But that doesn't negate the utility of those capabilities.
The uncomfortable reality is that all things exist naturally in a state of conflict (or "competition", to put a nicer spin on it). Morality is perhaps the greatest of the human inventions, but being unnatural, it does not exist in a stable equilibrium, and is rather irrelevant (and sometimes damaging) from a survivalist game theoretic perspective. Like capitalism, the rise and fall of nations mirrors Darwinism on a macro scale, so with that in mind, what we're seeing here should not be surprising -- it is the struggle for survival playing out over decades and centuries. The morality of an action, on a national scale, is a secondary concern, although it is often invoked if the effect on the nation is at least neutral or positive.
So that's why the US won't launch an outright attack against French industrial interests -- the consequences would be too damaging, not to mention the moral aspects of War Is a Bad Thing -- but has no compunction about stealing industrial secrets or snooping on politicians, where the potential gains outweigh the risks. And vice versa, for every nation that does this.
The "rules of the game" are dictated only by self-interest. Is it fair? No. Probably the only way to solve that is to collectively attain (and sustain!) enlightenment.
> rest of the world (the people, not necessarily the governments / those in power) considers industrial spying to be a negative activity
That is only true when the people/government are not the beneficiaries of the information. In reality, states (and people) will (and arguably, should) take any advantage that's given to them. Again, the reasonable argument to be made here is one of scale and proportion, not an absolutist directive of This Should Never Be Done Because It's Bad.
> 'They do it too' is such a lame excuse anyway
Yes, "they do it too" is a poor justification for anything, but it's not really the argument here. The argument is that not doing it would be more damaging to national economic interests. (I hate having to say this, but I feel like it needs to be spelled out, especially on the Internet: this is not me agreeing with anything the US is doing here, only giving a rationale. Although I will admit I'm not quite as idealistic in my convictions as you are.)
When France does it, it's bad. When the USA does it it is bad too.
If my country would do this - and it is very well possible they do - I'd be very much ashamed of this.
> This stuff is rampant between all the industrialized nations. You can find stories going back decades about Americans being evicted from embassies over industrial espionage.
Those stories are along the line of the article, not much of a counterargument there then.
> Technically --- modulo the "getting caught" part --- this is what NSA is supposed to be doing. That's a positive assertion, not a normative one!
This is true, but - and this will probably surprise you - the rest of the world (the people, not necessarily the governments / those in power) considers industrial spying to be a negative activity, and considers it a hostile act against those people.
The goodwill that a country builds up can easily be eradicated by activities such as these, especially when uncovered.
The only other countries that I'm aware of that use their intelligence services in such a blatantly offensive (both meanings of the word) manner are Israel and Russia.
And none of those - and definitely not France - have been caught spying on US politicians in their own offices.
'They do it too' is such a lame excuse anyway (especially when that is not objectively the case).