A Brief History of Corporate Espionage
In the early 1700s, a French Jesuit missionary in China sent detailed porcelain manufacturing information back to France. In the 1800s, the British East India Co. hired Robert Fortune, a Scottish botanist, to travel to China and smuggle tea to help India gain a competitive edge in the tea market. And in 2018 and 2019, two Apple Inc. engineers were accused of stealing valuable trade secrets (photos and electronic files) related to Apple’s autonomous car program, Project Titan. Clearly, just as business has changed along with the technology we use daily, so too have the methods of spying. But the essence of corporate espionage–known also as industrial or economic espionage–remains unchanged.
