How The US Government Uses Information From Spying On Foreign Companies

There’s no longer doubt that the US government spies on foreign multinational corporations as well as governments, thanks to the disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor turned international fugitive Edward Snowden.  The NSA vacuums up mountains of classified information from a rich array of sources. The CIA assists by launching digital “black bag” operations aimed at manually penetrating the computer systems of some of the world’s largest foreign multinationals.

Washington isn’t alone, of course; dozens of other governments do the same, in collaboration with each other and individually. But one thing that US officials insist they won’t do is use the information gleaned from industrial espionage to help US corporations, like the Chinese do with their state-run defense, oil and other companies.