‘They have re-aimed their guns’
In recent years, the topics of economic intelligence and economic espionage are getting more and more attention. The end of the Cold War resulted in the ‘cyclical unemployment’ of hundreds of intelligence agents, who were diverted towards other issues, of which economic espionage is one. The desire of lesser-developed countries to catch up with the developed countries, globalization, transparency, internationalization of production, the rising number of foreign researchers and scientists, the trend of outsourcing and the cyber aspect that has become a vital part of doing business, had an increasing role on the level of economic espionage. Recently, the Belgian intelligence community showed their commitment to work on this issue and this topic will be taken on board as a priority issue in the upcoming years. This article tries to contribute to the debate on economic espionage and to the safeguarding of Belgian economic and scientific interests by defining a framework to make estimations about the likelihood of an espionage incident in a company.