Counterintelligence
Spies might seem like a throwback to earlier days of world wars and cold wars, but they are more common than ever—and they are targeting our nation’s most valuable secrets.
The FBI’s Counterintelligence Program
The FBI is the lead agency for exposing, preventing, and investigating intelligence activities in the U.S. Because much of today’s spying is accomplished by data theft from computer networks, espionage is quickly becoming cyber-based.
The goals of the FBI’s counterintelligence work are to:
- Protect the secrets of the U.S. Intelligence Community
- Protect the nation’s critical assets, like our advanced technologies and sensitive information in the defense, intelligence, economic, financial, public health, and science and technology sectors
- Counter the activities of foreign spies
- Keep weapons of mass destruction from falling into the wrong hands
Economic Espionage
Economic espionage costs the American economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year and puts our national security at risk. These foreign competitors deliberately target economic intelligence in advanced technologies and successful U.S. industries.
Historically, economic espionage has targeted defense-related and high-tech industries. But recent FBI cases have shown that no industry, large or small, is immune to the threat. Any company with a proprietary product, process, or idea can be a target. Any unprotected trade secret can be illegally stolen.
Outreach
In addition to its investigative work, the FBI works to raise public awareness and inform industry of the threats they face, through outreach activities.
In collaboration with the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, the FBI released a short film to educate anyone with a trade secret about how they can protect it. Based on an actual case, The Company Man: Protecting America’s Secrets illustrates how one U.S. company was targeted by foreign spies and how that company worked with the FBI to bring the perpetrators to justice.
Counterintelligence Brochures
- Economic Espionage: Protecting America's Trade Secrets
- Elicitation Techniques
- The Insider Threat: An Introduction to Detecting and Deterring and Insider Spy
- Intellectual Property Protection: Safeguard Your Company's Trade Secrets, Proprietary Information, and Research
- Safety and Security for the Business Professional Traveling Abroad
- Visitors: Risks and Mitigations
- Internet Social Networking Risks
- The Key to U.S. Student Safety Overseas
- Safety and Security for U.S. Students Traveling Abroad
- Higher Education and National Security: The Targeting of Sensitive, Proprietary, and Classified Information on Campuses of Higher Education
- Best Practices in Supply Chain Risk Management for the U.S. Government
- 11.29.2023 — Justice Department Announces Charges in Connection with Foiled Plot to Assassinate U.S. Citizen in New York City
- 11.20.2023 — Utah Man Arrested on Charges of Interstate Death Threats
- 11.17.2023 — Two Texans Found Guilty of Conspiracy to Sell Sanctioned Iranian Petroleum
- 11.01.2023 — Brooklyn Resident and Two Russian Nationals Charged with Exporting Dual-Use Electronics Used in Russian Military's Drones
- 10.31.2023 — Brooklyn Resident and Two Russian-Canadian Nationals Charged with Massive Sanctions Evasion and Export Control Scheme
- 10.23.2023 — Defendant Admits to Attempting to Transmit National Defense Information to an Agent of a Foreign Government
- 10.23.2023 — Former NSA Employee Pleads Guilty to Attempted Espionage
- 10.19.2023 — Inside the FBI: The Emerging Technology and Securing Innovation Security Summit
