Corporate Intelligence Gathering
A Brief History of Clandestine Business Philosophy and Practices
Corporations use intelligence gathering techniques to create propaganda, protect and extract trade secrets, and manipulate public debates.
Corporate information gathering techniques are once again being reexamined after what is being called the Wal-Mart spy scandal. The following is an extremely brief summary of the philosophy and techniques of corporate spying throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Sun Tzu’s Art of War
This is the basis of a lot of business theories and practices because many business school students are required to read Sun Tzu’s Art of War, especially in Japan. In these ancient tomes come some of the first recorded thinking about intelligence gathering.
“If you know both yourself and your enemy, you will come out of one hundred battles with one hundred victories. Therefore, one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the most skillful. Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful”. Sun Tzu
Edward Bernays' Propaganda
One of the modern creators of our understanding of propaganda and how we think about public relations and manipulation, Bernays lays out some of the techniques for understanding and forming mass opinion. His scientific approach to propaganda is called “engineering consent” and based on his fundamental question: “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our wills?”
For example, he made women’s smoking fashionable in the 20’s by equating smoking to freedom and independence. He called cigarettes “torches of freedom” because of information gathering about the target audience of suffragette woman.
At this point in time, information gathering was focused on consumers and other industry competitors to bend both the market and the policies surrounding those markets.
In his book, Propaganda, Bernays writes:
“The conscious and intellectual manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
70’s and 80’s
There is a shift in the 70’s and 80’s in corporate intelligence gathering from examining consumers and competitors, to targeting dissenting organizations and anticipating future problem in the social and political spectrums, both domestically and internationally.
Academic Judith Richter summarizes this period of corporate information gathering into three components:
- intelligence gathering and assessment of socio-political climate
- attempts to manipulate public debate through: delay, depoliticize, divert, and fudge
- attempts to exclude antagonistic voices from debate through character attacks and division among critical groups
Building on Bernays’ ideas of propaganda and in reaction to dissenting organizations corporations form departments or hire consultants for gathering information and manipulating the public debates on corporate practices.
Modern
With the proliferation of PR consulting and corporate information gathering firms and the easy of access to information through digital communications technologies, the US Congress passes legislature to protect corporate information systems.
Economic Espionage Act of 1996
a) criminalizes theft of trade secrets to benefit foreign powers
b) criminalizes theft of trade secrets for commercial or economic purposes
Information Age Information Gathering
As made public by Bruce Gabbard in the Wal-Mart spy scandal, corporations are using techniques of phone and email screening and recording, watch-dogs trotting the globe to follow employees, through programs designed and run by former CIA and FBI agents. Programs track the activities of not only consumers, dissident organizations, and competitors, but also employees and shareholders with increasingly sophisticated technologies.
