Cost of Intellectual Property Theft

I liked the following excerpt from Tim Wilson's story Experts: US Is Not Prepared to Handle Cyber Attacks:

If the bad guys launched a coordinated cyber attack on the United States tomorrow, neither government nor industry would be able to stop it, experts warned legislators yesterday.

At a hearing held by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, cyber defense experts testified that government agencies are insufficiently coordinated to handle an attack, and that efforts to build a defense have not adequately addressed issues in the private sector...

[Paul] Kurtz [a partner with Good Harbor Consulting and a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies's (CSIS) Commission on Cybersecurity] registered concerns about the theft of intellectual property from U.S. companies, which he said is occurring at a rate of $200 billion a year. "American industry and government are spending billions of dollars to develop new products and technology that are being stolen at little to no cost by our adversaries," he said. "Nothing is off limits -- pharmaceuticals, biotech, IT, engine design, weapons design."

Why spend money on research and development if you can steal the product from someone else? The long-term foundation of this country's power is economic, not military. When our competitiveness is systematically eroded by foreign nation-states, action must be taken. A year ago I wrote US Needs Cyber NORAD:

We often hear that the private sector should protect itself, since the private sector owns most of the country's critical infrastructure. Using the same reasoning, I guess that's the reason why Ford defends the airspace over Dearborn, MI; Google protects Mountain View, CA, and so on.

Industry needs help, and we need it now.