Our spies are supposed to spy on Them, we assume Their spies spy on us, that’s just the way it goes. From quiet conversations with friends in politics however, on trick is for the Americans to spy on the Australian citizens, and pass anything useful along to the Australian agencies, and thus those agencies can say that ‘they’ don’t spy on Australian citizens. The same kind of agreement is in place in other places, often reciprocal.
Industrial espionage has long been par for the course however, although it made more sense when big companies actually had a national home, rather than being trans-national companies. If my country’s companies do better, my country gets more tax and has more well-paid workers, so my country’s spy agencies stealing secrets from foreign companies and giving them to my country’s companies makes sense. Now that those taxes aren’t really being paid, and wages are so low in so many places, it all just gets mercenary.
