Traditional conceptions of state-sponsored cyber economic espionage suggest that countries with different product profiles should experience high levels of espionage between them. However, this is not what we observe empirically. Incidence of economic espionage tends to be prevalent between countries with similar product and manufacturing profiles. This suggests that we may be missing critical parts of what drives state-sponsored cyber economic espionage. To help unravel this puzzle, I develop a novel theoretical framework that proposes that because attackers seek to maximize the expected utility of stolen information, they target countries that possess similar productive capabilities as themselves. Consequently, countries with dissimilar product profiles should avoid targeting each other for espionage. I test this argument using data on states’ product complexities and cyber economic espionage for a global sample of countries in a dyadic analytical framework. The results robustly show that for any pair of countries, as the complexities of their products diverge, they become significantly less likely to aim espionage attempts at each other. This study thus contributes new insights to explain why cyber economic espionage appears restricted to only a small number of advanced economies. It also illustrates the utility of large-N dyadic approaches in studying state-sponsored cyber espionage.

中文翻译：

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谁监视谁？解开国家支持的网络经济间谍活动之谜

国家支持的网络经济间谍活动的传统概念表明，具有不同产品特征的国家之间应该经历高水平的间谍活动。然而，这并不是我们凭经验观察到的。经济间谍活动在具有相似产品和制造业概况的国家之间往往很普遍。这表明我们可能错过了推动国家支持的网络经济间谍活动的关键部分。为了帮助解开这个谜题，我开发了一个新颖的理论框架，该框架提出，由于攻击者寻求最大化被盗信息的预期效用，因此他们的目标是与自己拥有相似生产能力的国家。因此，产品概况不同的国家应避免互相针对对方进行间谍活动。我在二元分析框架中使用全球国家样本的国家产品复杂性和网络经济间谍活动数据来检验这一论点。结果有力地表明，对于任何两个国家来说，由于其产品的复杂性存在差异，它们相互针对对方进行间谍活动的可能性就会大大降低。因此，这项研究提供了新的见解来解释为什么网络经济间谍活动似乎仅限于少数发达经济体。它还说明了大N二元方法在研究国家资助的网络间谍活动中的效用。