A Political Economy of Digital Espionage

随着民族国家越来越依赖网络空间的间谍活动来维持其影响力，我们讨论了间谍活动从传统方法向数字世界的演变。我们讨论了具有显著攻击性网络能力的民族国家的个别政治经济，以及它们如何反思间谍方法。通过因果分析，我们绘制了民族国家依赖于促进监视和黑客等数字间谍方法的私人行为者的崛起。我们将数字间谍活动的变化作为运动战的一个因素和结果进行比较。通过少数私人行为者的网络效应及其向世界各国政府提供的攻击性工具，我们旨在回答数字间谍活动的社会成本这一核心问题，特别是对新闻自由等民主机构以及从这一成本中获利的私人行为者而言。

As nation-states increasingly rely on espionage in cyberspace to maintain their leverage, we discuss the evolution of espionage from traditional methods into the digital world. We discuss the individual political economies of nation-states with significant offensive cyber capabilities, and how they reflect on to espionage methods. Through a causative analysis, we chart the rise of private actors that nation-states rely on to facilitate digital espionage methodologies such as surveillance and hacking. We compare the change in digital espionage as a factor in, and as the result of, kinetic warfare. Through the network effects of the few private actors and their offensive tooling available to governments worldwide, we aim to answer the central question of the societal cost of digital espionage, in particular to democratic institutions such as the free press, and the private actors who profiteer from this cost.