2024-03-29 18:12:02
Olivier Mas worked until 2017 at the DGSE (Directorate General for External Security). It provides the keys to understanding the merciless economic war in which all the great industrial powers are engaged.
“When it comes to industrial espionage, there are no allies. Even the Germans are carrying out economic intelligence against us. In two minutes, we can have manufacturing secrets stolen and lose a technological advantage for 10 years” , breathes Olivier Mas, army colonel, who spent 15 years at the DGSE (General Directorate of External Security).
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He takes the example of the partnership between EDF and China in the construction of nuclear power plants: “We think that by cooperating so intensively, we will still succeed in protecting our industrial secrets but obviously, the Chinese goal is to “is to recover everything as quickly as possible to be able to do better and cheaper. This is the greatest danger hanging over our industry.”
Terror exerted on European economies
For the former spy, a trio of foreign powers is behind the majority of attacks on French companies with the highest added value. “In Toulouse, it is the aircraft defense industry, the subcontractors who are most attacked because they have fewer means to defend themselves,” he analyzes.
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Olivier Mas still has his antennae in the very closed circle of economic intelligence, believes that the Russians reoriented their strategy during the war in Ukraine: “At the start of the war, there were attacks against our computer networks, we were sure sabotage and attempts at destruction to scare European economies. Currently, Russian strategies favor influence operations more, trying to recruit sources, recover data to give comparative advantages to their own industry.”
The former DGSE agent describes a world where the notion of patriotism is very relative: “The intelligence services, ours included, subcontract cyberattacks to hackers from all countries. We pay for a service, it’s is the law of the highest bidder. There is little risk that they will deliver false documents. There is so much data to be stolen that we would quickly realize if it was a set-up.”
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