By Gatra Priyandita
Publication Date: 2026-03-10 19:00:00
Artificial intelligence is transforming economic cyber espionage, but protecting economically valuable assets has not kept pace. Governments and industry cannot rely on AI protections to counter a more scalable, stealthy and structurally different threat.
Two shifts are urgently needed. First, AI-enabled economic espionage should be treated as a stand-alone national security priority and not integrated into broader debates about cybercrime or AI ethics. Second, AI supply chains – including training data, model architectures and cloud dependencies – should be explicitly integrated into critical infrastructure and economic security frameworks. Without these adjustments, advanced economies risk the silent transfer of strategic innovations to competitors willing to adopt them.
Economic cyber espionage is nothing new. Companies and universities lose billions every year due to the theft of advanced manufacturing processes, pharmaceutical research, defense technologies and proprietary software. G20…
