Hitting so close to home, and being such a morbidly fascinating subject, it has tended to attract a lot of crank authors with populist approaches. While Fialka doesn't really pull his punches, his approach is much more even-handed than many writers. This well-researched and competently written book stands well above the junk being currently produced in this subject area.
Although this text is now over four years old, it is still relatively current. For example, one who has read this book could not have been surprised at the amount of Federal attention paid to a nuclear physicist of Chinese extraction with strong ties to his native land, which has a long-standing pattern not only of economic espionage, but also of using and abusing non-professional spies. The author also gives convincing evidence to support the consistent rumors that the French have a ongoing tradition of government-sponsored economic warfare against their 'allied' partners. (As someone who has benefited from the character-building experience of a long-term relationship with a Peugeot, I remain convinced that although the French undoubtedly engage in economic espionage, Gallic pride prevents them from actually applying anything that they learn.)
This is an excellent text for helping build a mental picture of one particular class of Information Security threat. Those involved in Infosec topics will also find value in the chapters "Virtual Justice," which explains why corporations are so reluctant to report incidents of espionage, and "Surviving" which describes the lack of attention that corporations are willing to pay to security issues. As someone who has been involved in the field for over ten years, I can attest that this attitude is pervasive, and that security failures do occur. But without a greater willingness to report incidents to the authorities, the true statistics will never be known.
Given that virtually all large corporations are highly-vulnerable to attack, and given the author's supportable contention that both motivated and resourceful adversaries exist, it seems imprudent to write this book off as mere scare mongering. Since the writing of this book, the problem has only worsened.
My background includes the knowledge and life's experience from a number of diverse points of view, including one that involved my graduate education which took place at Central Missouri State University -- yes, the Chinese Communists were there, and so were others from Thailand, Taiwan, FSU, and so forth.
Let me tell you, if you are one of the 'commoners' (I mean that in a humourous way- it is part of the vernacular for those who are not practioners, and is not meant in a disparaging way) this book makes absolute sense. Yes, our brain pool is being examined and drained by foreign governments. No longer do we have warfare conducted in military terms on a vast scale such as WW II, but the massed hordes are now within our borders, slowly leaking our country dry (I'm surprised that Fialka didn't include the analogy of the frog being boiled alive, not realizing what was happening to itself). Reverse engineering and other methods are alive and well.
May God help us!
In my view, the leaky bucket theory of developing technology and know-how described in the book does not give enough consideration to the rate of innovation in the U.S. Instead, a somewhat paranoid view of losing all the goodies to the bad guys comes across.
The people and money behind the innovation seem to be the real keys, not the specifics of any implementation. Most of the examples of copy cats or rip-offs the author uses to illustrate his point are technologies that have lived their life cycle and near zero margins anyway. Although the margins might have been diminished in a less timely fashion had better controls been in place. Innovation moves on to the next better thing with higher margins. Its natural -- get over it.