Cloak and Dagger Time for PMs

Kevin Coleman is a highly skilled senior level project and program manager/advisor with experience leading projects with labor budgets ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to multi-million dollar budgets across multiple industries.

  Business Intelligence   Risk Management   Strategy  

A few years ago in testimony before the U.S. Congress, then FBI director Robert Mueller stated that intelligence threats that targeted political and military intelligence now include efforts to obtain technologies and trade secrets from corporations and universities. That was a stark warning and caught many organizations off guard.

I recently saw an FBI presentation titled “Industrial Espionage: Protecting America’s Secrets,” and it really caught my attention. That presentation made the problem very clear--and specifically mentioned that projects and programs are actively being targeted.

Consider the following quote that was included in that presentation: “Today, American business is the chief target of the GRU and SVR.” If you are not familiar with the GRU and SVR, you are not alone. The GRU is Russia's largest foreign intelligence agency. The SVR is the entity created to succeed the old (and more widely known) KGB. We all should remember the KGB and the Cold War with Russia.

If you are still confused, just think of them as the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) in the United States. Stanislav Lunev, a former GRU intelligence officer, uttered that troubling statement. Lunev went on to say: “The GRU is now putting all its efforts into recruiting agents from U.S. companies.” That is what the intelligence community and law …

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