Researchers studied scientific and technical information that the Ministry for State Security of the GDR — the Stasi — received from agents in the West and passed on to East German enterprises. Between 1970 and 1989, the intelligence service collected more than 180,000 items of such information.
The main targets were enterprises and research institutions in electronics, chemistry, energy, and mechanical engineering. According to the authors’ estimate, the data obtained could spread further along production chains: not only the companies that received it directly benefited, but also their suppliers and customers.
Taking this effect into account, value added in industry by 1988 was 22.3% higher than it would have been without industrial espionage. This corresponded to 20.2 billion East German marks, or about 4.1 billion euros in 2020 prices.
According to the authors’ calculation, each additional valuable piece of intelligence information brought about 330,000 euros a year in 2020 prices. The authors also compared Stasi archival data with company data and traced how the performance of enterprises receiving this information changed.
According to the study’s description, such companies increased productivity faster, invested more, and focused more strongly on their core products. One of the paper’s authors, German economist Albrecht Glitz, said that Stasi espionage strengthened East Germany’s position within the socialist bloc, but the researchers found no noticeable increase in the success of East German companies in Western markets.
Another author, researcher Adrian Lerche, linked this historical experience to the way states today tighten export controls, screen foreign investments, and try to restrict rivals’ access to strategic technologies. The authors compare their findings with these efforts to protect developments from industrial espionage.
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