I'm sure Airbus cared when the GCHQ snooped on the details of a bidding process and handed over the details to Boeing.
Probably not, since that doesn't appear to be what happened.
Boeing Called A Target Of French Spy Effort
The Boeing Co. was among the targets of a French government plan for a massive spying effort to learn U.S. technological secrets and trade strategies, according to classified documents.
The plan targeted 49 high-tech companies, 24 financial institutions and six U.S. government agencies with important roles in international trade, the French documents show.
The plan focused on research breakthroughs and marketing strategies of leading-edge U.S. aerospace and defense contractors that compete directly with French firms.
The French also sought advance knowledge of the bargaining positions of American negotiators in trade talks involving France. . . .
Among the most coveted U.S. secrets:
-- Research, test results, production engineering and sales strategies for Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. Both compete against the French-led European conglomerate Airbus Industrie.
Why We Spy on Our Allies - By R. James Woolsey, ... former Director of Central Intelligence
The European Parliament's recent report on Echelon, written by British journalist Duncan Campbell, has sparked angry accusations from continental Europe that U.S. intelligence is stealing advanced technology from European companies so that we can -- get this -- give it to American companies and help them compete. My European friends, get real. True, in a handful of areas European technology surpasses American, but, to say this as gently as I can, the number of such areas is very, very, very small. Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing.
Why, then, have we spied on you? The answer is quite apparent from the Campbell report -- in the discussion of the only two cases in which European companies have allegedly been targets of American secret intelligence collection. Of Thomson-CSF, the report says: "The company was alleged to have bribed members of the Brazilian government selection panel." Of Airbus, it says that we found that "Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official." These facts are inevitably left out of European press reports.
That's right, my continental friends, we have spied on you because you bribe. Your companies' products are often more costly, less technically advanced or both, than your American competitors'. As a result you bribe a lot. So complicit are your governments that in several European countries bribes still are tax-deductible.
When we have caught you at it, you might be interested, we haven't said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid (sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and the other country's bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public scandal. ...
