I agree this is a very important difference. I talk about it a little, but mostly not in section 2, which is more about categories of information (abstract vs. concrete vs. tacit, etc) than about institutional contexts for research. The most extensive discussion of issues of this kind is in section 3.4 where I basically say that in the private sector (where most AI development happens) financial motivations for spying are likely to be more important than they were in the Manhattan Project case because:
1. money is in general more salient as a mo... (read more)
I wonder if one additional disanalogy between corporate espionage and government espionage is that government espionage is freer to break the law in order to create incentives for people to start and continue spying. Especially blackmail, but maybe also things like threats to family member or use of honeytraps/seduction (though maybe that's also easy for corporate espionage efforts to use?).
Would-be puppet masters of corporate espionage having less access to such tools might reduce the prevalence of corporate espionage (not necessarily making it less prevalent overall than government espionage, but serving as one factor pushing in that direction).
That said, this is just about who is arranging the spying, not about who is being spied on. It seems plausible/likely that there'd be government-led or government-endorsed espionage against corporate labs, in which case this disanalogy doesn't apply.
(Epistemic status: Probably overly influenced by TV, movies, and books...)
I agree this is a very important difference. I talk about it a little, but mostly not in section 2, which is more about categories of information (abstract vs. concrete vs. tacit, etc) than about institutional contexts for research. The most extensive discussion of issues of this kind is in section 3.4 where I basically say that in the private sector (where most AI development happens) financial motivations for spying are likely to be more important than they were in the Manhattan Project case because:
1. money is in general more salient as a mo... (read more)