In 2023, the French defense industry was exposed to a sharp rise in foreign interference attempts. Whether military bases, deployed forces or companies belonging to the defense industrial base (BITD), these stakeholders were subjected to more or less offensive approaches or intrusions, clearly considered interference operations by foreign states. The alert, published in the newsletter of the French Direction du Renseignement et de la Sécurité de la Défense (DRSD, Defense Intelligence and Security Directorate), was posted on LinkedIn on July 5.
This is the second time since the start of the war in Ukraine that the DRSD, the French armed forces' intelligence service dedicated to counterintelligence, presented its annual threat assessment in its economic newsletter, distributed two or three times a year online. The choice of LinkedIn aims to raise awareness of the report's findings in economic circles, which are highly targeted by foreign state actors. LinkedIn is also one of the tools regularly used by foreign services, led by the Chinese and Russians, to try to approach certain profiles.
In its 10-page letter, the DRSD first notes a "clear increase" in "human" attacks, i.e. computer thefts, blackmail operations based on real or supposed offenses, particularly during trips abroad, and aggressive poaching strategies, aimed in particular at capturing the know-how and knowledge of employees of French companies.
The mode of action that has particularly increased, however, in 2023, is the fake job interview, particularly with the use of social media. Without naming it, the DRSD singled out a Chinese consulting firm which has been running a "massive" poaching campaign in the scientific research sector since November 2022. More than 650 approaches made by this firm were identified since 2023. Structures contributing to France's defense are "particularly targeted," the DRSD found.
In 2023, the number of "security incidents" against French defense industrial sites (intrusions, tracking attempts, drone overflights) increased by 10%. During renovation work, at the very last moment, a defense company prevented a worker with a dubious profile from entering its site, the DRSD noted, without naming the targeted company. During screening on the first day of work, security guards realized that one of the employees had a false Bulgarian identity card, that he was residing illegally in the country and that he was, in fact, from another country in "the Russian sphere of influence."
You have 48.53% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.