Industrial espionage is the practice of secretly gathering information about competing corporation or business interest, with the objective of placing one's own organization at a strategic or financial advantage. A common practice to achieve this advantage is to elicit information from unwitting individuals through what today is called social engineering (SE). We all hear the term SE so often that we become desensitized to it, thereby INCREASING the effectiveness of it against ourselves and organizations. Thus, will call it what it is - Human Intelligence, also known as HUMINT.

Presenting personal experiences as an Army counterintelligence agent with examples of military and industrial espionage, will examine tradecraft employed against individuals every day. We will apply lessons learned from the US military and the intelligence community by using two acronyms taught to Army counterintelligence agents: SAEDA (Subversion and Espionage Directed against the Army) and MICE (Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego). By presenting different aspects of HUMINT collection efforts will enable individuals to possibly detect, deflect, and protect oneself from such actions.