Techno-Bandits: How the Soviets are Stealing America's High-Tech Future (review)

264 SAIS REVIEW Techno-Bandits: How the Soviets are Stealing America's High-Tech Future. By Linda Melvern, Nick Anning, and David Hebditch. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1984. pp. 305. Reviewed by Sheila Bindman, M.A. candidate, SAIS. Techno-Bandits: How the Soviets are StealingAmerica's High-Tech Future is promoted as a book that reads like a fast-paced international thriller, and indeed, authors Linda Melvern, Nick Anning, and David Hebditch substitute a large measure of sensationalism and espionage-cum-anecdote for factual reporting and concrete analysis. The book begins with a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and then proceeds relentlessly from there: It is a compilation of vignettes about Western business executives who betray their countries for "Soviet gold." Despite an interesting history on emerging American export controls, interagency rivalry in Washington, and increasing tensions among the Western allies, the book never quite makes the transition from "mission impossible" to serious study. While a number of chapters are devoted to "The Trader Spies" and "A Bandit Family Tree," only in their conclusion do the authors raise any significant questions about the assumptions, objectives, and viability of Western export controls, and the motivations of those who work assiduously to contravene them. The role of the businessman in East-West rivalry is never clearly articulated, and the Soviets are portrayed as mere backstage manipulators, presenting shopping lists and then checks to those calculating British, German, and Austrian spies and greedy American manufacturers who exploit Western economic abundance and intellectual freedom. Moreover, no clear distinction emerges between the patent infringement rampant in today's microchip industry and Russian efforts to acquire the benefits of Western technology minus the costs of research entailed. Soviet actions seem mere industrial espionage writ large. The inconsistency of American policy towards East-West trade is better documented, veering from active encouragement during détente to sometimes overzealous supervision under Reagan, and the authors examine the bureaucratic mismanagement and lack of prosecution that hamper export control efforts. Still, the book's tone fluctuates between stern condemnation and amused condescension, and the issue of technology transfer is depicted as both a serious threat and a comedy oferrors. For a study purporting to be an in-depth exposé of East-West technology transfer, Techno-Bandits unfortunately provides more on the bandits and less on the underlying issues. The New Diplomacy. By Abba Eban. New York: Random House, 1983. pp. 401. Reviewed by Steven Kasten, M.A. candidate, SAIS. In international politics, "success is relative to perceived possibilities and diplomacy is the art of appraising the feasible." Abba Eban's book represents a call for the acknowledgment of the limits of the contemporary international system, limits that preclude the realization of Utopian aspirations regarding arms control, U.S.-Soviet rapprochement, and international legal organization. ...