Abstract

The article presents a theoretical framework for analyzing domestic innovative capability in relation to industrial espionage, drawing on material from the Soviet military aerospace sector, 1946–1990. It employs a structured comparative case study of six Soviet aircraft systems, which are compared to their closest Western equivalent. Three ideal types are used to categorize each case: copycat (mostly copying, virtually no innovation), innovator (mostly innovation, virtually no copying), and pragmatist (copying of specific parts or subsystems). The study concludes that only one of the studied aircraft is a copy, while three are innovative. The remaining two are categorized as pragmatic designs, where some parts may have been copied. This indicates that Central Intelligence Agency estimates of Soviet technological capability seem to have been mostly correct, while some in academia and at the policy level during the Cold War clearly underestimated the Soviets. The general conclusion is that large-scale industrial espionage should not automatically be seen as an indicator of a lack of domestic innovative capability.

摘要

本文借鉴 1946 年至 1990 年苏联军事航空航天领域的材料，提出了分析与工业间谍活动相关的国内创新能力的理论框架。它采用了六种苏联飞机系统的结构化比较案例研究，并将其与最接近的西方同类系统进行了比较。三种理想类型用于对每种情况进行分类：模仿者（主要是复制，几乎没有创新）、创新者（主要是创新，几乎没有复制）和实用主义者（复制特定部分或子系统）。研究得出的结论是，所研究的飞机中只有一架是复制品，而三架是创新的。其余两个被归类为实用设计，其中某些部分可能被复制。这表明中央情报局对苏联技术能力的估计似乎大部分是正确的，而冷战时期学术界和政策层面的一些人显然低估了苏联。总体结论是，大规模工业间谍活动不应自动被视为缺乏国内创新能力的指标。