In Trade Wars of 200 Years Ago, the Pirates Were Americans

Intellectual property theft!? *pfft*

Look into some of the early American fortunes and you’ll find a different sort of piracy. See, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich by Kevin Phillips:

Although later generations have taken a glossier view, the Revolution was another grand intermingling of public purpose and private profit—and as in the French wars, privateering seems to have been the single most lucrative enterprise.

In case you don’t know, privateering is state sanctioned piracy.

But back to intellectual property theft for a moment: The USS Jimmy Carter, which is used to tap undersea data cables for NSA and is used (among other purposes) for intellectual property theft on an unimaginable scale, happens to fly a pirate flag—for morale boosting purposes only. *chortle*
While it’s not particularly unusual for military units to use pirate insignia, in the case of the USS Jimmy Carter, it is very appropriate.

Via: AP:
The upstart nation was a den of intellectual piracy. One of its top officials urged his countrymen to steal and copy foreign machinery. Across the ocean, a leading industrial power tried in vain to guard its trade secrets from the brash young rival.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the rogue nation was the United States. The official endorsing thievery was Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. And the main victim was Britain.
How times have changed.
Now, the United States accuses China of the very sort of illicit practices that helped America leapfrog European rivals two centuries ago and emerge as an industrial giant.
“The message we are sending to China today is, Do as I say, not as I did,’ ” said Peter Andreas, professor at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. “The fact of the matter is that the U.S. was the world’s hotbed of intellectual property theft.”