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Over the past five years, a highly sophisticated team of operatives have stealthily infiltrated more than 70 U.S. corporations and organizations to steal priceless company secrets. They did it without ever setting foot in any victim’s office. . . . This is the new face of corporate espionage (spying). Thieves whose identities are safely obscured (blocked) by digital trade-craft rather than a ski mask, are robbing companies of the ideas that are the source of American ingenuity. . . . Though this new corporate espionage is rampant and rising, calculating the damage to U.S. interests remains difficult. . . . In the aggregate, the theft of this property, including everything from sensitive defense technology to innovative industrial designs, insidiously erodes government and corporate competitive advantages among global peers. . . . U.S. companies invest considerable time and money in researching and developing new products, only to be undercut by competition, using their stolen property to make cheaper versions. Unfortunately, companies experience such losses every day . . . Yet many cyber-intrusions could be prevented by implementing sound cyber-security practices.

Using this information, what role does cyber espionage play in global trading?