Date of Award
Summer 8-22-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in Business
Organizational Unit
Daniels College of Business
First Advisor
Daniel Baack
Second Advisor
Conrad Ciccotello
Third Advisor
Kellie Keeling
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
All Rights Reserved.
Keywords
Cyber, Espionage, Innovation, Intellectual property, International security, Trade secret
Abstract
The United States' concerns over unauthorized Chinese acquisitions of its strategic assets shape trade and national security policy, yet existing terminology—such as intellectual property theft, espionage, cyberattack, or trade secret violation—fails to capture the full scope of the phenomenon. To address this, across two manuscripts, I introduce the construct of strategic information appropriation (SIA): the unauthorized acquisition of any excludable information an organization holds.
In manuscript one, I review 142 studies across 15 academic fields during the two decades following China's WTO accession. I find the literature fragmented across six central themes: legal protection, institutional evolution, innovation dispersion, international growth, economic impact, and interstate rivalry. Integrating and interpreting this literature contributes a multidisciplinary review on which future work can build.
To measure the United States' underlying claim that trade with China results in strategic capacity transfer to an authoritarian rival, I analyze an original dataset of 213 SIA cases spanning three decades in manuscript two. The findings reveal that targets of SIA concentrate in knowledge-intensive organizations, appropriated assets are predominantly dual-use, perpetrators typically hold authorized business access, and most cases exhibit a state nexus.
The data support the claim that China appropriates strategic assets from US organizations. Standard organizational boundaries fail because appropriations frequently occur through authorized business channels. Whereas organizations value assets by their contribution to profit maximization, states value them by their contribution to national capability, highlighting divergent valuations. Further, because Chinese law imposes standing duties on all enterprises and civilians to support state security and intelligence, ownership vetting of trading partners provides limited protection. Ultimately, accounts of cross-border exchange in strategic management and international business research should explicitly state whether actors are presumed to maximize economic performance or state power, alongside the institutional preconditions on which these objectives are predicated.
Copyright Date
8-2026
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
Rights Holder
Noelle Borao
Provenance
Received from ProQuest
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
184 pgs
File Size
3.3 MB
Recommended Citation
Borao, Noelle, "Strategic Information Appropriation in the US-China Rivalry" (2026). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2760.
https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/2760
Included in
Business Administration, Management, and Operations Commons, International and Comparative Labor Relations Commons, International Business Commons, Portfolio and Security Analysis Commons