The PC revolution was upon us, and American tech companies were running circles around Compagnie des Machines Bull, the legendary but struggling French computer company.
France was determined to find out how and why. Between 1987 and 1989, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, France’s equivalent of the CIA, planted moles inside the offices of Bull’s biggest American competitors, IBM and Texas Instruments, where the spies passed trade secrets back to the French company. The FBI and CIA ultimately uncovered the scheme and the employees were fired.
