Foreign Adversary Federal Offense Act of 2025

This proposal raises penalties for spying that helps foreign adversaries. It adds tough, mandatory prison time and larger fines for stealing trade secrets or leaking key defense information to benefit a “covered nation” (a category used in federal law for certain foreign governments).

Key points

• Who is affected: People who steal U.S. trade secrets to aid a covered nation, and organizations involved in such theft; it also touches the law on handling defense information.
• What changes: Minimum 10 years in prison for economic espionage done to help a covered nation, with up to 15 years; up to 20 years if the leak causes severe harm to economic or national security. Individuals can be fined up to $5 million and cannot get supervised release. Organizations can be fined up to $20 million or 5 times the value of the stolen trade secret, whichever is greater.
• What counts as “severe harm”: Sharing nonpublic details about critical infrastructure (like how it’s designed or where it’s vulnerable) if that info could be used to seriously damage or shut it down.