Finally, did you figure out what this story is doing in a chapter on industrial espionage? If not, here's the answer: What these two students did as a malicious prank could just as easily have been done by a professional industrial spy, perhaps in the pay of a competitor, or perhaps in the pay of a foreign government. Either way, the damage could have been devastating to the company, severely eroding the sales of their new product once the competitive product reached the market.