Borrowed Time: A History of Espionage, IP Theft, and the Global War for Horology

Albert Einstein wore a 14k gold Longines for most of his life. He never knew it carried the name of the company whose most legendary engineer carried out in America industrial espionage on behalf of a Swiss watchmaking alliance -- a maneuver that has been mimicked ever since by bad horological actors around the world. In Borrowed Time, Gabe Oppenheim asks the question no watch brand will answer on the record: how did a tiny, war-avoidant nation hold the summit of an entire global industry for two centuries? Just how ethically (or shadily) was their title won? From the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition, where America briefly out-watched the world, to the smog over China’s border with North Korea at Dandong — where a Communist-founded factory now builds the finest clone Rolex and Patek movements on Earth — this is a cinematic, deeply reported history of espionage, stolen intellectual property, and karmic payback.