With globalisation, and the appearance of new powerful nations emerging from a state of under-development (China, India, Brazil, etc.), we are witnessing the birth of non-state powers of global stature which are capable of bypassing, even confronting, nation-states (transnationals, financiers, international crime syndicates, counterfeiters, billionaires, etc.). From ‘refined’, global competition has become grasping, brutal, intensified; businesses are more and more subject to illegal attack. It is right that they should be able to defend themselves. Isn’t it time to give them the legal means to do this? Could economic self-defence be a solution?