Well it's more organized crime, but espionage is also literally not legal. Spies are arrested and jailed all the time.

Edit: my thought isn't a unique one anyway. Many theorists have drawn comparisons between nations and organized crime. Nations are essentially the crime syndicates that retain the most power and influence.

It makes even more sense when you look at organized crime syndicates and how they run. You'll see a lot of parallels to how nations run. Alliances, treaties, laws, wars, even espionage etc...

The biggest difference is scale but we see with the cartels down in Mexico that crime syndicates can increase their scale so much that they're essentially their own nation with their own laws and governing bodies.