Isn't this an entirely rational way for China to react to market exclusion? Given the size of the upside economically this would be a cheap investment.

Most likely, somebody tries to forbid it.

Not really news to me: at least one certain well-known telecom company was scouting specialists from all over the world (from US to EU and Russia) and bombarding them with astronomical salaries. I'm not saying no one used this tactic before China. It's centuries old. But in this case those engineers or scientists are super-rare (unique), extremely valuable and desired. So, in multi-billion strategic industry it's worth paying triple for them.

But, I guess, it takes unbelievable amount of loyalty/patriotism to stay when you're offered so much..

Western policy is inculpatory in that it explicitly categorises chips as weapons that only work, if the other side does not have them.This is very much like the MAD principle of nukelear weapons bieng grudgingly accepted. I think we are all better off if war is forced to devolve into symbolic fights, involving badass motherfuckers with swords and shit, it bieng 2024, it would be bass ass mofo's and mofoet's and big piles of physical gold on the line. The present situation has large numbers of passive aggressives, toying with the infrastructure of armagedon, and realy no one much, is enjoying anything now.