> It's hard to say what their motivation is.

Not for anyone who reads history.

Back in the late 18th century, England was the world's top economy, in big part due to its textile industry. England had an export ban on the technology, but textile worker named Samuel Slater brought blueprints over (Supposedly in response to a bounty posted in a newspaper by the US government!). The technology diffused rapidly because the legal environment made competition easy, and ironically the US had better sources of energy (superior water-power sites).

Arguably, China is doing the same thing in the 21st century.

The US under e.g Hamilton opposed all trade secrets in principle on Englightment grounds, and thus did not protect its own.

By contrast, export of protected Chinese tech today frequently gets the death penalty.

Samuel Slater did not bring blueprints over. His father died when he was 14 and he was indentured to a mill at that time. Over the next seven years (as an indentured apprentice) he received some pretty decent training in both how to operate and maintain a 32 spindle Arkwright mill. He memorized parts of the blueprints and moved to the United States. Over seven years, it would be hard not to learn parts of the mill you were indentured to. It was technically his job to learn how it worked.

A mill in Rhode Island acquired a 32 spindle Arkwright and didn’t know how to operate or install it. I have no idea how they actually acquired a 32 spindle Arkwright since that technology could not be exported - but that’s one the biggest IP thefts in human history. Slater found some mechanics who could hand turn the iron needed for the frame, trained children to operate it and by 1791, the mill was in operation.

In 1794, Eli Whitney patented a 72 spindle cotton gin. That invention enabled the American textile industry because it opened up different kinds of cotton to the textile industry.

I’m into the history of the American Industrial Revolution and generally think history is a good guidebook to the future. But the evolution of the American textile industry was a lot more complicated and interesting than this. I really don’t see this connection once you dig into Slater.

Edit - This is kind of messed up to think through with modern sensibilities. But one of Slater’s biggest contributions to the American Industrial Revolution was a slightly different take on child labour. Children generally ran the textiles industry because their hands were small. But Slater came up with a form of apprenticeship in which he would indenture entire families and move them into villages surrounding the mills. Child labour was just great… but even better when you could indenture the entire family. As grisly as that sounds, it led to a very skilled workforce since when the kids hands would get too big, their parents would teach them mechanics.

There’s a joy of studying the Industrial Revolution. Everything sounds okay in comparison.

Sums up exactly what is going on with China's hundred years strategy with their pure focus on technology.

History doesn't repeat itself but it does rhyme.

Really? The USA has built a ton of AI datacenters, exactly because it does have energy. The US IP system has flexed to allow training on all copyrighted content - compare that to Europe where such training is effectively forbidden. Britain doesn't even allow commercial web crawls! And the US has allowed the entire world to sign up and use its LLM APIs.