I think that scenario only naively made sense if technical knowledge was entirely proprietary and talent was guarded with severe non-competes and NDAs

And Chinese labs openly publishing so much of their methodology destroyed any hope, which was inevitable

> And Chinese labs openly publishing so much of their methodology destroyed any hope, which was inevitable

I think the secrecy doesn't make sense. People swap jobs between labs so I'd say the big players can' really keep secrets for long, and any secret sauce advantage gets incorporated by competitors in a major product cycle at most.