And unlike the Cold War, both sides' economies are completely tied to trade with the other.
Before anyone feels too complacent about that fact - trade doesn't have a great track record of preventing actual wars. WWI was considered unthinkable, because of how tightly the two sides were entangled in trade.
It's also why several of the countries had issues feeding their populations during the war(s). I think it's fair to say, that what exasperated WWI was the secret (and not so secret), alliances everyone had made. Such that when Austria decided to invade Serbia, France had to declare war on the Ottoman Empire... (traditionally an enemy of Austria)
It's essential. From my reading of the news it seems the Chinese want access to US universities, tech and financial service companies for a variety of reasons. I'd imagine that access to these resources is impossible without coming to the US.
Because they are likely working for institutions that are committing IP theft, in this case it's better to keep them honest, they don't have a culture that respects the rules and customs of other cultures (common law, contract law).
You're not wrong. I wouldn't blame the US for wanting to defend against it. I just wouldn't bother with the "morality" card vs. a simple transactional justification.
The definition of theft of IP is entirely a product of local jurisdiction though, given we are talking about temporary monopolies on ephemera and not physical protection of personal claims on objects or spaces.
If Snowden revealed anything it's that there is lots of hypocrisy involved and for the most part American citizens are in line with that hypocrisy as long as it does not effect them personally. And if we see China's behavior it's in line with accounting for this hypocrisy. Sure the US calls them out on it all the time, and they can't respond to the allegations... But similarly their citizens are on board with their hypocrisy. It's a world full of liars looking to exploit however they can so they can get to the top and remain there. It's all propped up on a commonly accepted fiction, if you did a bit deeper you see all the fictions are there to support various power structures and keep them functioning.
So can you blame China or the US... Not really everyone is playing the hand they were dealt the best way they know how.
No, Samuel Slater smuggling trade secrets was a consequence, not a reason, of the same sound logic that also makes China ignore the IP laws of other countries: if there's a group of other people with a mutually beneficial agreement, who expect you to play by their rules without getting any of the benefits, then fuck 'em.
The logic is "if you've used it to become the richest nation on earth don't knock out others using it to become rich".
And those that still benefit from the heads-tart due to their country/ancestors having done so, shouldn't play it holier than thou either.
Not to mention the whole hypocrisy, since the US has used corporate espionage and actual spying on supposed "allies" corporations since forever and still does, plus using their military and diplomatic might to ensure cheap resources, control of trade routes, use of its currently, and bending "banana republics" to its will and installing friendly lackeys to the detriment of their peoples. Case in point, this vintage gem posted today:
If you're referring to Slater, it was not a crime in the U.S., and explicitly legal for quite some time afterwards. See the links I posted in another comment here.
There are many things previous generations did in the name of economic progress that we would find wrong today (slavery, child labor, etc). Times change and I should not be required to defend the morality of my ancestors. That is not hypocritical.
What’s the alternative for them, to not have a middle class lifestyle? Especially since the US is the historic greatest emitter of CO2, and per capita still one of the top? Or are we living beyond our means and unwilling to step down..
No, I don't. Especially since those pointing the finger still have the most carbon- and materials-expensive lifestyle, and have refused to sign environmental agreements for decades...
At this point, personally, I have issues with anybody using fossil fuels. We do have alternatives now. We can talk social justice and whatnot but it'll ring hollow when civilization is collapsing around our ears, especially since Africa and India will likely suffer before the U.S.
To be fair, a lot of countries used methods to get rich (or try to) that are absolutely despicable and far, far worse than IP theft: slavery, colonization, straight up plundering, genocide, war. Basically every country of moderate size and of decent wealth today has at least part of that wealth attributable to something that could be called truly and utterly despicable.
I think that until maybe 70 years ago, countries did whatever they could to get ahead. If it was possible to accomplish, and it provided an advantage for the country, the country would do it. Nowadays, countries mostly do what they can get away with. The amount of things they can get away with has shrunk over the years, but there's still a hell of a lot of unexpected leeway, particularly if you have something someone else wants. For example, you can infer that Europe having cheap natural gas is more important than doing something about the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Ultimately, that's it: in 2018, countries can enforce IP law a bit better than 300 years ago, and as a result they are going to. I don't think there's any American campaign to be more lenient on China for IP theft and I don't see such a campaign gaining traction. It certainly is interesting to watch the whole thing play out though.
The real issue is that developed countries don't help other developing countries develop. The US got rich in the same ways that China is now getting rich, by stealing.
I think this is my favorite article on the subject.
My second paragraph is why I think China might be justified to some extent. My first paragraph was only to say that I don't think China's culture is unusually disrespectful of others.
It was tech related to water powered cotton mills. In those times England had outlawed the exportation or manufacturing machinery as well as the emigration of persons with industry knowledge.
Sam Slater moved to the US in 1789 and partnered with a textile manufacturer to recreate the technology from memory. (Amusingly what he did may not have even been a violation of IP law by today's standards)
Samuel Slater apprenticed at a British cloth factory and memorized the design. Then he emigrated to the US and set up shop. Although, I think it might be more correct to say that the US allowed him to steal IP, rather than the country stealing it.
I think that US publishers, especially sheet music publishers, would copy British music and and publish it in the US, since I don't think that the US honored British copyright (at least some subset of it), but I can't think of good search terms to find any sources.
"the American copyright statutes did not allow for copyright protection of foreign works for fully one century. As a result, American publishers and producers freely pirated foreign literature, art, and drama....It was not until 1891 that the Chace Act granted copyright protection to selected foreign residents."
They started allowing non-citizens to get U.S. patents earlier:
"Americans could not obtain patents for imported discoveries, but the earliest statutes of 1793, 1800 and 1832, restricted patent property to citizens or to residents who declared that they intended to become citizens. As such, while an American could not appropriate patent rights to a foreign invention, he could freely use the idea without any need to bear licensing or similar costs that would otherwise have been due if the inventor had been able to obtain a patent in this country. In 1836, the stipulations on citizenship or residency were removed, but were replaced with discriminatory patent fees: foreigners could obtain a patent in the U.S. for a fee of three hundred dollars, or five hundred if they were British. After 1861 patent rights (with the exception of caveats) were available to all applicants on the same basis without regard to nationality."
That particular argument isn't really sound, because the question is one of magnitude. However it still isn't obvious why China should enforce US IP law if it doesn't want to.
IP is the ultimate human creation, it has no basis in the physical world. If pretending ideas are property puts China at a disadvantage there isn't a moral or practical reason to do it.
Most economists think this sort of thing does more harm than good.
Only in a hypothetical scenario where it's a battle of equals.
But China has worked itself into a corner now for several reasons:
1. It imports so little from the U.S. that it's almost out of stuff to put tariffs on.
2. Most of the things it imports from the U.S. are used in manufacturing in China, and then sold back to the U.S. as a finished product. So China's own tariff makes Chinese goods more expensive and less attractive in the U.S.
3. China still needs to import a metric ass-ton of soybeans from the U.S. It tried getting them elsewhere, like Brazil, but every other soybean-growing country saw the opportunity and raised prices. So putting additional tariffs on American soybeans will make food cost more in China, and there's nothing China can do about it.
I've heard there's additional pressure on China in regards to the soybean situation because harvest is already over for soybeans in the southern hemisphere. And you know who's sitting on a ton of soybeans ready for export? The U.S.
I don't know enough about soybean growing cycles to say if that last paragraph is still true or accurate, though.
To be honest, I think this is hurting China more than the US, and we're seeing that reflect in the Chinese economy. The US is also the stronger global superpower of the two for now — see, for example, Canada's arrest of Huawei's CFO under the direction of the American government, whereas I doubt Canada would arrest any American citizens at the behest of China — so I think the US has more of an ability to enforce its rules than China has the ability to enforce its desired alternate set of rules. Picking a fight with the US also means picking a fight with most of the US trade allies, which are the richest countries in the world by far: nearly half of the entire world's GDP is generated by the US and the EU alone (37 trillion out of 80 trillion global GDP); and that's not counting heavy hitters like Japan, Canada, Mexico, and South Korea. I don't see a lot of win conditions for China on this one.
IP theft is illegal in pretty much the entire industrialized world. China's big, but it's not bigger than everyone else combined.
There are dozens of supposed reasons to start a trade war with China, but most of those "reasons" are just saber rattling.
If we aren't going to start a trade war (or a real war!) Over things like Tibet, or the humans rights violations, or the million people that China has put into camps, then I don't see how something morally silly such as IP laws would be the tipping point.
IP is a much bigger part of the economy now, but for the time, U.S. infringement of foreign IP was rampant, and explicitly legal. See the links I posted in another comment here.
I wasn't intending to use that comparison as a real justification of China's infringement; your point is a much better one as far as that goes. I brought up U.S. history in response to the characterization of China's culture as particularly disrespectful of "the rules and customs of other cultures."
in the distant past, China's silk industry tried to prevent the knowledge of silk making from spreading outside of China. and China's tea growers tried to prevent the exportation of Chinese tea plants.
ultimately, neither of these efforts succeeded.
but it is evidence that people and industries in China truly do understand the notion of protecting trade secrets, IP, etc.
Everyone understands those notions when they benefit them and everyone is quick to discard or gloss over them when they don't. It's a simple economic calculation, China just happens to be on the other end of it compared to the rest of the world - namely, the benefits of ignoring these notions outweighs the risks of antagonizing the U.S.
Absolutely, people need to realize that morality usually means absolutely nothing compared to power. Might doesn’t make right but right doesn’t make might either...
What if stolen IP could be law-suited into a title, giving anyone holding such a title in value of the lost profits a right to infringe on any future creation from the infringing country - in value of the same title?
The word "culture" is often used as a euphemism when stereotyping - unsupported generalizations. What exactly does it mean here, and how can you back it up? Based on my experience in the world, it couldn't be said for anyone.
Please keep this their-culture stuff off HN. If it isn't poisonous, it certainly borders on it, and there's no good HN comment that wouldn't be better without it.
USA’s main exports are IP and Dollars. They have engaged in petrodollar warfare and international treaties to protect the demand for their export and intimidate those (like Kim Dotcom) who threaten it in other countries. Just like Russia has done for natural gas, for instance.
I've taken similar advice from HN -- not to travel to the US unless it's essential -- and I've heeded that quite closely. It's unsurprising that people significantly more important than me are being advised the same in more formal situations.
The cold war experience of tit-for-tat has two lessons:
Firstly, somebody has to make a move either at parity which is respected or below, and the "you blinked first" message has to be ignored.
Secondly, there are always collateral damages. You can't afford to expel Russian diplomatic staff so you expel east Germans. You don't want to risk core staff so you send friendly nations into harm's way.
Canada was thrown into harm's way to avoid a bigger problem. The question is: who is willing to de scale the tit-for-tat response first?
Can't fight a trade war like a cold war. I actually think Trump is doing it right. I mean, if you're going to fight a trade war, you have to do the kinds of things he's doing. Now the problem is... economic reality. If the other guy just has the bigger market long term, especially if they can grow their market without you, you're just at a disadvantage. I think we can get some short term wins, but in the long term, we would have to prosecute this trade war flawlessly to come out on top.
That's just the reality of large markets looking to de-link themselves from global carbon energy resources. Long term, if we're all intent on ending the age of oil and coal, there's just nothing to keep everyone cooperating with each other.
This trade war is not being prosecuted flawlessly, and as Ike or somebody like him said, no plan survives first engagement with the enemy.
Trump does not have a unified national intent behind him. I don't agree with him or his policies, in this or any other regard but trying to think dispassionately, I think appointing Bolton to signal strength of will demands having somebody more flexible to negotiate the real outcome.
For example, Trump is probably going to lose the trade war over Iran. They need Boeing spares but if he continues to blackball Iranian trade the future air fleet will be Airbus with loans from Germany and France.
Trump is going to lose a trade war in China because China holds far more US debt than Americans hold Chinese debt and China has far more market reach into emerging markets in Africa since the decision to decouple trade and local politics was made clear: you can trade with China and continue to repress your own people or trade with America and have to clean up your act.
> Trump is probably going to lose the trade war over Iran
Who cares what "Trump" loses? This is about the USA and Trump will be long gone before any of these situations are measured.
The USA is not starting a trade war with Iran (first time I've ever heard sanctions called a trade war), the US is enacting sanctions to hurt Iran without scaring allies like Saudi Arabia.
> China holds far more US debt than Americans hold Chinese debt
That's intentional and good for the US. If you don't understand this, I really think you need to understand why we sell it to foreign powers at all.
> China has far more market reach into emerging markets in Africa
That's a real problem which the USA is losing out on potentially. It won't be apparent for some time, since people who are industrialized enough to get out of self-oppressive warlord control will not handle foreign occupation very well either. The US answer is always to enable the counter-revolutionaries anyway until the US has someone they want to deal with.
The USA is not starting a trade war with Iran (first time I've ever heard sanctions called a trade war), the US is enacting sanctions to hurt Iran without scaring allies like Saudi Arabia
The trade war is with the EU and Russia. Iran is a huge potential future market, alongside the rest of the non saudi aligned Middle East. After Iraq the contracts for rebuild and repair went to classic US interested parties in trade retaliation for prior diplomatic posture in the m.e. by France and Germany.
Please explain to me what I don't understand about china holding US debt,and what it means tactically regarding the trade war.
China holding US debt is not really a great weapon. If they dump it, they will experience incredible losses, and it is not clear if the effect on the US will actually be proportionately harmful. The USD would drop and US exports may be advantaged.
This is a thing not just in China based organizations. A lot of hi-tech companies around the world have clause in a contract that does not allow any employees to traves to US while carrying anything containing IP of a company or discourage employees from traveling to US altogether.
Surprising amount of support for IP theft here today.
The US got away with it because countries like the UK couldn't police it during the industrial revolution. Whoops.
The Chinese got away with it because the US couldn't police it on the global stage. Whoops.
---
But the US might've found a way to police it effectively now... soooo why would we not? Why would we permit it because others historically got away with it? Without civility, you only own what you can defend.
>But the US might've found a way to police it effectively now... soooo why would we not?...
That's just the thing though right?
I mean, if the Chinese are engaging in IP theft in a fashion that is both broad, (across all industries), and brazen, then how effective can our policing methods be?
The only thing we can really do is stop trading with them. Which is really not going to stop them stealing ideas, nor will it stop their domestic market from growing.
The reason every great power in history engaged in blatant IP theft, is because it really has been extremely difficult to prevent it throughout human history. (Greeks were really smart, so Romans and Egyptians stole metallurgy from them.) IP theft is just a hard problem.
> But the US might've found a way to police it effectively now... soooo why would we not?
Because IP law is morally wrong and makes the world a significantly worse place? Anything that underminds IP law is good, in my book, no matter who benefits.
There are lots of horrible things in the world that would be economicly beneficial to the offending party, that we don't do because they are wrong.
I kind feel the same about the US. The majority of the horror stories about people being forced to spit out password and getting devices taken away for copying...straight out of the country that spends all its time exporting "freedom".
Pretty happy in Europe. China, Russia and America all seem dodgy AF lately. Overtly so...I shudder to think what happens behind the scenes.
You might be right, but perhaps countries with something to lose might be better places to live because of opportunity. I understand you give up some rights in exchange for 'freedom' but the opportunities are better. Sometimes you just have to live blissfully aware.
Remember that this is not an accident or byproduct, but a goal of nationalists in the U.S. government (and probably in China too). They seek division and a breakdown of international relations and activities.
After Meng's case, I think not only Chinese Hi-Tech company would avoid US, so would Chinese entrepreneurs. I guess one of the side effect would be less VCs in China in 2019 - Until the trade war is sorted out.
86 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 140 ms ] threadBefore anyone feels too complacent about that fact - trade doesn't have a great track record of preventing actual wars. WWI was considered unthinkable, because of how tightly the two sides were entangled in trade.
A lot of us think U.S. IP law has seriously overextended itself these days. I'm not sure I entirely blame China for not going along with it.
Sound logic
And unless anything changed since the Snowden revelations, the US is still conducting (or attempting to conduct) industrial espionage to this day.
In some cases they were in direct violation of agreements they had with other countries concerning such espionage[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_espionage#Germany
So can you blame China or the US... Not really everyone is playing the hand they were dealt the best way they know how.
And those that still benefit from the heads-tart due to their country/ancestors having done so, shouldn't play it holier than thou either.
Not to mention the whole hypocrisy, since the US has used corporate espionage and actual spying on supposed "allies" corporations since forever and still does, plus using their military and diplomatic might to ensure cheap resources, control of trade routes, use of its currently, and bending "banana republics" to its will and installing friendly lackeys to the detriment of their peoples. Case in point, this vintage gem posted today:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18683073
Cool, so you have no issues with China, India, Africa accelerating their use of fossil fuels.
I think that until maybe 70 years ago, countries did whatever they could to get ahead. If it was possible to accomplish, and it provided an advantage for the country, the country would do it. Nowadays, countries mostly do what they can get away with. The amount of things they can get away with has shrunk over the years, but there's still a hell of a lot of unexpected leeway, particularly if you have something someone else wants. For example, you can infer that Europe having cheap natural gas is more important than doing something about the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Ultimately, that's it: in 2018, countries can enforce IP law a bit better than 300 years ago, and as a result they are going to. I don't think there's any American campaign to be more lenient on China for IP theft and I don't see such a campaign gaining traction. It certainly is interesting to watch the whole thing play out though.
I think this is my favorite article on the subject.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/08/china-is-cheating-at-a-...
Sam Slater moved to the US in 1789 and partnered with a textile manufacturer to recreate the technology from memory. (Amusingly what he did may not have even been a violation of IP law by today's standards)
https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2017/07/05/americas-industrial-re...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
I think that US publishers, especially sheet music publishers, would copy British music and and publish it in the US, since I don't think that the US honored British copyright (at least some subset of it), but I can't think of good search terms to find any sources.
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-copyright...
They started allowing non-citizens to get U.S. patents earlier:
"Americans could not obtain patents for imported discoveries, but the earliest statutes of 1793, 1800 and 1832, restricted patent property to citizens or to residents who declared that they intended to become citizens. As such, while an American could not appropriate patent rights to a foreign invention, he could freely use the idea without any need to bear licensing or similar costs that would otherwise have been due if the inventor had been able to obtain a patent in this country. In 1836, the stipulations on citizenship or residency were removed, but were replaced with discriminatory patent fees: foreigners could obtain a patent in the U.S. for a fee of three hundred dollars, or five hundred if they were British. After 1861 patent rights (with the exception of caveats) were available to all applicants on the same basis without regard to nationality."
https://eh.net/encyclopedia/an-economic-history-of-patent-in...
IP is the ultimate human creation, it has no basis in the physical world. If pretending ideas are property puts China at a disadvantage there isn't a moral or practical reason to do it.
The US can also choose to place massive tariffs on any goods coming out of China, making them highly uncompetitive. Their choice, it looks like.
Only in a hypothetical scenario where it's a battle of equals.
But China has worked itself into a corner now for several reasons:
1. It imports so little from the U.S. that it's almost out of stuff to put tariffs on.
2. Most of the things it imports from the U.S. are used in manufacturing in China, and then sold back to the U.S. as a finished product. So China's own tariff makes Chinese goods more expensive and less attractive in the U.S.
3. China still needs to import a metric ass-ton of soybeans from the U.S. It tried getting them elsewhere, like Brazil, but every other soybean-growing country saw the opportunity and raised prices. So putting additional tariffs on American soybeans will make food cost more in China, and there's nothing China can do about it.
I've heard there's additional pressure on China in regards to the soybean situation because harvest is already over for soybeans in the southern hemisphere. And you know who's sitting on a ton of soybeans ready for export? The U.S.
I don't know enough about soybean growing cycles to say if that last paragraph is still true or accurate, though.
IP theft is illegal in pretty much the entire industrialized world. China's big, but it's not bigger than everyone else combined.
There are dozens of supposed reasons to start a trade war with China, but most of those "reasons" are just saber rattling.
If we aren't going to start a trade war (or a real war!) Over things like Tibet, or the humans rights violations, or the million people that China has put into camps, then I don't see how something morally silly such as IP laws would be the tipping point.
I wasn't intending to use that comparison as a real justification of China's infringement; your point is a much better one as far as that goes. I brought up U.S. history in response to the characterization of China's culture as particularly disrespectful of "the rules and customs of other cultures."
ultimately, neither of these efforts succeeded.
but it is evidence that people and industries in China truly do understand the notion of protecting trade secrets, IP, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar_warfare
https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran...
Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
I've worked for years at companies that had corporate policy to either wash or destroy phones/computers taken into China.
That is to say, it's unsurprising that any 2 countries engaged in a trade war (hot or cold) would take these precautions against each other.
Firstly, somebody has to make a move either at parity which is respected or below, and the "you blinked first" message has to be ignored.
Secondly, there are always collateral damages. You can't afford to expel Russian diplomatic staff so you expel east Germans. You don't want to risk core staff so you send friendly nations into harm's way.
Canada was thrown into harm's way to avoid a bigger problem. The question is: who is willing to de scale the tit-for-tat response first?
That's just the reality of large markets looking to de-link themselves from global carbon energy resources. Long term, if we're all intent on ending the age of oil and coal, there's just nothing to keep everyone cooperating with each other.
Trump does not have a unified national intent behind him. I don't agree with him or his policies, in this or any other regard but trying to think dispassionately, I think appointing Bolton to signal strength of will demands having somebody more flexible to negotiate the real outcome.
For example, Trump is probably going to lose the trade war over Iran. They need Boeing spares but if he continues to blackball Iranian trade the future air fleet will be Airbus with loans from Germany and France.
Trump is going to lose a trade war in China because China holds far more US debt than Americans hold Chinese debt and China has far more market reach into emerging markets in Africa since the decision to decouple trade and local politics was made clear: you can trade with China and continue to repress your own people or trade with America and have to clean up your act.
Who cares what "Trump" loses? This is about the USA and Trump will be long gone before any of these situations are measured. The USA is not starting a trade war with Iran (first time I've ever heard sanctions called a trade war), the US is enacting sanctions to hurt Iran without scaring allies like Saudi Arabia.
> China holds far more US debt than Americans hold Chinese debt
That's intentional and good for the US. If you don't understand this, I really think you need to understand why we sell it to foreign powers at all.
> China has far more market reach into emerging markets in Africa
That's a real problem which the USA is losing out on potentially. It won't be apparent for some time, since people who are industrialized enough to get out of self-oppressive warlord control will not handle foreign occupation very well either. The US answer is always to enable the counter-revolutionaries anyway until the US has someone they want to deal with.
The trade war is with the EU and Russia. Iran is a huge potential future market, alongside the rest of the non saudi aligned Middle East. After Iraq the contracts for rebuild and repair went to classic US interested parties in trade retaliation for prior diplomatic posture in the m.e. by France and Germany.
Please explain to me what I don't understand about china holding US debt,and what it means tactically regarding the trade war.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/economy/article/2160270/why-...
There are also many mitigating factors that the US can deploy:
https://www.cfr.org/blog/what-would-happen-if-china-started-...
https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-China-sold-all-of...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Breda_(1667)
Mea culpa.
The US got away with it because countries like the UK couldn't police it during the industrial revolution. Whoops.
The Chinese got away with it because the US couldn't police it on the global stage. Whoops.
---
But the US might've found a way to police it effectively now... soooo why would we not? Why would we permit it because others historically got away with it? Without civility, you only own what you can defend.
That's just the thing though right?
I mean, if the Chinese are engaging in IP theft in a fashion that is both broad, (across all industries), and brazen, then how effective can our policing methods be?
The only thing we can really do is stop trading with them. Which is really not going to stop them stealing ideas, nor will it stop their domestic market from growing.
The reason every great power in history engaged in blatant IP theft, is because it really has been extremely difficult to prevent it throughout human history. (Greeks were really smart, so Romans and Egyptians stole metallurgy from them.) IP theft is just a hard problem.
Because IP law is morally wrong and makes the world a significantly worse place? Anything that underminds IP law is good, in my book, no matter who benefits.
There are lots of horrible things in the world that would be economicly beneficial to the offending party, that we don't do because they are wrong.
eh...really? Like how?
You really think IP theft got halted because one guy was arrested?
That naturally asks how to keep trade secrets better? Manufacture domestically, air gapped servers, better pentesting etc. etc.
Pretty happy in Europe. China, Russia and America all seem dodgy AF lately. Overtly so...I shudder to think what happens behind the scenes.