> I believe almost no Fab manufacturing happens in the US anymore.
That's incorrect. The US has four or five dozen fabs. It's one of the largest fab manufacturers globally, along with Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea. The US is likely to grow its domestic fab manufacturing over the next decade, thanks to the new lower corporate income tax rate and tighter restrictions on IP exportation (those two things lured Broadcom home).
> how long will it take to reverse engineer?
That's where China faces a problem: that only works if you have no plans to integrate further into the global economy.
For the most part, the EU, North America, South America, Australia/NZ, Japan, South Korea, etc. isn't going to buy your stolen semiconductor tech.
If you're going to steal semi tech and use it as your own, at best you can only sell it domestically.
If you mean stolen chip designs, no we're likely not to want to use them ... but there are lots of smart Chinese chip designers doing great stuff - some using on licensed US IP (the ESP chips), others based on licensed Arm IP (I've lost track of who owns that), some home built.
Remember China is not just 1/4 of the world's population, it also has 1/4 of the world's smart people
That's incorrect. The US has four or five dozen fabs. It's one of the largest fab manufacturers globally, along with Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea. The US is likely to grow its domestic fab manufacturing over the next decade, thanks to the new lower corporate income tax rate and tighter restrictions on IP exportation (those two things lured Broadcom home).
> how long will it take to reverse engineer?
That's where China faces a problem: that only works if you have no plans to integrate further into the global economy.
For the most part, the EU, North America, South America, Australia/NZ, Japan, South Korea, etc. isn't going to buy your stolen semiconductor tech.
If you're going to steal semi tech and use it as your own, at best you can only sell it domestically.