If there's actual smuggling of designs or trade secrets going on, I'd be more interested. But if it's just "the rocket looks the same on the outside", that's hardly "industrial espionage".

They're even espionaging from themselves in the future!

Dude, have you ever _been_ in China? They don't need espionage, they're now way ahead of the world in technology, except in a few areas like biotech research and semiconductor manufacturing.

For the last decade, China has been having more engineers in _training_ than the total number of engineers in the US. Sure, the quality of Chinese universities is not that great, but the sheer number of them has its own power.

Few layman know this but France is one of the biggest industrial espionage players active in the US and Europe, after Israel of course.

In fact, according to Wikileaks diplomatic cables from Berlin quote: "France is the country that conducts the most industrial espionage [in Europe], even more than China or Russia."

Basically, every nation on the planet engages in espionage for its own benefit if they can get away with it. There's no honor amongst thieves.

Singling out China as if they're the only ones doing it, or the ones doing it the most, is both naive and hilarious.

How many starlink clones are there really customers for?

Many people have fiber, and in an urban area you'll probably prefer 5G, if you can't get fiber or wired internet.

Starlink is great if you live in the middle of nowhere, but few people do.

Even if you could do a competitive launch cost, the number of customers is limited.