Monday, April 02, 2012  Why should China innovate when it can
just steal?  Another day, another "Can China innovate?"
story popping up in my Twitter feed. This is a beast of the same
family as the "Prepare for a wave of Chinese innovation" article
and the "America can only stay ahead if we innovate" article.
But I never see anyone asking this question:  Why should China
bother with innovation when it can just steal technology?  When
I was but a lad, I used to play a game called Master of Orion
II. In this game, as the leader of a star empire, you can
research new technologies. You can also hire spies to go steal
technologies from your competitors. Spies are cheap and quick.
If your species has an advantage in spying, it almost doesn't
make sense to pour your resources into research; instead, you
can just steal everything you need, and put your people to work
building warships instead of peering through microscopes.
There's only one problem with this strategy - it makes all the
other races of the galaxy declar