Not really. Britain banned textile technicians from leaving the country because textile machinery knowledge was overwhelmingly valuable. Semiconductor IP is not nearly that important.

> IP and knowledge was much less valuable in the 19th C industrial economy than it is today.

Actually it was far more valuable because it was far rarer and you could do far more with it. With IP you could own/dominate the entire textile market, the entire cotton market, the entire oil market, etc. With IP you could dominate the world's oceans with your navy.

It's counterintuitive but IP at the beginning stages was far more important.

> The Chinese (NK, Iranian, Russian) corporate hacks we have seen recently could have a MUCH larger economic effect.

This is simply not true. The markets today are much larger and far more diverse and the IP space is ridiculous complex, large and diverse. Of course IP theft has a significant economic impact today, but IP theft 200 years had a far greater effect when industries and IP was so limited.

The problem was recognized at the time, though. The first US patent was in 1790 (a process to make potash), the beginning of the industrial revolution.

Of course, now we buy portfolios of patents as an investment backing extortion as a business model, or as bludgeon to slow competition.