This is how it works. Countries without technology steal it from those that do. It's basically a market force- if you don't make it available at something approaching a reasonable cost then it will be duplicated through research or just directly stolen.
The two countries were still enemies at the time and on the verge of war. If I recall my history correctly, the trade routes collapsed when Britain stopped selling America textiles, stopped buying American cotton and then tried to blockade the entire country.
Yes stealing the loom filled a void in the American market, but in this case Britain isn't exactly blameless.
It wasn't really the same market forces that we see today, unless I'm missing something. China's not stealing IP to fill any market void.
See Patent Dispute.
I’m not saying US does this as much as China. It would be hard as US is the tech leader in many fields.
But whenever US is not a tech leader they happily engage in government sanctioned industrial espionage (Not Officially Officially sanctioned but wink and nod whoopsie kind of). Thus the complaints about what China is doing ring hollow.
Nobody would come to the conclusion to call that IP theft though.
Translation: what about all the countries that aren't as bad as China?
A certain amount of "whataboutism" is unavoidable if you attempt to make any comparative statments, or believe inductive reasoning is possible.
And so comparing A when done by actors other than X is absolutely critical in determining whether it's actually indeed a bad action, or whether I'm simply clouded by bias and calling it bad because of my dislike of X.
In searching Google Trends it's somewhat unsurprising to find that 'whataboutism' as a term didn't even really exist until around 2017 [1] when partisan driven bias and antagonism started to exponentially skyrocket. It's quite an insidious term since it helps deflect potentially logical critique of irrational views, but has a paradoxical connotation of legitimacy and intellectual authenticity.
[1] - https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=w...
Yes, aka "putting things in perspective" and "not doing one-sided criticism"...
Why don't all these whatabouters don't just let us blame whoever we want, and keep mum for shit ourselves or our friends did/do?
I hope you see the irony (hypocrisy?) in this statement.
How do you define a better human being? Let me guess, you fit in that group!