It will pay itself and offset those costs once they reach breakeven and start selling their equal or better tech in the international market, displacing the incumbents.
Of course this doesn't automatically mean China wouldn't eventually pull ahead without the external pressure either. I'm just not as convinced it was so clearly a forced opportunity cost loss as much as something which provided a washed mix of both friction and acceleration despite assuredly preventing the US from making more money while its tech was farther ahead.
What was the opportunity cost in this equation? A substantially smaller bailout for their commercial real estate market?
> [The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology] on our terms (emphasis added)
What terms did we dictate? Timelines? Trade?
How does America or the West emerge ahead here?
It was known and was accounted for.
The idea is to make them spend resources developing their own technology on our terms instead of their own.
They were always going to do this, they just had to do it faster than they otherwise wanted to, which has an opportunity cost.