Comment by Cthulhu_
8 hours ago
Possibly, but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce), plus these are mostly managers, not engineers, definitely not engineers that have the deeper knowledge of the systems.
But even the knowledge on its own is enough - after all, a lot of that is in published scientific papers already. ASML works because they combined everything. China can't just build a copy of their EUV machines without also having a copy of their suppliers.
> but there's no-compete clauses (which are hard to enforce)
I'm pretty sure those aren't even a consideration if you relocate to a different economic superpower.
Nah, worst that can happen is you get arrested if you try to go back or are in a country with an extradition policy, but that's only if it's considered a criminal case (e.g. espionage instead of no-compete) or there's a warrant out, else a no-compete clause is a civil matter.
And besides, while in the Netherlands people do sign no-compete clauses, in practice they're not enforceable by law. Or so I've heard.