Nonsense. Patents are a locked glass door; anyone can get in if they knock hard enough. And Chinese engineers wear heavy gloves and eye protection when going door-to-door.

I used to work for ASML as a design engineer, and I asked my manager why we didn't shred our paperwork, like some other companies I worked at.

"With all the trouble we've had, getting our designs to work? We should publish them to slow down our competitors!"

He wasn't wrong. “Nothing that's good works by itself, you've got to make the damn thing work.” — Thomas A. Edison.