alt Hacker NewsI'd expect the competition for these companies to come in not from someone using the same technology, but a different technology that serves the same purpose. Eg. what happened to Kodak and Nokia.
For jet engines, the only thing that comes to mind is electric aircraft. No single-crystal turbine blades needed at all.
I may have picked a bad example, but the principle stands.
EDIT: China has an extensive high-speed rail network. While those don't quite cover intercontinental flight, it is the sort of paradigm shift I mean.
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Serious electric aircraft are really gated behind major advancements in battery technology or some alternative power storage tech. The energy density of batteries is an order of magnitude less than fossil fuels, and you have to carry the heavy batteries with you the entire trip (vs burning off fuel as you fly).
The problem with fully electric airliners is physics: to achieve useful range you either need batteries with energy density that seems unfeasible or some sort of power beaming infrastructure which has its own set of enormous challenges. So if Western turbofan manufacturers' moat lasts until electric aviation is ubiquitous, they can be very, very happy.
(Now sure, you can substitute electric aircraft with open rotor jet engines which require different institutional knowledge to modern high bypass turbofans, but they're still really sensitive to how the blades are manufactured)