... but most of those PHD are seriously "smart", and "smart" does not go well with authoritative regimes, namely it is very, very hard to make those work togeth

... but most of those PHD are seriously "smart", and "smart" does not go well with authoritative regimes, namely it is very, very hard to make those work together to acheive results at scale, and that unrelated to science at all. The silicon world is waiting for China to announce their EUV photolitographers (and the other required tools) on par with those from ASML (or maybe some brand new process able to build at scale similar cutting edge chips).