Who cares about unintended consequences if you're the first person to study them? China gets to deal with a novel problem and will get novel rewards eventually because the west let itself get soft.
EDIT: To all the people making Nazi comparisons, we stole the atom bomb from the Nazis. Their science across multiple disciplines was on par or superior. We're smarter than them now because we /destroyed/ them. It's easy to surpass someone who's standing still. My point is that we need real strategies and plans if we don't want certain science domains to become irrelavent due to the restrictions we place on ourselves. "We beat the Nazis" isn't a real counter argument.
EDIT: To all the people making Nazi comparisons, we stole the atom bomb from the Nazis. Their science across multiple disciplines was on par or superior. We're smarter than them now because we /destroyed/ them. It's easy to surpass someone who's standing still. My point is that we need real strategies and plans if we don't want certain science domains to become irrelavent due to the restrictions we place on ourselves. "We beat the Nazis" isn't a real counter argument.