>That current cooperation may not be geared towards knowledge transfer doesn't mean it couldn't be. For example the US helped Great Britain extensively in the 60's and 70's on the space front and other areas, not to the extent that the UK was unable to do it themselves but to successfully boot strap their efforts.
The problem is there is a big crossover between space tech and missile tech, so you have to see that other country as a very close ally to start that kind of tech transfer.
>There's other examples too: Despite a chilly relationship and very different values, the US and Russia have worked together for two decades on the ISS. The world is littered with current projects or their results that involved significant international cooperation and shared expertise.
All tech they both already had.
> Practically no country has independently built all of the technology that it both uses, fully understands, and can now produce on its own.
That isn't an argument for choosing to transfer a particular technology to a particular country.
>What we're really talking about here is teaching-- teaching another country how to do something. I don't need how teaching necessarily disadvantages the student country. It doesn't replace their own initiative to learn and internalize the material, but it does bootstrap the process.
It makes that tech much more easily spread in an age where the west is already worrying about North Korea/Iran/etc's long range missile programs (which they are collaborating on!, point you, but thats a reason why not to share technology willy nilly, point me).