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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] An anonymous source, identified as a former Dynex exec, told The Sunday Times that the acquisition of Dynex Semiconductor by Chinese railway firm Zhouzhou CRRC Times Electric in 2008 "could have helped the development" of the Chinese navy's new railguns.

Dynex produces, as its name suggests, semiconductors, in particular insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). These can be used as critical components in railguns and similar catapult-type technologies thanks to their very high voltage and current ratings.

"In these big electronic systems... you need to be able to turn on and off big power very, very quickly. And your standard power switches are too slow," the former Dynex exec told the newspaper.

The basic principle behind a railgun is that a current passed between two rails via a sliding armature generates an electromagnetic field that flings a projectile carried in the armature out into the great beyond. A little lateral thinking easily turns this into an electromagnetic catapult. To make it work you need seriously high currents and voltages – sufficient to generate 160MJ, if this paper is taken at face value.

[...] The national security implications of this tech transfer are obvious, and troubling. Britain's post-Brexit answer to maintaining national prosperity is to go full throttle into cutting-edge technologies, racing ahead of other countries to commercialise and license the technologies we develop. If that comes into conflict with our strategy of using Chinese capital to cover the upfront costs, and the result is that British advanced technologies find their way into Chinese weapon systems, that will not only make the world a less safe place, it will potentially harm Britain's standing with its allies – particularly the US, which is keen to confront Chinese challenges to its hegemony.

Original Submission