I think you are underestimating how many companies use 3D printing for prototyping. It's not just hobbyists printing miniatures.
To give an example, I had RSI and use a high-end, expensive ergonomic keyboard. The company that makes these keyboards does not go immediately from design idea to an expensive mold. There are many design iterations and prototypes and they are all 3D prints.
The same is probably true for air humidifiers, drones, or whatever other object you can come up with.
If you have access to everyone's STLs, you basically have access to all the design prototypes and something close to the final product.
It's like industrial espionage, except companies are willingly giving you the data, because they do not want to spend the extra money for a farm of Prusa printers.
It's a brilliant play of the Chinese government. Exploiting that we prefer short-term savings over long-term strategy.
This pattern repeats over and over again, from 3D printers to people buying Chinese fitness watches because they are cheaper than EU and US counterparts.
I think you're overestimate the value of these prototypes. The print itself is either a plastic render of the final product without any value, or it's a shell without any actual useful parts/machinery. If we imagine we're talking about the 1% of 1% of 1% which could end up as useful IP stuff, but which might be very hard/impossible to find/understand/do anything with it, for which cases don't use bambu.
Chinese have made it part of their economy to steal the IP of US and Europe. It’s not unfathomable.
You’re making the assumption that customer product prototypes are the only prototypes produced by 3D printers.
There’s plenty of other more valuable things that are prototyped using 3D printers, such as high end commercial machines, or components that go into those machines.
I suspect that getting hold of STLs from US defence manufacturers would be extremely valuable. Why bother trying to capture a copy of your enemies technology, when they’ll happy just send you all the prototype STLs. Even if it’s not defence, don’t you think access to prototype components from EUV machines from ASML would be crazy valuable to Chinese companies trying to close the gap between Chinese and Western chip fabrication technologies?
> I suspect that getting hold of STLs from US defence manufacturers would be extremely valuable
It would be, yes. There’s a reason why Prussia has optional connectivity and the camera can be physically removed and unplugged.
I mean, if you want to make your point, yes. But I think it would be logical to assume "US defence manufacturers" wouldn't be using Bambu from the start, regardless of what their track record is.
You’re severely underestimating the value of prototypes.
Not to mention, 3D scanners exist. It's well within Chinese capabilities to simply scan parts and recreate them in CAD.
The only case where they might not be able to do that is if they literally can't buy the part (e.g. the military). But the military does not use Bambu printers.