Title.

Getting your hands on another nations military tech is a major achievement; it will give you knowledge of new systems, functionality and capability.

According to this; there are many nations that will have the F-35

This includes less friendly nations such as Turkey and potentially even the UAE.

I do believe military bases in the US, UK, Japan and the Netherlands to be secure but I can imagine Turkey, and the UAE less so, as in accepting bribes from the CCP to actively get their hands on the airframe.

In short; If I were the CCP id target the countries that are dictatorships that are the least friendly with the US; and find some way to bribe the government into giving my spies unrestricted access to an American made F-35 and use the information.

So why are we (americans) letting the F-35 get sold in the first place; why dont we just keep it to ourselves and sell other aircraft to other nations or why dont we make an F-34 thats shittier using old technology that we can sell to other nations.