It buys time for three letter agency to counteract bad intentions.
I see zero basis in reality for this and much more "logical legitimisations" of much of cretinism of security bureaucracy.
Public security is supposed to be ran by smart or at least above average intelligence people. They make every effort to demonstrate the opposite with their actions. Take a look at airline security, or, well, pretty much security at every public venue for that...
What's the point of obsessive screenings in airports when at most they are guarded by 20-30 poorly trained security guards or low rank military officers who didn't make it to regular forces?
Police in China is normally banned from carrying firearms, and a lot of public facilities are not guarded whatsoever in comparison to what you see in the West, yet you don't hear of sabotages happening every day.
For example?
I once ended up mistaking one quite high up security establishment for an office building. It took me few minutes to realise where I am and get the fk out. Nevertheless, I haven't seen myself descended on by security.
Some military installations used to not even have a fence. I do remember flying on civilian flights from Shadi airbase at around 2011. The terminal and the airfield were there in the open field.
For the same perfomance, a Western supercomputer probably fills a room, and a Chinese one the whole datacenter.
Add to that, that the physical distance plays a big role in lantencies, and China may be able to do supercomputer, but it is probably very expensive and inefficient for them.
I have never operated or seen a supercomputer, so all of this is speculation on my part.
The next requires three times the power and 3 times the cores to produce 60% of the number two supercomputer.
Seems like it's a case of "increase operational friction".