Of course that would be having open research that was freely shared. That would immediately make theft impossible, since there would be nothing to steal.

This simple and obvious point is not mentioned once in a piece describing efforts by Russia and China to gain access to vaccine research being done at U.S. universities and private companies. Since the whole world is struggling to get a vaccine as quickly as possible to bring the pandemic under control, it might have made sense to have a cooperative effort, where all research would be freely shared and any vaccines that are developed could be produced by any manufacturer with the capability to make it.

Instead, we went the route of restricting research access, which is both likely to slow down the development of effective vaccines and also lead to otherwise pointless security costs. It also is likely to mean that any vaccines that are developed will be expensive, since the producers will own patent monopolies that allow them to restrict access.