[fspeech]

As chip manufacturing goes DRAM used to be at the bottom of the ladder. Many logic fabs did DRAM first to learn the rope because the fab technology is simpler for DRAM (less layers than logic). DRAM fabs bought used equipment from logic fabs, so there were always swing capacity available. DRAM business was tough and the main challenge was yield (therefore cost and margin). I don't know if any of this has changed more recently as it certainly seems people are not bringing DRAM capacity online as expected -- maybe they are scared by the prospect that China may bring in a large amount of capacity.

The Chinese company mentioned in the article is only incidental to the story so the article title is kind of a click bait. Sure they decided to buy technology from the Taiwanese fab UMC, which is perfectly legal. UMC as a very large fab itself, could also be expected to provide the technology. For whatever reason, UMC seemed unable to deliver and had allegedly resorted to underhanded tactics instead.