The Russian rockets engines aren’t our tech. Also, they’re selling *US* their rocket engines because our companies are having problems making engines as good - their liquid fueled disposable engines are actually better and more reliable than ours, in general, with the exception of SpaceX and maybe Blue Origin’s engines at current.
We need to copy them and manufacture them ourselves with improvements, of course.
Yeah, if the US had the foresight to keep the geniuses that developed the F1 engines employed, who knows what they could have come up with by now?
But, cut the funding and divert $$ to social spending, and then howl when everyone finds out the skills and industry are gone.
The Russians are not smarter, they have just been at it continuously, not just when the political winds blow right.