It's hard not to see a connection between Japanese airlines going for the 787 and how much of its development and production work Boeing is outsourcing to Japan. The list includes Mitsubishi and Fuji (wing boxes), Kawasaki (fuselage sections), Toray (carbon fiber materials), ShinMaywa (horizontal stabilizer/elevators), Ishikawajima-Harima (engine components) and more. Japanese firms are jointly slated to build 35 percent of the 787 airframe, up from 20 percent of the 777 and 10 percent of the 767. What's more, the 787 is the first Boeing aircraft in which first-tier subcontractors control the selection of second- and third-tier subcontractors, so the large number of Japanese first-tier subcontractors has led to the participation of over 50 second-tier subcontractors and an uncounted number of third-tier.

David Pritchard and Alan MacPherson of the State University of New York at Buffalo have written that Boeing may be "surrendering the U.S. aircraft industry for foreign financial support," giving away previously-proprietary wing technology, abandoning composite material development, and making it possible for Japan to create a serious threat to Boeing/Airbus joint dominance of the large airliner industry. Boeing's argument that it had to outsource building the wing box from carbon-fiber composites because it didn't have the tools or materials doesn't hold up: prior to receiving the contract to build them, the Japanese firms didn't have the machines or the tools either. (Yes, so far the only full airframe project Japan has announced is an RJ, but does anyone seriously believe they'll stop there? GM didn't worry about the 1957 Toyota Crown, either. And Contax once called Nikon cameras a "cheap knock-off.")

Granted, there is a chicken-and-egg issue here. Did Japan get involved in the 787 because it was easier to get part of a Boeing project than part of an Airbus project, and they now favor it because they are so heavily involved, or did they get so heavily involved because it matched their needs in the first place? This can be argued either way, but to deny (or even ignore) the importance of the connection today is naive.