France can be criticised in many respects but they do produce a lot of good tech. Just not so much in the frontend digital consumer sphere.

I wish my country was as good at spying and could steal the TGV designs ;)

Very high? France is the third largest military industrial exporter in the world after the US and Russia. The Ariane is Europe's heavy lift rocket.

I'd say so. as I alluded to in my comment, in aerospace and defense they're very much among the top three. A country that competes if not leads India and China despite having twenty times smaller a population I think deserves that label. And rather than use Italy to drag France down in a comparison I'd say it's a good opportunity for people to recognize that Italy itself is quite underrated. The country has a remarkably resiliant private sector in particular.

> They're the 8th largest manufacturing country in the world. Is that industrial superpower territory?

When you're the 20th most populated country, yes, arguably.

They're the world's leading nation (or possibly #2) at manufacturing datacenter infrastructure (by sales volume).

Ever heard of Dassault? Solidworks? Airbus?

I have. (Note that the first two you listed are not two different things, or to the extent they are, the second one is US, continuing to be based just down the road in MA, USA).

I did not know Solidworks is based out of MA. I wonder how their dev teams are split