<p>Why do states impose export controls that harm their own economies? We reinterpret such measures as costly signals of technological autonomy rather than coercive sanctions. A Bayesian signaling model with dynamic cost structures and bounded monotonicity shows that credible signaling functions only within limited regimes. Once perceived threat crosses a critical threshold, information revelation triggers defensive counter-investment and welfare loss—a tragedy of signaling in which credibility becomes self-defeating. Methodologically, the framework infers information from regime identification rather than parameter estimation: observed escalation locates the system within a bounded equilibrium region, while theory predicts when qualitative regime shifts occur. Empirically, China’s 2023–2025 export controls on gallium, graphite, and rare earths exhibit perfect rank-ordering, consistent with operation inside the credible-signaling regime even as Western counter-investments approach its boundary. The model offers testable predictions about regime transitions, illustrating how formal theory can anticipate structural breaks in technologically interdependent rivalries.</p>