I agree with LVN's tech sharing idea as it sounds very reasonable to me. I in genreal don't like tech sharing becuase of the below reason:
Whilst tech sharing is possible almost everyone seems to have missed the fact that those people in the lower tech nations will need training to handle the new tech, won't be able to mass produce the technology anytime soon, will require constant parts for the sharer and it generally takes a lot of time to do this.
A good quote I think id from the book im reading where a lower tech star nation has aquired information and tech from their enemies however, as the general says:
"For all intents and purposes, we've got to build the tools to build the tools, to build the tools we need to reproduce the Manticoran technology"
So as that shows you might have the technology but you won't really be able to repair/reporduce the technology.