[johnknowles]

From your article:

“This is helping maintain US dominance, particularly from a technological perspective,” says Meyerriecks. “That’s really critical for national and economic security. It also democratizes the technology by making it available to the planet in a way that allows the level of the water to rise for all.”

Such a skeevy way to paint this picture -- it's not about global democratization to rise the water level, we know from history that the cia cares about the ability to impose controls through more powerful, more distributed tech.