[irateswami]

I would bet any amount of money that it's a private space debris tracking conglomerate that discovers a widowmaker asteroid coming at us...

...and they make us subscribe to a rundle for the rest of our lives to keep it from hitting us.

"Earth, and life on it." - brought to you by Facebook, probably

[JshWright]

The sort of radar used to track debris in Earth orbit isn't really that useful for detecting Earth crossing asteroids.

[pshc]

Surely the US or China would immediately seize control of any organization that crucial to national security

[Jtsummers]

The US government (these days at least) is perfectly happy to let private enterprises take on the costs and risks. They'll just contract it out. You see the same thing across the entire intelligence and defense sectors (some major systems are maintained not just by contractors at military facilities, but at facilities owned and operated by contractors).

Space launch is a contemporary example of an important capability that the US has demonstrated they're happy to mostly hand off to private enterprises (mainly SpaceX these days).