[calacatta]

According to Peter Zeihan, France (along with Turkey & a few others) will be emergent empires of the post-globalist age. There is ample precedent for and, and for some countries, explicit codification of using commercial tech products for state ends, particularly espionage.

So a) this is not a surprising direction at all and b) this sets up a nice little pre-fertilized, fully-walled-off plot for a French omnibus tech company to explode into.