[Humorist2290]

It must be a wild time in the corporate espionage world these days. The annual operating budget of the CIA is like 20B. That's a rounding error compared to the burn rates of these labs.

Maybe it's conspiratorial, but it seems like the direction this is going is for the US to nationalize these companies. Somewhere between "too big to fail" and "national security."

[asdff]

You probably don't want to nationalize them. You keep them private like how Lockheed et al are set up, so there can be no freedom of information act requests or any congressional meddling over the secrets and technologies within their purview.