Comment by acomjean

All I can think here is the government forcing back doors

(like the failed Clipper chip) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

The thinking might be the government needs a local industry for security. Think submarine manufacturing. Not a huge private market for that, but best to keep local so the supply can’t be cut off.

Though usually the government isn’t the best stewards of companies. When I worked for a large government contractor someone joked “yesterday’s technology tomorrow”. Some of that is for reliability, but it wasn’t cutting edge in a lot of ways.