Outside of the usual lust for grant money, why do "they" oppose enabling advanced technology?
Primarily weapons systems, I imagine. But probably everything would be considered part of those weapon systems - anti-gravity, advanced propulsion, EM shield technology, literally God-knows-what. I imagine there are actually systems that are openly deployed at this point that are literally unreognizable as weapons to ordinary people, and easily explained away as something else even as you're looking straight at it. Beam weapons are a good example - what's the difference between how a "phase-array antennae" and a "de-molecularizing beam generator" looks? LOL, probably nothing!