“Perhaps - and contrary to the common perception - the NSA’s surveillance program is (is, because it has not been terminated) aimed at getting a stranglehold on people and organizations not only to strengthen the US government’s hands. It is also aimed at helping US corporations consolidate their hold on the global markets and thus make more profits.”
Having been involved for an entire career at the point where government meets private enterprise, I can tell you without equivocation that the government will not transfer stolen foreign technology to a company. Most importantly, our government has been staffed by hippie anti-company types since the late 1960’s. The government and everybody I ever worked with is deeply ideologically opposed to profit. But beyond that, which company would benefit from this largesse? If the government gave stealth technology to, say, Lockheed, you can bet that Boeing would find out and senator and lawyer up and complain. (Also, our competitors for the last 40 years have had nothing worth copying.)
Now, this is not true of our trading partners. When I was with Honeywell a negotiator went to France. During the negotiation he told his French corporate partner that he was not empowered to do x. The Frenchman stated, “Yes, you are.” And, proceeded to produce a photocopy of the confidential briefing that had been stolen from the Honeywell employee’s locked briefcase the night before. When the Soviet Union crumbled the US laid off spies. But our European counterparts could not, as they were protected civil servants. They simply changed the spying mission from the Soviets to aid their internal companies against competitors. Believe me, if that happened here it would be a political and legal nightmare for whoever did it.
Perhaps not directly, but I don't buy that in total, because it makes no sense. If the technology is critical to national defense, it would be stupid not to, if only to know our adversaries' capabilities. I used to work for a couple of defense contractors doing advanced communications technology and observed upon more than one occasion engineers doing such reverse engineering.