The best stuff gets invented in war time. WW1 and WW2 gave us great technological advances, like fertilizer, radar or the microwave oven.

Finally somebody puts it in words easy to understand. This is what I try to explain to people when they try to tell me about some mega Uber duber super secret technology. I'm like, all of the science used for it come from academia. The government doesn't know anything the academics don't know.

I imagine a lot of the best stuff also gets developed in public-private partnerships, like In-Q-Tel and the startups it supports on behalf of the CIA.

I'm just thinking of prior examples, such as how the internet was technically a military intranet before it got into public hands, or how radio and lidar technology was leagues ahead in the military before it became public

What the government would have that public research would not is a) better quality training data (they have direct surveillance at the telco hardware level, not just what's publicly scrapeable) and b) less need to artificially limit the AI so end users can't abuse it.

I'd also disagree on the leaked NSA stuff being only "good". Russia used it after it leaked to unleash the NotPetya malware, and that was the most damaging malware of all time.

Depends on what the objective is. The US government has had back doors into webcams, microphones, and social profiles for around two decades now. Snowden exposed the extent of their snooping in the early aughts and it was quite shocking. I doubt they've been resting since then. The stuff that gets leaked is usually the stuff they're fine with people knowing about it. The Snowden leak was unprecedented, and we usually don't get that deep of a glimpse into the intelligence community. By now they likely have complete and total access to anything, a Sneakers Black Box, if you will. No private tool can accomplish that. Keep in mind I'm talking about the NSA, not the FBI or local law enforcement.

B-but the computers go beep boop

Most government entities seem to work this way. This doesn't mean that a division that actually has its shit together doesn't exist.

DARPA and your DMV are not the same thing

GPT Prime

I vote GW!

When you say academia… do you mean private institutions only, or are you including public institutions and researchers that are funded by government grants?

Government worker here too, can confirm our system runs on COBOL. The wizards who can program it have infinite job security.

It's good to look back on how far back they had stuff that seemed like future tech even decades later. First commercial satellite phones were developed in '98, based on satellite phone technology Lyndon Johnson used publicly in '63, meaning that the tech had already been tested and was working for who knows how long privately.