Genuinely curious

So… I’m listening to a pod and something that keeps coming up are the black programs in place and president(s) on a need to know and that they’re worried about adversary gaining the tech first or being way ahead of us in this race. My question is so are those countries also running similar programs and the government is also shut out like ours? I want to believe so bad but in the same breath can imagine something like this taking place in Russia and Putin not knowing a thing about it.. let’s...