Putting my tinfoil hat for a minute, I suspect that it was well known and in use by various 3-letter agencies for years, and somehow they got wind of a foreign

Putting my tinfoil hat for a minute, I suspect that it was well known and in use by various 3-letter agencies for years, and somehow they got wind of a foreign nation either exploiting this as well or about to expose it publicly. Their only move was to let a respectable entity like Google "discover" it.