I think there are several historic precedents of advanced technology having a huge impact in sustaining or further advancing nation-states policies. Think abou

I think there are several historic precedents of advanced technology having a huge impact in sustaining or further advancing nation-states policies. Think about Spanish and Portuguese caravels, english longbows, etc. If your country somehow discovers something akin to electricity, probably fastly reproducible by other nations, you will probably want some extra time developing technology over the discovery, just to have maybe, 10-30 years edge over the rest. The more, the better. This is not any news, US has done it already with the stealth technology (and they still have and edge on it, even if they're not making it public), nuclear technology (most of it are still closely guarded secrets, think hydrogen bombs), even most of the optical technologies related to satellites are highly guarded secrets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_secret