This question is easily dismissed because the author is asking about something that is not likely to emerge in the near future. A more interesting and less eas

This question is easily dismissed because the author is asking about something that is not likely to emerge in the near future. A more interesting and less easily dismissed question would be to substitute 'game changing technology' for AGI. I think there are a number of technologies which, while not AGI, provide a significant edge for a nation or other organization possessing them. Biological technologies. Energy storage technologies. Financial manipulation technologies. Advanced propaganda technologies(think 'deep fake', or deep fake combined with mass surveillance and communications infrastructure penetration(i.e. man in the middle a society's communications and start a mass panic)). There are probably many, many more. People worry a lot about AGI, but all that's required for, say, killer robots is a solution to the power problem. We can already mass produce drones with good enough pattern recognition to slice your jugular. If you figure out how to power a few million of those drones for a day or so, you have one of the most lethal and targeted weapons in the history of mankind. I think it's more likely that the robots won't kill us though. It's far more likely, assuming such a doomsday scenario takes place at all, they'll just convince us to kill each other or ourselves. Perhaps we won't even have to die, we'll just need our priorities adjusted to serve their owners. To return to the original question though, I think there is a naivete amongst technologists today regarding the level of integration between corporations and the military. Si Valley basically exists as an arm of the military industrial complex. Anyone who thinks the government isn't funding and making use of the latest technologies in processing, pattern detection, deep fakes, deep learning, etc is simply ignorant of reality. These things aren't talked about much because they're upsetting to younger engineers.