Perhaps these latter ideas are simply large/hard problems, not "ideas so strange no one has even ever considered them before". However, if you were a hush-hush

Perhaps these latter ideas are simply large/hard problems, not "ideas so strange no one has even ever considered them before". However, if you were a hush-hush R&D lab investigating some ideas that were so far out there no one has ever heard of them, would you really tell them to the NYT so they can include them in their profile of your lab? I doubt it.