Reliability was a problem in the early US and Soviet years. All the new German ideas needed to be understood and worked with under local conditions.
Operation Paperclip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... gave the US a lot of German experts with no questions asked.
Over the years the US had to understand what was been constructed for them.
India had to build its own rockets and now has the local technology that is well understood and can be funded.
China faced the same issues with its advanced technology. Buy in or wait for local skills.
China now has the industrial capability and is ready to move on with its own rocket development at its own pace.
Different nations have understood to not out spend their space budgets.
A generation of the UK Skynet satellite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... would be the other way to do space science.
Buy hardware from the US and try and get local experts to work on a new UK satellite. When that fails just buy into an existing US satellite product.
Lots of nations have to learned to understand space science in different ways. Some have much lower budgets too.

The UK faced that years ago with its GCHQ links to the National Technical Assistance Centre, Government Technical Assistance Centre and other domestic efforts after the 1980's, 1990's.
Once the use of tech tracking enters the courts and legal system the tech tracking news is then public.
Sealed courts for every case with tracking? Hope parallel construction protects the role of contractor cell-site or other tracking?
A lot of interesting people can just stop using digital networks. All the mil, govs and their new contractors have set up is the ability to track digital networks globally.
Telco databases track consumers after a court order. That same database shows who is been tracked.
All the contractors can do is keep selling products that help law enforcement with parallel construction and try keep all investigations hidden.
That works well until open court or the press using FOIA finds the local use of extra cellular phone surveillance devices.

re " Do they elect a body to deal with it?"
Legal Experts: Stuxnet Attack on Iran Was Illegal ‘Act of Force’ (03.25.13 )
http://www.wired.com/2013/03/s...
It depends on the experts asked, who funded what and why.
Think of Sputnik. Nations thought airspace went up. Sputnik went over many nations but not much was said as spy satellites where going to be used.
A lot of different nations now have offensive cyber-operations funding and contractors. No much is been done to question that new concept.

Re Encryption is before.
A few products tried that in the 1950-1980. The US and UK govs always got the plain text they wanted long term.
Staff where turned, cheaper standards where set. The junk international standards and tame systems can be seen years later.
At some point in the consumer network the plain text is ready. At that point the backdoors, trapdoors are ready.
Product quality did not save the world from the tame standards.
Political leaders did not help. Experts did not mention much about junk standards. Was a lot said about tame encryption over the decades in the press?
The big brands did not seem to understand what was been done to their own networks.

Re "True, there are numerous ways to hide things, but if you intend to make it secure and you do understand the system because you designed it, it is quite possible to make it secure"
The device and the network has origins with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Trying to build a better app over that voice, text and network logging ready system is interesting.
An app can encrypt but the data has to be entered?
Get the plain text as it is entered? Then the new app can be as powerful as it wants and totally tested. The plain text is still ready on any network.

Re "modern".
Millennium Challenge 2002 was a major war game experiment and exercise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"significant portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats"
"the exercise was suspended, Blue's ships were "re-floated", and the rules of engagement were changed"

Yes. "They must be running out of real spies."
The real spies are cleared and have been in the US for generations. Their paperwork is all correct, in local paper and digital form waiting to be looked at over for reviews over decades. Number stations, one time pads keep a one way connection.
Cults, faith groups are also great ways to get perfect new staff in over decades.
The old way was for low pay and lack of promotion to get existing staff to turn. That gets low and mid ranking staff with some interesting material. But the person often needs constant emotional support and funding. Often they fail to advance to the policy setting levels and just draw attention with lifestyle changes.
A policy of of needing amounts of new skills over the past decade is not useful as it allows new staff to enter for decades of easy advancement with few life story questions.

Yes the new prices will be interesting.
Putin Kills "South Stream" Pipeline, Will Build New Massive Pipeline To Turkey Instead (12/01/2014)
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
"massive gas pipeline that will travel from Russia, transit through Turkey, and stop at the Greek border – giving Russia access to the Southern European market. In effect, Russia will still have access to the Southern Stream endmarkets"

Re "from your privacy"
The UK has been looking at messages, letters, communications over generations since WW1. With each new generation the ability to sort and store gets better but the laws to access have always been ready.
The digital collection sites are in place. The news about collection was always the same from 1914 to 2014.
The Intelsat collection at Goonhilly Downs in the 1960's.
From the D-notice affair about thousands of private cables and telegrams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in 9167.
In the UK, monitoring medium wave tower connections to Ireland. The questions about early Public Key Encryption.
The Government Technical Assistance Centre, National Technical Assistance Centre. It was always in the press over many years.
Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From telegrams, telephone to the digital age the only new story is about how cheap storage is.

It does when you are talking to your boss. "We bought support, but even they can't figure it out."

NACK... You never want solution by comity.

The fact that "Support != Solution" is a painfull lesson for many.

Have you? If this is your plan, you already have the a-la-carte support agreement approved by the lawyers, and a few support incidents in your budget. Then you just call and pay, and get support right now.

Of course, that takes prior planning, something that is actually rare in a lot of IT departments.

It can join Adversary Gold, Goldeneye, Goldenflax, Goldenperch, Goldmine, Goldminer, Goldpoint, Goldvein.
Silver Vs Gold? Platinum Plus? Alchemist?

Re What am I missing?
All the contractor funding to place the tame encryption, keep it working and then clean up the networks after events.
All the new security clearances and new cyber funding? Ex staff and former staff selling their skills globally?
Staff who worked in friendly nations with an understanding of the networks and tame systems selling their skills globally?
Once weak encryption and junk telco networks are worked on for a few generations the skill sets become available to other nations, cults, the needs of multinational corporations or anyone with cash.
State and federal investigations that needs telco support then show up on different databases. If the encryption and standards are low, everybody gets a look in real time. Time to escape.
The US and UK expects and is set up for the world to just keep on using the same tame, junk standards.
The rest of the world can revert to other methods. One time pads, number stations and less digital networking.
What the US and UK are getting could just be generations of digital misinformation. Junk crypto works in both directions :)