How Science Gets Stolen

When I was fighting NGO corruption in grant funding and scientific publishing, I was told something chilling: “We’ll fund your platform if you agree to walk away once it’s built. Scientists have no place in publishing.” Translation—knowledge is power, but only if it’s gated.

Fast forward a few years. I’m consulting for small businesses trying to land military and government contracts. During COVID, I worked on launching an advanced handheld instrument that could detect a broad spectrum of nucleic acids and upload results to a cloud repository. Phase I of RADx seemed promising—until the interest shifted. Not disease detection. Surveillance. They wanted it to scan for genetic markers and upload the data. Human genomic mining, disguised as public health.

By Phase II, the setup looked like Shark Tank for defense contractors. Military-industrial players lining up, ready to absorb the tech, strip it for surveillance use, and bury the rest.

This is not how grant funding is supposed to work. But maybe I was naïve to think it ever was.

I’ve worked in the system long enough to see how the game is played. The question is—did it change, or did I just finally get a front-row seat to how it’s always worked?

Grant Funding: The Velvet Cage of Innovation

Here’s the dirty secret: the grant system isn’t about funding innovation—it’s about acquiring it before it ever threatens the system that feeds on control.

On paper, grants are meant to give small businesses and researchers the seed money to test their ideas, to “de-risk innovation.” In practice, they’re regulatory choke points. A grant isn’t just money—it’s surveillance on your science. The moment you enter the system, your intellectual property is tracked, your milestones are dictated, and your funding becomes contingent on staying inside the rails set by the agencies that own you.

Here’s how it works:

1. The Hook – Phase I

   
   

   They dangle small checks (SBIR, STTR, RADx, etc.) to lure innovators in. At this stage, you’re flattered. The government sees value in your idea. But what they’re really doing is taking inventory. Your prototypes, your datasets, your know-how—they all get logged into the system.

   
   

2. The Net – Phase II

   
   

   To advance, you need to pass through panels stacked with “stakeholders.” Translation: corporate and military representatives who decide whether your technology is “worth” scaling. This is where the pivot happens. If your tech can control populations, gather data, or integrate into surveillance networks—it suddenly becomes “transformative.” If not, it’s buried.

   
   

3. The Cage – Regulatory Gating

   
   

   Even if you make it through, your ability to commercialize independently is crippled. FDA, CDC, and NIH regulations, paired with IP clauses in your grant, ensure that you can’t release your product without clearance. And that clearance never comes unless it aligns with the military-industrial timeline.

   
   

4. The Absorption – Corporate Capture

   
   

   By the time you’re at a “Shark Tank-style” pitch to investors, it’s not really investment—it’s absorption. Defense contractors and multinational conglomerates step in, take majority stakes, or acquire outright. What was your idea is now theirs, and it’s pointed toward mass surveillance, biometric control, or battlefield deployment—not the people it was meant to help.

This is how science is stolen in plain sight. The system doesn’t fund what threatens it—it funds what can be used to control. Anything truly liberating, truly disruptive, gets starved out through regulatory strangulation or absorbed under “national security” umbrellas.

The result? Innovation becomes a velvet cage. You think you’re building the future—but unless it strengthens the hand of the military-industrial complex, that future will never see the light of day.

So when people ask “Why don’t we see more breakthrough technologies?”—the answer is simple: because they’ve already been built, catalogued, and locked away until the day they’re useful to the system that bought them.

Grant Funding: The Soft Theft of Science

Most people think grant funding is about advancing science for the public good. That’s the illusion. In reality, grants are the velvet glove of the military-industrial complex—a way to catalog, gate, and capture technology before it ever reaches the public.

Here’s the mechanism:

DARPA: The Original Funnel

DARPA was founded after Sputnik to ensure the U.S. was never “technologically surprised” again. That mandate translated into one thing: absorb every breakthrough before it leaks into the wild. The internet, GPS, stealth technology, CRISPR—they all passed through DARPA’s hands. What wasn’t useful for surveillance or war got delayed, de-funded, or buried.

NIH → Pharma → DoD

Take NIH funding. Billions pour into early-stage research at universities and startups. Once a technology shows promise, it doesn’t go straight to the people—it moves through regulatory choke points (FDA, CDC). Big Pharma, tethered to defense interests, decides what makes it to market. Meanwhile, genomic tools, mRNA tech, and bioinformatics pipelines flow directly into defense applications. COVID was the perfect example: RADx and BARDA grants emphasized not public health, but population-scale genomic surveillance.

SBIR/STTR: The Inventory System

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Tech Transfer (STTR) programs are sold as lifelines for startups. But Phase I is really just an inventory pass—“show us what you’ve built.” By Phase II, you’re pitching not to citizens but to military contractors. Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Lockheed—they sit on panels like venture capitalists, ready to absorb anything that looks like it can be weaponized or used for surveillance.

Regulatory Gating: The Silent Kill Switch

Suppose your invention actually works—say, a handheld nucleic acid detector that could democratize diagnostics. You don’t just get to release it. You’re funneled through FDA clearance, export controls, IP clauses tied to your grant. These “protections” ensure the tech can’t be independently commercialized until it’s aligned with government and military timelines. Anything disruptive enough to challenge existing markets—or to liberate individuals from dependency—gets stuck in regulatory purgatory.

Corporate Capture: From Innovation to Control

By the time you make it to the so-called “investment stage,” it’s not investment—it’s acquisition. Tech is either bought out, shelved, or re-tooled for surveillance. Think of biometric scanners originally built for clinics, now used for border patrol and protests. Or CRISPR—pitched as curing disease, now weaponized for gene-drive research under DoD contracts.

The Pattern: The grant system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designed:

• Catalog the science early

• Gate it with regulations

• Capture it with corporate partnerships

• Release it only when it strengthens control

Anything that could free people—energy breakthroughs, independent health diagnostics, encrypted comms—never makes it out alive.

This is why the public rarely sees true innovation. It’s not because the science doesn’t exist. It’s because it’s already been absorbed, redirected, or buried until it’s useful for surveillance and control.