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At Rense.com, a writer claims:

The United States is known to have a huge budget for so called ``black projects,'' because it spends more on defense than can be accounted for by adding up the value of public programs.

Are there any good examples from history of it being revealed that the US government knew about some technology long before the general scientific community did?

The two most obvious examples I can think of are

  1. The Manhattan Project: However, I'm not sure how private it actually was -- I know they were very secretive about details (which are of course very important!), but the basic science was already widely known, I think.
  2. RSA: I remember that a British mathematician later revealed to have discovered it before R, S, and A did, but it was kept quiet because of a security issue. So that's a good example, I think.
Sklivvz
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YungHummmma
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    According to the [FAQ](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), Skeptics.SE is for researching the evidence behind the claims you *hear or read*. This question appears to be *your own* speculation, and is off-topic. Please edit it to reference a claim that other people are making and flag for moderator attention to re-open (or get 5 re-open votes). – Oddthinking Apr 10 '14 at 01:12
  • Hi, I added a specific claim. Can you reopen it? – YungHummmma Apr 10 '14 at 14:41
  • @YungHummmma That specific claim should be its own question, this one is still too general in scope. Plus, "a lot" is hard to define as well. A bunch of inventions that aren't of much use outside of limited applications could be a lot, but uninteresting where as one very invention that has broad applications could be a lot in terms of potential revenue. – rjzii Apr 10 '14 at 14:55
  • The linked reference claims: the US researched (not DISCOVERED, just LOOKED for) anti-gravity, the US has "black projects", and academic papers on "electrogravitics" disappeared from libraries. Which of those claims would you like us to investigate, and we can focus the question appropriately? – Oddthinking Apr 10 '14 at 15:10
  • @Oddthinking, I guess my question most concerns the 'black projects', and whether there have been any notable examples of any later being revealed (like the article mentions with stealth tech, though I have no idea if that's actually true). – YungHummmma Apr 10 '14 at 15:36
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    I've focussed the question on that claim. It is still problematic because you, in the question, give two examples, so I am not sure what extra information you need. Also, if the DoD has better information about missile defense strategies than that which has been widely published, for example, does that count? What about if they know better than the published literature how many troops have been trained by North Korea? It would hardly be astonishing. – Oddthinking Apr 10 '14 at 15:59
  • @Oddthinking I'm not sure why this was reopened as there really isn't anything to be skeptical of here the way the question is now phrased. – rjzii Apr 10 '14 at 16:05
  • @rob: Hmmm, I may have been too generous to a new user who actually made the effort to improve their question. I think vartec's find of a duplicate resolves the issue. – Oddthinking Apr 10 '14 at 21:51
  • Honestly, I'm more curious why anyone would think the U.S. _didn't_ have secret research programs. Even the U.S. government itself is quite open about the fact that lots of research whose release is deemed to be a threat to national security is classified. Basically all developed nations have classified research programs; the U.S. just happens to have more than normal and [really big deserts to hide them in](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51). – reirab Jan 03 '17 at 20:42

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