throwaway47748

The economical viability of things is way above my pay grade but if I were to hazard a guess it could be just to know who is "out to get you" or it could also be one of many forms of corporate welfare the same way the US shovels money into the F-35 bonfire to keep its arms industry afloat, the EU could be doing similar thing to keep its own security critical industries going, especially since Snowden. My €0.02

Lasers, electron microscopes and x-ray scanners used for testing and verification in the semiconductor manufacturing industry plus loads of custom and open source tools.

And I work at a European cybersecurity company and we are routinely tasked to inspect USB drives and devices EU politicians receive at conferences, so I guess we've come full circle.

I'm sure the NSA has implants in the EU systems but they're not dumb enough to just hand them out on USB drives that can be traced back to them.