Being something of a conspiracy theorist (although I need some new ones... all my old ones seem to have cone true), let me suggest another piece of the jigsaw.

It's just a guess, of course, but I've seen persistent rumours that both Google and Facebook were provided seed capital and useful contacts by the CIA. Is it possible the same applies to AI companies ? It would keep them nicely at arms-length if they were caught doing anything dubious, and would allow them to get nicely integrated in jurisdictions or by people that won't touch US government projects but still use American software.