The DOD is the largest employer on the planet. That doesn't even count the periphery of contractors. Sponsoring a project like trails makes sense and 100K to them is peanuts. 

In the army we had a tactical fire computer that we ran Linux on sometimes because we wanted to test hardware. So I'm sure 23 years later there is a team testing something and they got funding for a project that they viewed as tight. 

I'm not recommending for or against but if the code is open source it can be reviewed and audited. I think the issue really is in compilers that are trusted and not audited and legacy software that NSA spooks will submit code to. 



OgFOMK

Information is sparse using search engines, and I don’t feel comfortable linking to unverifiable Reddit speculation on security matters, [but here is the list of sponsors on Tails’ website.](https://tails.net/sponsors/index.en.html) The US Department of State is one of their largest sponsors as of 2023, over $100k USD.

Not sure what to make of it, and not fear mongering. Just wonder if it might be a conflict of interest. 