[WallShadow]

Regarding #6: Once one side or another has the McGuffin, they would first make sure it's safe for THEIR side. Next, they would spend lots of time deciphering it, then producing copies for their use only, always preserving their advantage likely to the detriment/exclusion of any competing groups or even the populus at large. Only after their monopoly was fully established, and v.2.0 debugged and in place in their own organization's TOE, would they release any information about v 1.0.
On a related note, I once asked a friend in the electronics industry what core components and materials would be needed to be stashed (in a Faraday Cage to exclude EMP effects) to allow a quick restart of the Integrated Circuitry industry, even on just a small to medium scale, if only to produce simple ICs to fix phones, personal computers, vehicle emission control modules (fuel efficiency there)? I never got an answer, but the question remains: what if some tinfoil-hat paranoid crank with some bucks did stash such a cache of bleeding edge/not the best and brightest technology, including photoetching materials, etc, etc.? Or even just a bunch of junked worn-out pc's that had been replaced enmasse with newer models (think the leftovers from a large-scale corporate upgrading). Not completely workable as is, but kit-bashable/cannibalizable to produce several more-or-less workable units.