&gt; They don&#x27;t exist to serve &quot;national security interests&quot;<p>Yes they do. From their website:<p>&quot;The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a not-for-profit Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) at Carnegie Mellon University, specifically established by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) to focus on software and cybersecurity.&quot;