I interpreted the parent comment as saying that <i>CMU</i> doesn&#x27;t exist to serve national security interests, whether or not there is an entity, like the FFRDC SEI, that does exist for related reasons.<p>On one hand, leading academic institutions are commonly understood to have a responsibility to preserve free speech (especially speech that is critical of military or government action), remain as a neutral education and research body decoupled from any specific political or military agendas, and help lead in social progress towards greater overall ethical standards in education, research, and scholarship.<p>On the other hand, many universities loan out the credential and status of being affiliated with them as a recruitment tactic to assist the DoD in the task of creating a diversified set of military research organizations, which from a superficial observation point of view (the view taken by many of the younger engineers duped into working for below market pay at such places) <i>look like</i> run-of-the-mill software&#x2F;science&#x2F;engineering jobs while having all sorts of ethical gray areas, and the end result is to create rampant ethical conflicts of interest, questionable management practices, and many other problems.<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s as simple as just pointing out that SEI is an FFRDC and moving on. The fact that universities in general continue to perpetuate this problem -- academia-military pseudo-credible research facility affiliation and status-mongering -- <i>that</i> is the bigger issue.