> Then Alice starts asking questions. I was not prepared for questions
> Then Alice started asking questions about my research
Wow, that is kinda creepy. You're seeking to pay them money for a product they sell, and they want to ask all these intrusive questions about what you do? Is there a reason for this? I mean imagine if DigiKey did this, what a nightmare that would be for electronics design.
Are they worried about you using it as part of a lab producing bioweapons? But frankly anybody with a shot at pulling that off would already know enough to lie very convincingly. I can't imagine this interview would be a hurdle to those folks.
The only other place I've come across this behavior is when seeking to buy wafers from semiconductor foundries. In that situation the foundries see themselves not as vendors to the chip designers, but rather as investors in the chip designers -- investing not money but rather production capacity, and earning not dividends but rather wafer purchases.