"Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead." - Benjamin Franklin
It seems highly improbable that a team of any size would have been successful at keeping this a secret for this long, let alone not wrestle for control of vast BTC wealth.
Why do you suspect is Wei Dei, was there any reveals regarding this in the lasts few years?
Similar possibilities.
Literal American cash dollars (which tend to work everywhere, even anti-American regimes) under the table would be more secure. But then assets in other countries are probably just paid through shell companies in those countries with local currency or something.
I know the US isn't solely or originally responsible for those, but boy it sure ran the ball a long distance.
If Bitcoin was a government program, it probably wasn't the US government. I'd guess North Korea, Iran, Russia, etc. One of the countries heavily bothered by US-led sanctions, or at least one that doesn't already have an important ~global currency to disrupt.
It seems to have grown mostly in the English-speaking world to start with, but that doesn't seem like a fatal flaw of my theory.
It's also a big government though, it is quite possible that some part would have driven something like Bitcoin for its own reasons. It just doesn't strike me as very likely compared to the alternatives.
Most likely, in my estimation, is still probably it being started by non-government to be clear.
How would Satoshi know that people would scrutinise their emails 16 years later