I think (and have heard) the Chinese govt is also interested in trying to embarrass the US as well by showing off their capabilities (so there's a political angle, too)
I used to work at Mozilla. I think we are missing a player in the market with a more principled open source approach.
Purely random thought, of course.
A lot of things have to come together: talent, capital that is not looking to maximize returns, ambition to compete in the marketplace. At peak Mozilla it was clear to everyone that we needed an undeniably successful product to be able to influence the market. Advocacy alone is not very effective.
They killed extensions. They introduced signed extensions - and then forgot to renew the certificate. Mozilla employees build what they want, not ehat users want etc.