If they win, the US government collected taxes they shouldn't and those would be returned. Saying the "US taxpayer will pay for it" is equivalent to saying the US taxpayer pays for your tax refund. (And also, Nintendo is a "US taxpayer.")
Twenty years ago, I was strongly anti IDE and pro text editor. In the last ~10 years or so text editors have gained features previously only found in IDEs and IDEs have improved their performance and brought in features from text editors. I would argue the distinction between text editors and IDEs at this point is academic.
I'm (still) very interested about this project. Two years ago, I came across this when setting up a Raspberry Pi based "home lab" Kubernetes cluster (https://github.com/tantalic/shaving-yaks). I ran into some issues (I believe all Raspberry Pi specific) and ended up going with k0s. While I am happy with k0s, I do wish Kairos worked out for me and I might have to give it a try again soon.
I have been a happy Base user since 2011. I don't use it all that often, but anytime I need to explore a database file or take a CSV and turn it into a database for some investigation it is the first tool I turn to. Happy to be able to be able to pay for an upgrade after this long!