It's definitely not irrelevant. My first search time covid related because I knew the non-official, random person on the internet blog wouldn't have the money to create flashy sites.
I mean, it's kinda well known that war is the mother of all innovation right?
That explains it right there if you take the theory as true. WW2, Cold War. I mean even the moon landing was part of that cold war era technology advancement.
So now instead of governments/military pushing for needs, it's now companies trying to innovate for money. Which can work, but you need CEOs to take risks like Musk or even Jobs.
But they already do that with warrants. As long as they have a warrant and aren't breaking encryption by putting in backdoors, they should have the ability to listen in on conversations.