If China had "no regulations" and was building out 100% coal, no one would be worrying that China industry would have an advantage due to low electricity cost vs rest of world.
So I haven't looked through the comments, and assume this has been discussed, but the simple solution is to limit contracts to, say, $4M, and pay only on successful completion. Then build a large project through a series of smaller steps.
To me, the interesting question is, were they the first to come up with the concept of communicating while jumping around on a random-like sequence of frequencies. What was the prior art?
It will be interesting to see who owns all the compute hardware in a few years, that cost billions now, and what becomes of it. With an expected useful lifetime so short the depreciation rate is insane.
I find the article unconvincing, although I'm open to being convinced. With historical hindsight, it should be easy to see if the Lamarr et al patent seems novel. Just because an examiner doesn't allow a claim, I don't see that as strong evidence it wasn't novel at the time. They always are rejecting claims, sometime for good reason, sometimes not.
A more convincing article would focus on purported prior art patents, and let the reader judge if really anticipated frequency hopping.