Different agencies all wanted ways into the same systems, which played well from a bottom-line perspective, but not so much from the American taxpayer’s. His company was selling the same zero-day exploits two, three, four, times over to different agencies. The overlap and waste, Sabien recalls, became too much to stomach. The government has a name for this problem—duplication—and it wastes millions in taxpayer dollars every year. But duplication is even worse in the digital world, where contracts for bug-and-exploits are sealed up in nondisclosure agreements and often classified. The
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