> In reality, we observe that open parties tend to win, or at minimum, if they lose, the closed party tends to have an entirely disconnected line of research that rarely incorporates ideas from the open party

An obvious counter-example to this is the NSA/GCHQ and cryptography. They've repeatedly shown that they're a good 5-15 years ahead of everyone else.

Aside from doubts about whether or not this is actually the case the pertinent question that comes from my point is:

If cryptography researchers were keeping their results secret to within their institution / research circle, instead of sharing with academic community / public, would that advantage or disadvantage the NSA relative to the researchers? I think the answer is obvious, and it's a pretty excellent analogy for the US-China situation.

Is this still true? I feel like I haven't heard of any crazy cryptography revelations for a while now. My assumption was that cryptography was a bit of a special case because it was only government/defense entities putting significant work into it, up until the Internet/digital telecommunications became prominent enough that there was great individual and private-sector demand for crypto. (Plus the whole mess with it being export-controlled, obviously)