Does ethical hacking give security divisions motive to withhold security holes?

Question

Snufykat wrote:
I removed my first, not helpful, comment.
No worries. I acutally forgot to change this to a discussion post instead of an answer post, wasn't really looking for the answer, because I was pretty sure I knew already but I wanted to hear the input from some others that might know more about the subject than I do.

Answer 1

So, as we all know, software and hardware is going to have some kind of a security hole or concern after its release no matter what happens. I have seen a lot of posts about ethical hacking and the like. I was just wondering what the community's thoughts were on this: if we're more concerned about "being on the offensive" as the US government has said they intend to be, does it give motive to withhold security holes in software that might be used internationally?Say, for example, MS Word, which is used around the globe is found to have a security hole. The US discovers this. They want to use this security hole to their advantage thus they keep the security hole to themselves. Meanwhile, some hacker from China had already discovered the security hole and was exploiting it for the previous year. Now the US is withholding security...
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