they hire leading researchers, and leading researchers won't work for you unless they're able to publish

That was true 10 years ago. It’s most definitely not true now. The arms race is very real.

> leading researchers won't work for you unless they're able to publish

oh, honey.

Do we want the whole humanity to get richer, or few individuals (company owners)?

Which seems bizarre. Companies can’t afford to just give things away right?

Yes they can. Your research papers are not the whole story. It’s like google could open source their entire monorepo and very little would change. No one else could operate it.