Well, given the fact that people are working on it, and many of them probably don't like you so much, it's a good idea for "the people you call friendly" to work on it.
"Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we'd been spending on defense in a single year. But the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap."
Well, given the fact that people are working on it, and many of them probably don't like you so much, it's a good idea for "the people you call friendly" to work on it.