Who benefited? I assumed that while criticism is healthy, some calls for cancelling the aircraft were from adversaries. Easiest way to defeat the plane is to get Congress to kill it.
I know there was a bit of a disinformation campaign going on. A lot of it was overtly produced by Russian sources. In addition, with any American mega project like this there are always people who want to divert the funds to their own mega project.
Who benefited? I assumed that while criticism is healthy, some calls for cancelling the aircraft were from adversaries. Easiest way to defeat the plane is to get Congress to kill it.