Usually, high salaries are used to attract star performers. But there's other factors at play too. Sometimes, high salaries are used as compensation for dangerous or unpleasant work. So, for example, if the NSO had to pay higher salaries because all developers whotake the job get immediately divorced by their wives and no longer invited for beer by their friends, then that wouldn't attract better talent. Regular talent is merely being compensated for the negative externalities of working for NSO.

In order for a company to attract superior talent, they need the entire package to be better than the competition (lifestyle, salary, free pizza, prestige, etc).