Imagine if Merrick Garland announced that he was using prosecutorial discretion to effectively decriminalize cyber attacks on foreign countries as long as they didn’t affect US interests and the best of its allies. The federal government wouldn’t need to fund the entrepreneurial ambitions of the US talent pool. They’d self-fund and make a mint in the process.

It’s privateering of the modern age. So Putin only “funds” them in the sense that he allows them to operate, providing them implied letters of marque.