The financing agreements surely require business assets and equity as collateral. At the end of the day, any cash flow that goes to the owners has to come from long term profits from the business, which comes from extracting money from customers.

Maybe not today or this year or next year, but everyone is always going to want a return on the money they put in, whether it be owner or lender.

Unless I sell off assets. Or take loans now, give the proceeds to the shareholders and get a bonus for it, and leave before the company declares bankruptcy. Or leave a unfunded pension obligation.

Or run a nationally important service into the ground and then need emergency government money to keep providing it.

Do we consider the government a customer?

If it's buying goods and services. I would not treat it as a customer, and instead one of the unenumerated other ways of generating shareholder dividends, if it paid money to keep a nationally vital industry from imploding under the weight of its bad choices.