It's not really "weaponizing the tax code because of an ideological aversion"; it's more:

* It makes sense to tax capital assets as such.

* If companies do R&D and think the results are valuable enough to be kept secret, then obviously they're an asset.

* Depreciation is because real-world assets actually require ongoing maintenance or become worthless over time, but information does not.

* Finite-term IP grants (e.g. copyrights/patents) do become worthless over time, so a depreciation schedule makes sense.

* Trade secrets never expire, so it doesn't make sense to depreciate them. If they never get out, they remain an asset forever. So their development shouldn't be deductible. If they do get out, the company could release all of their (now presumably useless) info on it then for the deduction from their development.

The point about finding trade secrets to be dubious is that it seems natural to tax them as an everlasting capital asset (since that's what they are), and I don't see why we wouldn't do that since society doesn't eventually get the benefit of that knowledge, so incentivizing it runs counter to the purpose of IP law. Why would a knowledge economy provide a tax deduction for developing knowledge we don't eventually get?