The military's role in this seems very much rooted in selfishness and adversity, to the extent that a more cooperative species (let's be honest it's not gonna be us) would find plenty of non-military motivation to do similar amounts of basic and applied research.
Maybe in German. I personally regularly curse the fact that I was born a human when I am confronted with uniquely human problems: having to cook, sweating my behind off, having to waste time using the bathroom, experiencing strong emotions like anger or jealousy or envy. These are the things that make us human, but they often times I find them highly annoying and wish my ancestors had evolved out of some of them.
