You act like the basic research that darpa funded could not have been otherwise funded by a nation that didn't spend a large chunk of its budget on military spending.
I’m also having a hard time imagining some hypothetical peaceful country spending billions on a computer network without the benefit of hindsight regarding its potential value. In other words, without knowing the commercial, social, etc potential of the Internet in advance and without a military pretext, what country would have committed to spending on its development?
