But of course. California's nascent technology industry was also created by Federal dollars, just look at Ames, Rand, etc, on the left side of the map. The interesting question I was pondering is why the transition from public to private/consumer sector happened in one place but not nearly so much in the other.

I think at a certain point the question becomes very similar as asking why you got a 6 in a dice roll instead of a 3. You can definitely explain it using Newtonian physics but at a high enough level I'm not sure it really matters.

If you look at maps of the modern internnet, DC has an extremely large collection of international cable terminals. a lot of traffic goes throught it.