Steve Blank has probably done the best job yet of conveying the historical and intergenerational connections between Silicon Valley and the military:

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

The video and slide set do a great job of covering it comprehensively.

I had a chance to learn directly from Steve and his Hacking 4 Defense team.

BIG changes since WWII when military R&D was nearly all R&D.

Today, most R&D is commercial with a lot of duel use potential for Defense(hence the desired ties).

It’s quite interesting that military/commercial R&D proportional parity was achieved the year the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War paused.

Here’s an article I wrote that borrows a bit from Steve Blank’s presentation and blog posts.

https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect...

The military is utterly dependent on commercial off the shelf technology modified to suit its needs.

How the tables have turned in R&D.