Did someone measure that claim? There was a lot of progress in 20th century. Calling arms race a main driver is a pretty wild claim but seems to be repeated all the time by geopolitics and army experts. That doesn't make it true though. Development of internet was by no means a single source event. That is case for most of technology also and main driving force for progress of internet was definitely market incentive.

Imagine how much we could have progressed if we just focused on progress rather than acquiring power through intimidation in some artificial zero sum game.

Yeah, I'm trying to imagine that, but then I remember that we live in the real world here, with finite resources, and thousands of years of history, not in some utopia where everyone sings kumbaya and dances merrily around a campfire.

Yes, this is true: If you denuclearize you too will end up with a bayonet up your ass in the street.

Or we could spend a lot of money on technology which is actually serving the public good

To what end, fistfucker3000? How do you convince people to spend unlimited amounts of money other than by convincing them that their very survival depends on it? And the threat needs to be acute, too: this is what they're trying to do with climate change now, but nobody really gives a shit about something that may or may not happen 50 years from now.

Ask Elon Musk he seems to be good at that

Ah yes, all that military innovation that's been improving the education system over the years....

In Russia, after seeing the nuclear weapon the Party realized that the Marxism-Leninism alone is not going to produce such a weapon and had allowed and forced real sciences to be taught in schools. Likewise, the "Sputnik moment" in the US resulted in massive education improvements, e.g. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/10/how-sputnik-c...

Those better schools payed up real quick. Soviet union created atomic bomb in 1949.

The 1949 device was likely done with stolen technology both from the USA and Germany. Phystech opened in 1951.