You are merging the reason for the funding of the project (political decision) with the motivation of the people doing the actual job (scientist). That's unfair.

The motivation could be altruistic. But OP implies they were blindsided by human nature. Given the adversarial aim of the project, which was known to them when they built the protocols, and the personal writings of its designers, I question that assumption.

The protocols weren’t naïvely designed. They were designed against the threats of the day. The threat model has changed, making the protocols look childishly optimistic in the way someone walking into a modern battlefield with a wooden shield and sword might .

Still, what you're doing is something like downplaying the entire space program as being merely a happy accident resulting from building a better ICBM.

It's daft, and it oversimplifies the motives, goals, and characters of a hell of a lot of really great people. Sometimes military/defense applications is one of the best ways to guarantee funding. DARPA is even considered "defense" because it was decided that something like "those damn commies" being first to orbit a satellite happening again was unacceptable, and a technological lead was deemed a critical cornerstone of the United State's national defense strategy.

That that lead has been completely sacrificed in the last 60 or so years to foster increasing globalization in the foolhardy belief of winning over the communist bloc through capitalist flexing notwithstanding, the people who have been pushing the envelope have not by any stretch been some sort of series of diabolical Dr. Strangelove's. Quite the contrary in fact. It's just so easy for techies to get caught up in the pedantism of historical record they completely lose sight of the rest of humanity going on around them.

> DARPA is even considered "defense" because it was decided that something like "those damn commies" being first to orbit a satellite happening again was unacceptable, and a technological lead was deemed a critical cornerstone of the United State's national defense strategy

This is factually incorrect. ARPA, DARPA’s predecessor, predates America’s spacefaring ambitions.

>Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created in February 7, 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957.

--Wikipedia article for DARPA

ARPA may have existed, but was clearly found wanting, and not necessarily under the umbrella of the Department of Defense.

I think you might find the book "the innovators" by walter isaacson interesting, especially wrt the protocols.