[OminousWeapons]

The DoD funds a lot of medical research to improve combat readiness. When I was an academic researcher, we were working on a project that was partially DoD funded to develop a diagnostic device which was meant for personalizing medication for patients undergoing cardiac procedures, but the military was interested in using it for developing personalized versions of QuikClot for soldiers who experienced battlefield trauma.

I also worked for a company which had several novel therapeutics for agents commonly used in bioweapons in their pipeline and the DoD was funding parts of that as well.

[saalweachter]

It's also worth noting that science funding in the US government is decentralized. Each branch of the military as well as a half dozen "civilian" departments each have their own separate programs for funding basic science research. If I recall correctly, when I was an undergraduate research assistant working for a cognitive psychologist studying how humans solve the traveling salesman problem, that research was funded by the US Navy.

So the DOD funding research could mean it thought the research could mean it had potential as a weapon, or a defense against weapons, or was just a random thing being funded to promote basic science research.

You can't really draw a line from "This was funded by this department, so it had this intent" in US science funding.