[nimbius]

A cynics take awaits you, however, if you consider scientific research an organism of sorts then this makes complete sense. since most legislated spending at the congressional and senate level is only ever expediently approved if it is in the interest of the national defense, then the simplest way to encourage and continue meaningful advances in the body scientific is to simply blanket them all as "defense" projects.

so, your climate analysis grant may face grim prospects until the cosmic DARPA modifier is applied, and in doing so, becomes easily funded.

[comex]

This article is about the creation of new ARPAs without the D, which are explicitly not about defense. They are rather are meant to take DARPA’s model and apply it to other areas (climate, energy, health). Organizationally speaking, they’re unrelated, being under different federal agencies depending on the area. They may borrow some of DARPA’s glamor but they aren’t considered defense projects. So your comment doesn’t seem applicable.

[packetlost]

> if you consider scientific research an organism of sorts

Somewhat off-topic, but at a macro level, society itself and the systems it produces are fundamentally the same thing as the individual cells that make up our bodies (the specifics of what those systems act on and the context in which they act in are obviously different). Basically every societal structure can be reduced to the behaviors of an organic system at some level of complexity.