[aeonik]

A lot of the tech is at least dual use though. Think of imaging stuff: like DSP, radar, phased arrays, cameras and the like.

(I wish Thermal and Night Vision was cheaper)

I was just looking it up the other day and the first wireless time system was implemented by US and French defensive systems.

GPS, the Internet, etc... DARPA projects alone are impressive. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA#Projects

I do miss those private research groups like Bell Labs and Xerox PARC though.

NASA does a lot of good work too, and there are some really cool space projects there that need more funding.

[Retric]

Is there really that much overlap or are the budgets just so insanely high you end up with accidental overlap? Seat belts are a perfect example where the military and non military application was quite different on day one. But, military had the budget so John Stapp made the argument around how many pilots died driving in their civilian lives. Definitely a huge public benefit, but from what amounted to military funding of civilian research.

Packet switching saw first implementation outside the US including some key ideas like a router. We ended up with the ARPANET > Internet story everyone is familiar with more as an accident of history and a dash of propaganda rather than something that required US military participation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPL_network

Teflon is another one people bring up as coming from the military but was invented accidentally outside the military long before its use in the Manhattan Project.