Hacker News Reader

DARPA provided much of the early funding for autonomous vehicle research.

The "Grand Challenge"s and all that.

Just left a DARPA grant for an AI project. They've been one of the biggest AI funders for some time.

They've been doing that off and on for half a century. You may be interested in the history in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

In addition to DARPA there's IARPA, which has the MICrONS project: http://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/microns

I really think an AI race between states will be inevitable

Why would you think that they are not already doing so?