Yes there is some truth in this, I think. It seemed entirely plausible (at least to politicians) in the 50s that the scientists might well come up with something else on the scale of the bomb.

Similarly ITER and the whole fusion research project is a jobs program to maintain a population of high-neutron-flux physicists to draw on for weapons work. (There will be no fusion power.) But has anything useful spun off? Maybe plasma dynamics maths.

Inertial confinement drove development of short-pulse lasers, which are good for research into chemical reaction dynamics.