Citing an academic paper published years after something was built as the inspiration for building that something is just not possible. It'd be like saying Facebook is why Tim Berners Lee made the World Wide Web.
The narrative isn't physically possible regardless of arguments because that's simply not how time works.
Here's an early network diagram btw. IMP is the network device by BBN (they're still around in mini-museums at some of these sites):
https://historyofinformation.com/images/Screen_Shot_2020-09-...
The GE-645 at MIT there is the multics machine. The TX-2 at Lincoln Labs was Sutherland's machine he did sketchpad on while that link at Utah is the one that Martin Newell used to collaborate on his Bézier control points in constructing the Utah Teapot in 1975.
Every one of these links has a story to tell. None of them however involve wars, battlefields or bombs. I've dedicated years of study to computing history - it's not a supported hypothesis unless you want to handwave and string unrelated things together.
DARPA which provided some of the cash, which is the only real link there is, was really unhappy because these researchers just used them for their money - they didn't work on or produce results for them. Go read "where wizards stay up late" for very detailed drama surrounding this.
There's a typo at UCLA btw, that's an SDS, not an XDS Sigma 7 (It's a weird typo because it was later sold off to Xerox and got renamed the XDS 4 years later. But here, it's a typo because again, that's how time works). The Illiac IV at Burroughs would have been very interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILLIAC_IV