Yup, the military is one of the few remaining institutions interested in funding long-term research without an obvious immediate payout.

Yes. (Military) necessity is the mother of invention. https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

> I mean, isn't that the valleys origin?

Yes, discussed in the article, too.

Yes. And the "militarization" has always been active in Silicon Valley. There has never been a time when tech wasn't heavily involved with the DoD. The only thing that changes is how publicly they talk about it. Currently it is fashionable to talk about it again.

There has been an article like this every few years since at least the 1990s where someone (re-)discovers that Silicon Valley works closely with DoD. Almost every startup delivering genuinely novel technology will have a relationship with some part of the DoD whether they talk about it or not, it has always worked that way. People who think startups are not working with DoD are deluding themselves.

The government has generally taken a "buy one of everything" approach to evaluating new technology. They are actually an interesting early customer to work with, which is why so many startups do.