Isn't that method exactly how the silicon valley, and with it companies like Intel, were created? By the US DoD directing money from the top?
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, IBM, list goes on, weren't envisaged by a 60 year old bureaucrat sitting in Brussels or Washington.
They were created by ambitious young men looking to shape the world in their own way.
IBM and Google both came almost directly from government money. Amazon, Microsoft and Netflix are arguably actual startups.
The snowball/butterfly effect is real.
I feel like some in tech want to take responsibility, somehow that American's are just better tech-bros than anyone else. It was mostly chance.
Call it what it is, a gift. And take care of it, they only get made by luck.