For something so militarily useful? When the Soviet Union was still seen as a threat to the US? When it was already so expensive anyway? I guess it's possible, but it's hard to believe they'd just give up like that.
Who knows how often really impactful tech is gated behind some non-obvious thing which we never follow up on.
I mean Douglas Engelbart basically bet his entire career behind the Mother of All Demos[0], if it had flopped, modern computing as we know it would be fundamentally different, same with Hiroo Kinoshita and Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography[1][2], we just would have had Moore's law falling off a cliff.
-[0]: [The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)
-[1]: https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/mayjune-2023/developin...
-[2]: [The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Technology by Veritasium](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0)