I don't see the quandary. The US spends trillions (or something) on military R&D. There's nothing special about military R&D per se that make it produce better

I don't see the quandary. The US spends trillions (or something) on military R&D. There's nothing special about military R&D per se that make it produce better and greater technology than other reasons to do research. In fact, because of the particular focus, it probably produces quite a bit of technology that doesn't even have any non-terrible use, even if you're really creative about it. It's a numbers game. If you throw more spaghetti at some particular wall than anybody else or any other wall, then obviously that's where most of it will stick ... It's mostly that humans are real easy to convince to hate and want to kill eachother, as long as the numbers are large enough you can forget they're individuals. So obviously the other dominant lifeforms on this planet (super-organisms, in this case multinational corporations) exploit this loophole for control and power.