I think, if the net was meant to maintain military communications after nucwar, it would have developed TOR much earlier and made that the default, so it wasn't

I think, if the net was meant to maintain military communications after nucwar, it would have developed TOR much earlier and made that the default, so it wasn't clear where communications were being sourced or delivered. We'd all be exchanging messages that might be part of the critical infrastructure. In reality, they worked on radiation-hardened point to point multipath comms that allow them to evade jamming and know who they are talking to.