Tokamaks have always seemed to me such a massive distraction in practical energy production, other than ancillary benefits due to the funding, upfront energies

Tokamaks have always seemed to me such a massive distraction in practical energy production, other than ancillary benefits due to the funding, upfront energies involved, and sheer scale. Instead military complexes are quietly focussing on other nuclear research such as Polywell devices or forgoing the difficulties of fusion entirely and focussing on Generation IV fission reactor types such as Molten-Salt Reactors (MSR). I'm willing to bet that the world's energy problems will be greatly ameliorated or even solved long before ITER ever produces more energy than it consumes. Even if it ever worked, the likelihood is that the extreme dependence on scale of any installation would make it impractical in a future we are heading to where everything is greatly distributed, including energy generation.