You clearly didn't read the article. Dr. Tao provides a concrete example of the type of funding that very recently lead to an order of magnitude speedup of MRI

You clearly didn't read the article. Dr. Tao provides a concrete example of the type of funding that very recently lead to an order of magnitude speedup of MRI imaging and likely has many military uses he is not allowed to speak about (my speculation but I'd bet on it). Your statement is false.