...there are definitely a few of those. As a general rule, war is a great motivator, but something that motivates big research spending should not be mistaken for the only possible motivation. The Germans made advancements in medical technology by torturing and killing innocent people, but they still lost the nuke race--not coincidentally, to one of the least war-torn countries in the world at that time.

Furthermore, the kind of technology that comes out of wartime research is generally focused on two things: killing people and keeping them alive. Both of which have their place, and indeed, many technological advancements that have nothing to do with killing people nonetheless come to facilitate that process; but massive projects of the kind depicted here are simply too expensive and too theoretical for anything but a peacetime economy to undertake. This project will not give us better missiles or less terrorism. A deeper understanding of physics may actually extend human lifespans or alleviate poverty in the long run, but short-term all this does is further enrich the education of the most educated .01% of the people in the world.

An interesting intersection is actually the space race as spurred on by the Cold War; in that case, we had some very "non-military" technology getting pushed for a nationalist agenda, and the money we poured into R&D in the 1950's is still bearing fruit today (as virtually every new commercial technology of the new millennium is based on the 20th century's most important discovery--the transistor). In that case, we had the peace necessary for uninterrupted scientific discovery coupled with the competition that seems to drive American ingenuity.

But again, one possible motivation should never be mistaken for the only (or best) kind. U.S. military technology is still the best in the world, but increasingly "military technology" is the only kind of technology that fits in that sentence. So whatever argument you choose, while recognizing that war has motivated a great many technological advancements, I maintain that technology will advance more quickly in more important (i.e. non-lethal) ways when war is avoided.