Musk wasn't radicalized, he's always been this way. As the article says, SpaceX was founded with Michael D. Griffin, the head of Strategic Defense Initiative -- the very space weaponization program that Golden Dome is now modeled after. Griffin started the Mars Society with Zubrin (another war hawk), then took over NASA and funneled billions of dollars + people and plans to SpaceX before they had done anything.
The 'Mars concept' by SpaceX was not grounded in the same 'strategic goals' as anything NASA or DoD were planning at the time.
NASA at the time primary was doing a moon program called Constellation. And DoD was not really thinking much about deep space at all.
If you are talking about the other Mars program then I don't why that would be relevant in this context.
> Many forget the DC-X.
Not sure what you are implying here. NASA and DoD had periodic programs to do various things and test various things, including reuse. See X-33 and Rotary Rocket. But all those concepts involved Single Stage to Orbit and were arguably pretty dumb and incredibly unlikely to ever work.
If the question were about, did SpaceX invent re-usability or vertical landing then your point might be relevant, but it isn't.
Even if it was true that DC-X is the pure expression of some kind of missile defense obsessed deep state, then this would still be irrelevant for SpaceX.
The whole let's pretend to try and colonize Mars with private enterprise to help build the technology for SDI in plain view was conceived by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Advisory_Council_o...
(and indeed, lots of them were Heritage Foundation people)