I'm surprised that an highly trained Harvard postdoc would be surprised that the military is not only capable of disinformation like this but also indicates that such disinformation is generally employed in an effort to discredit emerging technologies that stray too close to actual developments that the government wants to keep under wraps for as long as possible in order to maintain a status quo that enables fossil fuel industries to enjoy profits for as long as is practical while a long slow transition into the new tech can be protracted for as long as possible. Certainly someone with credentials like yours can deduce why it is necessary for the U.S. to maintain a military budget that is ten times that of the combined budgets of the next three highest nations. National defense hasn't been the mission of the U.S. military since the collapse of the former Soviet Union.