> It's interesting - with such large defense funding, why did it take Starlink, a private company, to establish this network of satellites?

SpaceX has simultaneous pioneered vastly lowered launch cost by reusing rockets, and very sophisticated phased-array broadcasting technology that lets a small dish talk to thousands of satellites moving rapidly across the sky in low earth orbit without constantly moving around. SpaceX is still the only entity on earth reusing orbital rockets a decade after first doing so, and without that ability no one else—not even the US military—can afford to launch thousands of satellites and constantly replenish them because they only stay up for 3-5 years.