Yes, the linked article talks also about Donald Davies, which influenced more directly Arpanet.
But the point about Paul Baran is that for him packed switching was a way to make communications more resilient in face of nuclear bombing (and other things) and he had at least some influence on the birth of the Internet, so if you ask me "what is the relation between the Internet and a nuclear strike" my first answer is "Paul Baran"
> But the point about Paul Baran is that for him packed switching was a way to make communications more resilient in face of nuclear bombing (and other things) and he had at least some influence on the birth of the Internet […]
From chapter two of Wizards:
> Roberts also learned from Scantlebury, for the first time, of the work that had been done by Paul Baran at RAND a few years earlier. When Roberts returned to Washington, he found the RAND reports, which had actually been collecting dust in the Information Processing Techniques Office for months, and studied them. Roberts was designing this experimental network not with survivable communications as his main—or even secondary—concern. Nuclear war scenarios, and command and control issues, weren’t high on Roberts’s agenda. But Baran’s insights into data communications intrigued him nonetheless, and in early 1968 he met with Baran. After that, Baran became something of an informal consultant to the group Roberts assembled to design the network. […]
But the point about Paul Baran is that for him packed switching was a way to make communications more resilient in face of nuclear bombing (and other things) and he had at least some influence on the birth of the Internet, so if you ask me "what is the relation between the Internet and a nuclear strike" my first answer is "Paul Baran"