This is not circumventing anything because they don't have to modify the PS3. I got my PS3 the day it was released. One of the things you could do was to "donate" free cycles in your PS3 where a research firm working for the feds, would use your PS3's free cycles to create a large supercomputer. They wanted at least 200,000 users to see if it was possible. Nothing was modified, it was there as is, out of the box. All you had to do was agree or decline. I don't know what happened after that, because I declined and later decided to accept, but they said they had enough people. So, no, they are not violating the DMCA.

I just watched a documentary on drones. The US military is using the XBOX 360 to set up scenarios for the drone pilot trainees. The trainer can put "insurgents" or other enemy soldiers that the drone trainees shoot. The did find out that seasoned fighter pilots weren't as good as the "gamers." (This I fully understand, as in most plane simulator games, I have never successfully landed anything, I always crash. But I have landed a number of real planes as a pilot. When in a real aircraft, you feel - as in G forces - and have full depth view of your surroundings. But I did ok in an F4 simulator, where the G forces are simulated and full surround video is very realistic). But the XBOX 360 was still used.

I do agree that "consumer grade" was "commercial grade" in under a decade, however, but that doesn't always mean that "consumer grade" is good enough. Attack vectors are different and consistently changing and getting more sophisticated, "consumer grade" is not necessarily "good enough" in some applications. For enterprise class, mission critical systems "good enough" is not good enough.