... The marketing types at Intel were probably jumping on the Ada bandwagon when they finally had silicon, but if you read Intel's own docs, the relationship (or hype) is there.

I won't debate that point. It may very well be so and is not worth researching just now.

And yes, Ada has been a market failure.

Hmm ... I suppose one could say things like Lear Jets, Mercedes Benz autos and fancy yachts are market failures in the same sense. They do things out of the ordinary and require a deep pocket. (Of Ada, this is true of pre-1995 compilers and still true if one wants support, special features or just a validated (certified) compiler.

It is used in military applications because the government has dictated its use.

Not since 1995 or 1996. The US DoD did not extend the Ada mandate and in fact closed the AJPO in 1996. To repeat part of my original post, Ada has been in extensive use worldwide for aeronautics and astronautics (in fact my current knowledge is that every current airframe (civilian or military) runs on code written in Ada). The Paris Metro and part of the NYC Subway system runs on Ada code.

In the vast majority of commercial markets, where there is a choice of development languages, it is hardly ever used.

This may still be true, but I expect it to change. Ada-95 is eminently suited for general commercial development as well as systems programs and since GNU Ada has been available there are less stats available on market share than there are on Linux deployment.

To the best of my knowledge, Ada is being taught as a first programming language in some 200+ universities around the world, including in the US Military Academies.

That isn't to say, it doesn't have some clever and/or valuable features, ...

It's only the most readable modern language and the one that is most likely to catch programmer errors at compile-time. These two factors alone make it the most cost-effective language to use for any project of substantial size, and for any type of project from writing commercial off-the-shelf apps (short time-to-market) to software that will live for decades (high maintainability), including system apps (like an operating system).

Speaking of which, I am in the first stages of designing a new OS (*nix-like) in Ada targeted to Intel/AMD architecture processors. I expect to make an announcement here when there is more in writing, but anyone that wants to discuss it or work on it from the first may reach me at toolmakr at buzco dot nyct.net.