Literally every single sliver of technology that makes the iPhone a smartphone instead of a stupidphone - internet, GPS, touchscreen, battery, hard drive, voice recognition - was developed by researchers on the government payroll.
The Internet was developed in large part by U.S. government research funding to develop new communications networks, starting with a network created by the Department of Defense.
The really basic stuff that fuels 30-year job booms almost always comes from government research, stuff like biotech, the transistor, the Internet. The idea that private capital can handle the early spade work is a joke.
I started off at a local newspaper called 'The Middle East Times,' which is no longer in existence. I remember one of the earliest stories that I wrote for them was a study about domestic violence in Egypt from a government-run research institute think tank.
Government research has to go through peer review.
The most humble research scientist in the Department of Agriculture is at this time contributing more to this country than the most useful member of Congress.
It is false to suggest that medical breakthroughs come only through government research.
The Connection Machines owned by the United States government laboratories were made available to me because they were considered impossible to program and there was no great demand for them at that time.
The only study that the federal government has engaged in with a vengeance is in trying to see if they can make women fertile after menopause.
I was raised on technology. I grew up in Livermore, California, a town of physicists and cowboys. My parents worked at the government laboratories there. So technology was very normal for me.
Many of the libertarian entrepreneurs who only want the government to leave them alone have simply forgotten how important government research, public education, and immigration policy are to Silicon Valley's long-term success.
