No one will get funded with that mentality in such a high-risk high-reward area like fusion. But indeed after so many headlines I agree with you that no one gets excited about these news anymore.
I'm not really sure about that. The promise of fusion power is so great that it would be idiotic not to throw money at it.
The US was spending a billion a week in the Afghanistan war.
You just gave a great example of the irrationality of how things are funded. Idiotic things get cash thrown at them, National healthcare rests on the sidelines.
I think it matters on perspective. That funding might be considered rational if you were a congressperson who have a vested interest in certain lobbies. Not saying it's necessary moral or optimizing for the right thing for society as a whole, but it may be rational.
Yeah, but that helped out a lot of US companies that have significant lobbying backing and districts where those companies are located. Similar to how some NASA things get funded.
The outcome itself is not nearly enough, if it even matters (see Afghanistan, it's not like the outcome was a surprise): What needs to happen is that the money river* needs to flow through areas that have influential congress(wo)men and senators who benefit both financially (campaign contributions) and politically (good headlines, get something they can use in deals, etc.).
This is for anything where the outcomes are far away and/or uncertain. In those cases the money flow itself becomes the actual target. It is something concrete, with impact right away, compared to those types of goals.
A politician will probably support military spending in case the homeland is actually really threatened, but when it's not it's all about the benefits not of the military equipment for the troops, which are questionable (even when it works, do they actually need it?), but the benefits of the spending itself, pretty much disregarding the final products.
Example Afghanistan, which at first glance seems to fit my claim less than military spending for hardware:
> One-third to half of that sum went to contractors, with five defense companies— Lockheed Martin Corp. , Boeing Co. , General Dynamics Corp. , Raytheon Technologies Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. —taking the lion’s share, $2.1 trillion, for weapons, supplies and other services
Well, it's not like the US would pay someone else to develop NASA's missions, would they? Part of the point of NASA is to keep aerospace expertise thriving, (I'd argue one of the primary goals, in fact), by answering really challenging science questions. You're right in letter, but off in spirit by comparing it to war profiteering.
Just imagine where we'd be if the US had a similar "Focus here" initiative for semiconductors since the 1960s.
I would like to emphasize, since I did not already do so, that I make no value judgment. It is the public that does not want the US government to do "socialism", but there seems to be a real need for it so politicians do it through the back door. How well that works is another matter. It's not wrong for politicians to pay attention to try to keep jobs, or to keep certain industries alive for which there only is infrequent real need, which the short-term business management outlook would leave rotting.
I think independent of how well it works, or how terrible, to me it's an example of the "life finds a way" meme. Some great need exists, but also some great constraints, and a large amount of irrationality, so the outcome is what it is.
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> Just imagine where we'd be if the US had a similar "Focus here" initiative for semiconductors since the 1960s.
> Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and wartime urgency.
> In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was forever changed when the Defense Department, CIA and the National Security Agency acted like today's venture capitalists funding this first wave of entrepreneurship.
My very limited exposure to the EU research funding world suggests that it is customary (at least in applied CS) to massively overstate the potential benefits and scope of your project, and it is understood/accepted that you will backtrack when reporting progress (or even already in the detailed description of what work will be done). Unfortunate, but it probably means that your comment is valid.
