Darpa officials acknowledged for the first time a shift in focus. They revealed that within a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose slightly from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million last year, the portion going to university researchers has fallen from $214 million to $123 million.
Not my problem. I only use DARPA products all the time (slightly less when I am asleep). But hey Al Gore claimed he invented the internet so it's OK.
Seriously, I wonder how many people who work at DARPA or do research financed by DARPA voted for Bush in 2000, because they didn't mind that Bush assumed (correctly) that he could make a joke about his opponents support for their work. Any second thoughts guys and gals ?
I think that DARPA is (was?) one of the critical engines of world economic growth. I think that the present value of the lost economic growth due to this change in focus is more likely to be in the trillions than in the hundreds of billions. Maybe I'm wrong by a factor of one hundred or so, but this is certainly aweful news. I think part of the problem is that the Bush administration refuses to admit that the public sector might have a useful role in wealth creation, so they can't admit that blue sky research financed by DARPA is useful.
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