"Think about where most breakthrough technologies actually come from. Not from some genius in a garage (though that’s a nice story). They come from decades of basic research funded by institutions that operate independently of political pressure. The internet you’re using to read this? That was DARPA. The GPS in your phone? Military research. The algorithms powering AI? University research.

Here’s how the ecosystem actually works: government funds basic research that has no obvious commercial application. Universities and research institutions build on that work, training graduate students who become the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs. Some of those students go on to start companies that turn basic research into products. Others stay in academia and continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Yes, eventually the private markets and companies take over the commercialization, but so much of the core infrastructure of innovation comes from elsewhere.

And none of this happens overnight. The internet took decades to go from ARPANET to the web. GPS took years of satellite launches and signal processing advances. The machine learning techniques powering today’s AI boom are built on decades of research in statistics, computer science, and neuroscience."