The U.S. military is no longer the dominant launch or lead user. In today's context, government policy toward resources needs to focus not on physical investment or the cost of capital but on basic research and on human resources. But there are potential weaknesses to be found in the funding of basic research and in American education. Today's high technology is not the work of self-taught tinkers. Clever engineers working in family garages stand on the shoulders of fundamental, formal, largely academic scientists who created the enormous body of research and development on which the E-conomy rests.
Basic research creates the next technological frontiers.
Yet companies disciplined by modern capital markets simply cannot do basic research on the scale we need. Because it is next to impossible to keep fundamental results and principles the intellectual property of a single organization, basic research doesn't help the bottom line. Though it may be difficult to imagine, we may be only at the beginning of the technological revolution that is propelling our economic transformation. The growth of the E-conomy requires human expertise and talent to develop, apply, and use new frontier technologies at three levels. First, it requires highly-trained and brilliant research and development engineers.