For the past few decades, the eureka myth has walked hand in hand with another attractive fable: that the US government is helpless as an investor in new technologies. One useful summary of this view came from a 2012 Economist essay, which claimed “governments have always been lousy at picking winners, and they are likely to become more so, as legions of entrepreneurs and tinkerers swap designs online [and] turn them into products.” This dual image—the state, as a lazy slowpoke, versus the market, as the self-sufficient45 dynamo of innovation—bears little resemblance to history.
