The most important lesson of AMCs is that they make government a more active agent of invention, by identifying bottlenecks in public demand and filling them. “The US often makes financial commitments contingent on failure, like loan guarantees, which pay a lender in the event of a default,” said Thomas Kalil, the former deputy director for technology and innovation in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “But we don’t make enough financial commitments contingent on success, like a prize, or advance purchase order. Operation Warp Speed did it very successfully.”82 We should
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