What makes you so sure? See my previous comment here (with a link to the source) above in reply to "Silicon Valley" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124351

What makes you so sure? See my previous comment here (with a link to the source) above in reply to "Silicon Valley" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12435177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12435177). Basically, it all harks back to WWII and unlimited government spending on electronics (and related) R&D - financed based mostly on never before seen amounts of government debt. SV and all its firms stand on foundations laid by (very) big and (very) generous government. Investors ant at least statistical certainty, meaning while they of course account for most of their venture companies to fail they want to at least be certain for them all as a group. They won't finance a "business" that is just experimental with no advance idea what the whole thing is even about. Because such basic research isn't a business. I once worked for a startup that was eventually sold for a few hundred million (no I did not benefit from that). We got funded (by the tens of millions) - by Silicon Valley venture capital - because we were #2 in a market where the #1 just had an incredible IPO. We did exactly the same as the #1, and #1 also didn't actually do anything innovative, just a different version of what had already been in this world for decades, technology not all that superior to existing things, the changes were in the business model mostly. "Predictable" innovation. Here's an example: Imagine someone would try to get venture capital for a human-computer interface right into the brain. I'm taking about something out of a sci-fi movie, not based on the extremely basic steps we've thus far taken. Would they get funding? Never. It's tens of billions of investment and it's completely uncertain if it would take 10 or 100 years. This isn't a well-defined research project, this is very broad. Now imagine a serious threat to the United States - war, and not just one of those little ones abroad. Would the US government fund such a crazy idea? Sure, just like they've done many times. They will throw (non-existing) billions at this and at many other crazy ideas without asking for potential monetary return. While an investor wants a statistical chance that the overall portfolio has a positive monetary return, the government (at war) wants a statistical chance for a positive result - non-financial, not caring, actually expecting, that costs will by far exceed returns. If the stuff created in such an effort eventually creates businesses that's nice but not even part of the motivation. When they paid for the Manhattan project, the Norden bomb sight, or electronics and computing R&D they didn't stop to think about if that would ever create a financial return.