> What is missing in much of the recent discussion about engaging with the Pentagon is the simple fact that there probably wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley as we kn

> What is missing in much of the recent discussion about engaging with the Pentagon is the simple fact that there probably wouldn’t be a Silicon Valley as we know it without government defense contracts. Times change. The DoD is not what it used to be, and neither is the technology being developed. When the DoD was funding SRI and Douglas Engelbart, as I understand it, that money was going to "basic research". So the money was flowing, and the researchers could go in whatever direction seemed the most promising. Now, the contracts are more specific, and what the DoD wants has transformed from something like "do what thou wilt" into "do what we say." The government nowadays is always trying to do "another manhattan project", but the trouble with that is that during the original manhattan project, our country had the moral high-ground -- because we were fighting actual nazis -- and that was the entire reason that the best and brightest minds of that generation were able to come together to work on the bomb. But anyone who, today, thinks that our country has the moral high-ground is either 1) closer in their thinking -- ideologically -- to the original nazis, or 2) they just stepped out of a time machine from the 1940s.