Taxpayers in 1970's may have thought of internet as "a waste of money" or just a novelty. Same with taxpayers in 2005 with DARPA challenge for self driving cars

Taxpayers in 1970's may have thought of internet as "a waste of money" or just a novelty. Same with taxpayers in 2005 with DARPA challenge for self driving cars. Sometimes, you need government level entity to truly move the needle on technology and private sector is simply too short-term oriented[1] or too risk-averse[2] to take on meaningful challenges like moon landing or atom bomb. [1] VC funds have a life-cycle of only 10 years. Internet evolution was a 2-3 decades process. [2] Government can write off a loss of 5-10B. I can't think of any private sector entity with that kind of risk tolerance.