> Also what kind of argument is "an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people"? my point is that, however you may feel about the NSA, you ar

> Also what kind of argument is "an intelligence agency that employs tens of thousands of people"? my point is that, however you may feel about the NSA, you are comparing the budget of an entire government agency to that of a single research project. ITER is (AFAIK) the largest fusion research project, but it isn't the entire field. furthermore, fusion is an important piece of the sustainable energy puzzle, but it seems an exaggeration to call it the singular key. I just don't see how this comparison makes sense. why not compare ITER against other research projects? I suspect it is because you know that $4 billion is already a huge budget for a single project, maybe not the largest ever, but among those. > You seem to be encouraging the largest possible and least efficient bureocracy. the only thing I am encouraging is a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison.