Emphatically not in global terms, but probably so in the United States. Diffuse national priorities since 2000 have misallocated academic research, corporate R

Emphatically not in global terms, but probably so in the United States. Diffuse national priorities since 2000 have misallocated academic research, corporate R&D and government investment from hard-science to social science. Also, the inverse relationship between the "financialization" of the US economy & the decline of applied science innovation is stunning. By way of example, applied sciences have lost a lot of talent to fintech jobs. Similarly, the US-Russia cold war, for all its many downsides, did drive applied research. 20 years or so of low-intensity conflict in the ME wasted vast amounts of capital on logistics, munitions and purchased alliances that would have otherwise found its way to various DOD research programs.