Short answer: You are correct. Nitpick: Yes, the Manhattan Project got far more money and people than ITER. But: - ITER is merely one of >100 fusion power

Short answer: You are correct. Nitpick: Yes, the Manhattan Project got far more money and people than ITER. But: - ITER is merely one of >100 fusion power experiments - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fusion_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fusion_experiments - Cost/time trade-offs are not linear. The MP's war-priority timeline created enormous inefficiencies. Vs. fusion power research has been going for ~7 decades now. If you add up the budgets of the >100 experiments, over 70 years - then what's the comparison?