It's not just research published in journals. Siri was largely developed by the government, for example. There's a lot of tech transfer. The people who work on

It's not just research published in journals. Siri was largely developed by the government, for example. There's a lot of tech transfer. The people who work on these projects with taxpayer funds go on to start U.S. companies or work for them. The U.S. also spends billions on procurement that's only for nascent U.S. companies while they bring tech to market. The claim wasn't that SV tech is successful because hiring is easy. The tenure system shows that easy firing isn't essential to successful tech innovation.