[Editor’s note: Eric S. Lander is president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Eric E. Schmidt is the executive chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.]
For more than a half century, the United States has operated what might be called a “Miracle Machine.” Powered by federal investment in science and technology, the machine regularly churns out breathtaking advances.
The Miracle Machine has transformed the way we live and work, strengthened national defense and revolutionized medicine. It has birthed entire industries — organized around computers, biotechnology, energy and communications — creating millions of jobs. It’s the reason the United States is the global hub for the technologies of the future: self-driving cars, genome editing, artificial intelligence, cancer immunotherapy, quantum computers and more.
If the Trump administration and Congress want to ensure that the United States remains the most powerful nation in the world, they should embrace and support our Miracle Machine.
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While investing in basic research typically doesn’t make sense for a business, it has been a winning strategy for our nation. For 60 years, the federal government has invested roughly a penny on each dollar in the federal budget into research at universities and research centers. In turn, these institutions have produced a torrent of discoveries and trained generations of scientific talent, fueling new companies and spawning new jobs.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: America’s ‘Miracle Machine’ is in desperate need of, well, a miracle
