China focuses on applied tech much more than the US

Emily … Nate [Picarsic], my colleague, and I had these massive databases of Chinese science and technology resource allocations (i.e., funding) and prizes given out for advances in science and technology. Throughout all of these, we saw a tremendous imbalance between on applications as opposed to basic research––something that was entirely at odds with what would be the equivalent in the U.S. system…

 

Jordan: Is Chuck Schumer pouring a hundred billion dollars down the drain, trying to boost National Science Foundation funding to do this sort of basic research, only for it to show up in Chinese companies two to three years later?

 

Emily: Yes, that’s what we’ve seen, and that’s the crazy thing: the U.S. says there is this contest and we need to invest in science and technology because we’re competing against China. But what they don’t ask is “how does China compete” or “what are our resources actually going to fuel, now that we’re benchmarking against a competitor” or “are they in fact just going to fuel our competitor?”

That was from Jordan’s great ChinaTalk newsletter, “China’s True Tech Ambitions.” I’ve argued before that DARPA spends too much funding on basic research as opposed to applied or prototyping. I believe this is due to the “valley of death,” that it’s not in their interest to do applied work when there’s little chance of it scaling into a major acquisition program.