Craig Barrett, former CEO of Intel, delivered perhaps the most stinging indictment of the current political system. “There will be winners and losers, and the losers are the ones who insist on looking backwards,” said Barrett. “We continue to subsidize 19th century technology–like in the $290 billion farm bill–rather than the 21st century technologies that will allow us to remain competitive. We’re fat, dumb, and happy.”
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hefty increases at three science agencies–the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Last summer, legislation that incorporates many of those recommendations became law. But funding for most of the initiatives has yet to materialize.
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Speakers repeatedly pointed to those anemic budgets as evidence that politicians haven’t realized the threats to American preeminence in science posed by the rest of the world.