I said FYI because it was not my main point.

And carbon fiber also a had huge amount of development from commercial companies to drive it into 100s of applications. The total amount of investment in carbon fiber is dwarfed 100-1000x compared to government investment. Both are required to actually drive a technology forward consistently.

> the original claim that scientific and engineering progress depends on current US levels of inequality just doesn't fit the history

I don't think that was the claim.