It is absolutely possible to earmark government funding and arguments to the contrary are cynical at best and deceptive at worst.

You can offset internal Rd investment with gov money and use that elsewhere, sure, but when the magnitudes are large and immediate, that doesn't play. You get one check, and it better be spent on the intended cause in X fiscal years or you pay it back.

The tech community has suffered under the Cost Plus and other workaround bullshit for long enough that the cynicism is inbred. But there's plenty of gov funded RD money that does precisely what it was invested to do.

There’s no cynicism about it (not that cynicism would be intrinsically something bad, but that’s another discussion), but that’s the thing, the Government saying and actually checking that X sum is spent by a certain company on objective Y doesn’t make any sense, because once the X sum of money enters the company’s coffers its “substance” changes, it isn’t “X” anymore, it is “drowned” in the anonymity of said company’s available (or achievable) funds (funding). Again, I have no doubts that the Government will actually check that the money marked as “Z”, money which had been given to said company, is actually spent on objective Y, but it’s all illusory, because that money has stopped “being” Z once it entered the company’s accounts.

To put it another way, it’s similar to the futility of those well-meaning people who give some homeless person $5 on the express condition that they spend those $5 on food, not on alcohol or drugs. Which said homeless person is all too happy to do, he/she will gladly spend those gifted $5 on food, which leaves the other hipotethical $5 which he/she had in their pocket all available for buying drugs or alcohol, money which otherwise would have been spent probably half and half (2.50 on food, 2.50 on drugs).

At least in the counter-example I gave the result of largesse is a homeless person better fed, which is good (and also more intoxicated, which is not so good), but in this example with Intel you have taxpayers filling the pockets of one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

is this spoken from experience or assumption? Your examples sound like you are assuming that money sent to companies is sent like a check, and no further action is taken.

I cannot claim authority over all instances of gov funding, but I have managed funds from the government for Rd use and they absolutely do audit, and they absolutely do require an accounting down to the last penny, and they absolutely do review plans vs actions. And they absolutely do get refunds for money not spent. And, critically, they absolutely do shutdown follow on funding if they do not like what they see.