“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair

Interestingly, one of your examples, genomics, is exactly contradicted by Celera. At the time of inception the human genome project was slated to take 20 years! (We'd only be halfway done with it now). Say what you want about their idiotic and immoral business model - patenting and licensing human genes - the "private arm" of the human genomics project pushed for shotgun sequencing and got the genome sequenced in 3 years; and the hapmap shortly thereafter.

The "idiotic and immoral business model" is seriously not cool though. Clinton banned patenting human genes directly, which might make pure capitalists cross.

The author met that they've benefited in the sense that we all have benefited.

I very much doubt that there are many people in the world who have directly benefited (i.e., received grants from) all of NASA, the NIH, and DARPA.

For bonus points, try to do your job today without making use of federally-bootstrapped technology.

edit: also, Fede_V's sibling comment is spot-on.

Did what?

If you're asking if the federal government has wasted a lot of my money on things I don't like: sure they have. First, that's not the topic at hand, and second, private ventures also waste fortunes on stupid things, and sometimes with my money e.g. pension funds.

NASA and the NIH are explicitly research-focused. And DARPA may be part of DOD, but its charter is right in the name -- advanced research.