Hardware/Physical innovation also takes 20 years delay "lab to fab" - you can't cheat it or speed it up. It simply takes time.
And more importantly: if you don't continuously (not continually) fund that 20 years of work (financially, human effort, etc.), the delay goes to infinity.
In general, that "pipeline" has emptied out in the US as manufacturing was outsourced overseas. And so anything you start today merely starts the 20 year clock but if and only if you have the infrastructure in place to support it.
Hardware/Physical innovation also takes 20 years delay "lab to fab" - you can't cheat it or speed it up. It simply takes time.
And more importantly: if you don't continuously (not continually) fund that 20 years of work (financially, human effort, etc.), the delay goes to infinity.
In general, that "pipeline" has emptied out in the US as manufacturing was outsourced overseas. And so anything you start today merely starts the 20 year clock but if and only if you have the infrastructure in place to support it.