> Bush’s pivotal contribution was his creation of the “research contract,” whereby public funds are awarded to civilian scientists and engineers based on effort, not just outcomes (as had been normal before World War II). This freedom to try new things and take risks transformed relations between government, business, and academia. By the end of the war, Bush’s research organization was spending US $3 million a week (about $52 million in today’s dollars) on some 6,000 researchers, most of them university professors and corporate engineers.
I wish I could see a lot more parallels to this. Right now the only thing that jumps to mind is the NLNet grants.
There's a huge parallel to this mentioned in the next paragraph of the article. The 'research contract' is the foundational element of the National Science Foundation (which Bush brought into being) and is a core funding source for science in the U.S. ($9 billion last year).
I wish I could see a lot more parallels to this. Right now the only thing that jumps to mind is the NLNet grants.
The recent round of 45 NGI Zero grants was announced just yesterday, https://nlnet.nl/news/2024/20240618-Call-announcement.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720037 . But in general, if I'm looking for something inspiring or hopeful, I'll often see what NLNet sponsored folks have been up to; https://hn.algolia.com/?query=nlnet&sort=byDate