[Geojim]

Don't be evil? Kind of hard to build robots to help kill people and spruik this motto at the same time. I don't buy the money pit argument, rarely been Google's sole yardstick.

Kicker is in the US, government funded research is primarily through defense spending. If you're going to turn your nose up at that, you're on a long expensive path to monetisation in this space.

[forapurpose]

> Kicker is in the US, government funded research is primarily through defense spending

Agreed. There are serious consequences to shifting government spending to mostly defense and reducing everything else. Also, it creates a large group with vested interests in continued and increasing defense spending, which includes favoring use of the military over other tools of state power.