[cscheid]

Interesting that you bring up WWII. There's a theory that says that US's big research funding agencies are deliberately set up the way that they are because the US government freaked the _fuck_ out upon realizing that a bunch of nerds could go from zero to nuclear bombs in ~10 years. So, these big bureaucracies were set up to, in effect, keep tabs on physicists. (I first heard of this from a talk from Kim Stanley Robinson of Red Mars fame, and more recently Ministry for the Future. It's on YouTube somewhere but it's a bit hard to find, it was a seminar he gave at Duke University some 15 years ago.)

Then, some 35 years later came the Bayh-Dole act, which however well-meaning it might have been, really provided the incentives for universities to turn into fed money capturing enterprises. The rest is history.

[gumby]

You don’t need a conspiracy theory — Compton and especially Conant were clear about the model they wanted to set up and why. It was well documented in memos, planning, and position papers.

This was before the Manhattan project was authorized.