[benbataille]

Most people are completely unaware of what CS researchers are doing in France because they don't work on things which the public finds ultra-sexy. Most of what they do and are good at has direct industrial application.

They made some pretty interesting things in type theory, language design (OCaml), proof (Coq), static analysis and certification (B-method, Frama-C, CompCert).

All of these is useful if you want to do safe embedded softwares for your planes, flight control softwares, automatic metros or nuclear reactor monitoring systems (which they do) but it isn't really easy to explain to the general public.

There is also a supposedly quite strong numerical modelling group working on nuclear deterrence but most of this stuff is classified. Let's also not forget that France still is a major arm dealer so you have some R&D done by private defence companies. Nothing comparable to the USA but you still apparently have some development in targeting, surveillance and interception (well, France has a world covering array network, I hope they at least try to use it).

Now, there is nothing particularly exceptional here. The situation is mostly the same in all publicly founded laboratories around the world. What France doesn't have very much is people doing frivolous stuff like email sorting or social network aka start-ups but that's another problem.