American technology -- just like its foreign policy, domestic politics, and popular culture -- has been swept up into what Presi­dent George W. Bush calls "the global war on terror." The U.S. R&D establishment has narrowed its interests in the years since September 11, 2001, concentrating its resources on technologies that provide security: weapons systems, defenses against biological weapons, biometrics, network security. The U.S. government's research-and-development budget is now bluntly militaristic. In fiscal year 2005, federal R&D spending rose 4.8 percent to $132.2 billion, but 80 percent of that increase went to defense research. And most of that increase is committed to the development of new weaponry, like the ­ballistic-missile defense system. In all, the government will spend 57 percent of its R&D budget for 2005, or a record $75 billion, on defense-related projects. President Bush's proposed 2006 budget, now being debated in Congress, would introduce cuts to many civilian programs but spend an additional $600 million on defense research.

The Department of Homeland Security is particularly flush: its 2005 R&D budget increased 20 percent from the previous year. In 2005, the new Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA) received $300 million. But the administration plans to give the agency an extraordinary $1 billion in 2006. HSARPA is concentrating on late-stage technologies that the government could procure in only three to five years. But according to Lita Nelsen, director of MIT's Technology Licensing Office, such a near-term focus is "robbing from the future, because that's not basic, curiosity-driven research."