Moore’s Law, which posits that the number of transistors on a microchip will double every two years, is not, strictly speaking, a scientific law at all. It is not immutable. It is reliant on intellectual capital. And as, Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson show in their new book Jump-Starting America: How Breakthrough Science Can Revive Economic Growth and the American Dream, it is reliant above all on the financing and underwriting of that capital—which the U.S. government used to do in a substantial and serious way, and which the authors argue it must do again.
