“WIN, WIN, WIN, WIN” - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 169

and technology ot en doesn't seem to be enough. If policymakers can
get people excited about the potential of clean energy and by doing
so mobilize new money to support innovation, it might have wide-
spread economic benei ts. Indeed, there's an important precedent for
this: national defense. Defense has long dominated federal research and
development spending. 64 Since 1976, it has never fallen below half of
federal R&D outlays, and as of 2009, it accounted for 58 percent of
total investment. 65 (Health, another politically potent category, took up
a further forty percent of the remaining share.) Careful scholars have
persuasively argued that without the motivation provided by a tangible
threat—the Soviet Union for much of the period in question—R&D
spending would never have been nearly this high. 66 h ere's lit le ques-
tion that the money spent would probably have done more for the
broader economy had it been budgeted with broader goals (rather than
just defense) in mind. But there's also a strong argument to be made
that, without defense concerns, the money wouldn't have been there
in the i rst place.
In principle, the same could ultimately be true for energy: if worries
about economics, security, and the environment prompt the govern-
ment to ef ectively spend more on innovation than it would otherwise,
this could benei t the U.S. economy far more broadly, just as spending
on defense technology has in the past. But bet ing on concern about
energy to get the government to invest more in innovation is a long
shot. For now, defense technology spending seems to be a far easier
path to boosting U.S. innovation. Indeed, energy technology enthusi-
asts regularly discuss the possibility of steering more defense money
toward energy, on the grounds that military demand for fuel is enor-
mous, and Pentagon R&D budgets are huge. Government spending on
energy innovation is unlikely to become as central as past spending on
defense, at least not anytime soon.

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But all of this is only one way of looking at prosperity. In the same
way that many contend boosting U.S. oil supplies and cut ing U.S. oil
demand would benei t the United States by keeping it out of foreign