Dr. Ben Goertzel on technology: what the evidence says · JRE #1211
SUBJECT: TECHNOLOGY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
this is well known that like most of the technology inside a smartphone was funded by US government, a little by European government, GPS and the batteries and everything. And then companies scaled it up.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Goertzel's claim is mixed and component-dependent. GPS supports it closely: GPS.gov confirms it remains government-owned and operated (today by the U.S. Space Force) and that all GPS program funding comes from general U.S. tax revenues, with the Department of Defense holding primary budgetary and operational responsibility; GPS also originated as a DoD program in the 1970s, a widely documented history. The battery claim is weaker: the Department of Energy's own account confirms its Office of Science funded research stages for Stanley Whittingham and John Goodenough, but the foundational advances and commercialization were driven by private industry, not government funding, Whittingham's key innovation was patented by Exxon in 1976, and Sony released the first commercial lithium-ion battery in 1991 using a cathode from Goodenough's work and an anode developed by Akira Yoshino in Japan, with no government role in that step. So GPS is a well-supported example of government-funded technology later scaled by industry, while batteries are mixed: government research funding contributed to the underlying science, but private companies drove the actual invention and commercialization that made lithium-ion power smartphones. The broader claim that "most" smartphone technology was government-funded is not substantiated by these two examples alone and overgeneralizes.