Comment 24 by All About Meme

:o)

My post was in no way an endorsement of the culture of Livermore, it was just an example of defence spending driving technology forwards.

Although, being European, I would suggest that finding a car-park empty at 7.45 am and again at 6pm does not necessarily mean people are lazy, or is a bad thing. The general work culture in the USA is not something I would vigoursly defend. Livermore's attidue to work-life balance may not be wasteful in the long term.

"Nepotism, cliques, backstabbing and turf wars in every department" is not so good though.

As for people nearly retiring and phoning it in, i think that may be due to the fact that getting top quality health-care and other benefits post retirement seems to be so difficult in the USA, therefore people feel they must stay in the workplace longer.

some of the technology they produce -- including the supercomputer you cited, is cutting-edge

Thanks for agreeing, that's why i used that example to make my point.

The defense industry, by and large, is merely a form of corporate welfare

There are very good arguments for that point of view, but isn't it similar to funding "big science"?

Perhaps we are going off topic now? But the culture of big labs producing the "big science" is probably not too far, and certainly if the public deems these labs to be institutionally lazy and wasteful they will struggle to recieve the funding they desire.