I think people are missing the point of this comment. The US invested heavily in BD, and now BD is being incorporated into a South Korean company rather than a US company.
I presume this is mostly because US manufacturing industry is relatively dead so capex for potential automation gains don't make sense for US firms.
The perception that US manufacturing is dead is mostly just perception, if you look at the actual numbers.
Before the big dip caused by covid, the value of US manufacturing output had never been higher. [1]
Even in inflation adjusted/real value terms, US manufacturing output is 50% higher today than it was 30 years ago.
My guess is that the perception is cause by a few factors:
- fewer people are employed in manufacturing than were in the past because of improved manufacturing technology/productivity
- other sectors of the US economy have grown at a faster rate than manufacturing (tech for example) which means manufacturing represents a smaller share of a bigger pie
- the US is no longer number 1 in the world as China surpassed the US about 10 years ago. But the US still manufactures more than Germany, Japan and South Korea combined, for example.
The legal landscape in the U.S. may be harder to navigate, labor laws more strict, and salaries necessarily higher. This all makes it hard for U.S. manufacturing to compete on production of commodities.
Like many of the EU industries, viable U.S. industries tends to produce and export unique things with relatively small physical volume: complex chips, complex chemical compounds (like medicines), precision mechanics, high-performance agricultural equipment, aircraft, spacecraft, etc. Of course the U.S. does produce higher-volume things, too, from cars to foods to fuels, but these are more for domestic consumption, and often face competition from imported goods even domestically.
Not to mention land prices mean salaries need to be higher for the workers to afford rent/mortgages, facilities more expensive, higher property taxes, even ancillary purchases are more expensive.
What if we opened up immigration and built factories in middle America?
Provide path to citizenship and education opportunities for children of immigrants, but host all manufacturing domestically at rates comparable to overseas facilities. Beat them on opportunity and subsidize workplace safety and vacation.
Provide tax incentives or transferable/sellable credits. We could even federally purchase the land and provide no-cost ground lease.
Dollars to dollars, this would make way more sense than extending Amtrak. It'd also stop population decline and create a next generation of American consumer.
I believe DARPA is a national treasure, and has driven a ton of otherwise neglected innovation, but let's not overstate their contribution to Moderna. For exsmple, AstraZeneca did a deal with Moderna including a $240MM upfront to another $180MM for potential milestones six months before the DARPA money. That is all on top of a pile of venture money and other corporate deals over those few years. The value of the DARPA $25MM wasn't the money per se, it was the incentive for Moderna to keep a toe in infectious disease, which was a hobby for them (and the industry) at best before COVID. I believe the platform would have been established with or without the DARPA money.
>For exsmple, AstraZeneca did a deal with Moderna including a $240MM upfront to another $180MM for potential milestones six months before the DARPA money.
This is called "biobucks" in the industry. There's an incentive to close big deals for management and business types in biotech, so they love to craft these large headlines to drop it on their resume and grift at another big pharma.
I'd be surprised if they ever received the $180MM, although $240MM upfront is really impressive.
I think "grift" is a bit cynical. I agree the 'biobucks' concept largely exits, but it also good deal-making. A huge upfront is 100% risk on the buyer. Paying out incrementally for accomplishments is common and good business sense risk-sharing and should happen in almost any industry.
The larger point is that Moderna was flush with cash for years before COVID, and the DARPA money wasn't that 'crazy' of an investment, or essential to Moderna's progress.
Not everything DARPA does is going to be a hit. Don't forget they're responsible for virtually all of the funding that helped build the myriad technologies that comprise the Internet.
I don't know where to even look for this, but it would be interesting to see if the DARPA investment bought them a perpetual, irrevocable license to technologies they funded.
