Nanotechnology: Science, Innovation, and Opportunity

Chapter 6. The Role of the U.S. Government in Nanoscale Science and Technology

Geoffrey M. Holdridge

One of the cornerstone principles of the United States, and of the free market system that has helped to make the United States one of the world’s richest countries, is that the central government should play only those roles that are both critical to the nation’s welfare and that private citizens, private industry, or state and local governments are either unable or unwilling to undertake. One role for the federal government that was envisioned from the start of the Republic by the framers of the U.S. Constitution was to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”^[1] This role was originally intended only for the protection of intellectual ...