Carmack probably experienced a lot of government waste in aerospace. It's an industry that's long been dominated by subsidized government programs. On the other hand, Carmack should have experienced the dramatic development of the electronics industry, basically the break up of large electronics corporations into a vertically integrated semiconductor industry. Government had a huge role to play in that. The same thing needs to happen to the aerospace industry and other technology areas, e.g., health care, transportation, comm, etc..

One of the major reasons that the semiconductor and software industry took off is because of agencies like DARPA, where program managers are rotated (never permanent). If we continue to have careerists in charge then, unlike DARPA, we're bound to have inefficiencies develop. We would benefit from a reorganized government, where only small term-limited crack teams are kept in civil service and rotated to address gaps and challenges. This is how the Obamacare website was changed from a dysfunctional site being developed by a politically connected contractor selected/overseen by civil service to a more robust site developed by a volunteer crack team from SV. So, I disagree with Carmack in that it's possible to reformulate government to make it more effective and have government fund risks that private sector is unlikely to take due to short-term profit perspectives.

Despite the perceived waste in defense and other tech centers, I would guess the waste in the state department dwarfs everything. Not sure what to do about this area.