I'm talking about the larger industrial policy. In the 1980s and 1980s, Virginia pursued a very similar approach as California had in the 1960s and 1970s: it invested in transportation and education while maintaining a low-tax, business-friendly environment. For example, the state created GMU as an independent university in northern VA in 1972, and created TJ as a STEM high school in 1986. Virginia Tech expanded graduate engineering programs into the Northern VA campus in the 1990s. GMU and Virginia Tech aren't Stanford, but both are R1 Research Universities, and the tech industry, especially on the government side, was far less snobby about degree prestige back then. Like California, Virginia focused on attracting government research labs and affiliated entities like defense contractors (MITRE, SAIC, etc., were there long before Google). Finally, the Dulles Tech Corridor grew for largely similar reasons as Silicon Valley when it first started. There was plenty of cheap formerly agricultural land that was largely unregulated, but easily accessible thanks to the newly-built Dulles Toll Road. Good for building things like data centers.