Nyquist, Bode, Shannon, etc. didn’t need an A bomb to advance their research which is the bedrock of the digital control systems that microcomputers are.
As it is, if our researchers are spending almost all their time thinking about and doing things other than research, what do we expect?
On a tangent, software industry has a bit of similar problem, with the best developers being forced to enter management roles[0] instead of solving technical problems. That is, a developer progresses from doing shoddy work to doing mediocre work and then, just as they start doing high-quality work, they get told to manage a new cohort of juniors doing shoddy work instead. I wonder if that's why so much software is hot garbage these days.
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[0] - Whether proper ones on management path, or "fake" ones like principal developer, where you get all the managerial responsibilities with none of the authority.