The military spending has been long gone out of control. Funding of actually useful civilian projects lacks money. Instead DARPA invests into more weapons. We have already enough weapons.
Consider that the US economy is $15 trillion. The US handbag market is bigger than DARPA's budget.
http://www.prweb.com/releases/handbags/leather_handbags/prwe...
How can we get more people to invest in science and engineering research? Hopefully, KickStarter and Petridish will eventualy lead to a boom in consumer funded science research.