If such a project happened today, academic scientists would be trying to figure out ways to bend their existing research to match the grants. Then it would take another 30 years before people started to ask why nothing has been delivered yet.
It was a massive government-directed military project in wartime that was able to recruit all the top theoretical physicists at the time around a common aim in an urgent technological arms race to build the bomb. It included a vast effort of army engineers to build the facilities to process the fuel and so on. I'm not seeing the parallels with startups.
They built a gosh darned city... oh wait, I was wrong, they built three. It was run like an extremely high-value military project, which is exactly what it was. Sure it was more theoretical than other military projects(at the time), but that is the game sometimes.
I get the sense that some folks just think "faster then we would do it now" is the same as startup. Which, to put it politely, I strongly disagree with. Startups are great and I am grateful for the daily value adds to my life, but pretending everything "fast" has startup mentality is just missing the mark.
There was a hook to get the funding (easy to get weapons funding in wartime). Recruiting the top talent. Urgency (beat everybody else to the punch). Outsourcing the building of infrastructure while you focus on the unique/hard part.
I'm not seeing how you can't see the parallels with startups.
The GP suggested that a reason for the success of the Manhattan project was that it was run like a startup, whereas it seems more illuminating to point out that it was a massively funded military project in wartime. I was curious if there was some more specific rationale for the startup comparison
No serious person can argue this being plausible today. Sam Altman will drop 10B at a blink of an eye if it means unblocking a major problem for OpenAI.
The government spends 10x that all of the time without anything impressive to speak of since the moon landing.
It's also really odd to me that you claim Sam Altman can do more impressive things with 10 billion than some government. I mean, have you seen a public transit system? A sewer system? A dam? Sam Altman could hand code a true AGI tomorrow and people would still need to flush their poop.
It's also worth noting that without the government there is no economic system that allows for startup investments, nor does the USD really have any value.
Huh? Decision was made by the president Roosevelt, advised by government agencies and even Albert einstein.
This is like top-down, command economy with elements of technocracy. There are no investors, no markets, etc.
Run directly by the government employees, and directly hiring the nessesary people to work for the government. today we would call that socialist or some such, opposite of startup?
> If such a project happened today, academic scientists would be trying to figure out ways to bend their existing research to match the grants
You missed important step- such a project today would start by the government handing out grants, stimulus and tax breaks. If they directly hired the nessesary people, there would be no fighting for grants. People do what incentives demand