No, but YOU are succeeding.

And he would be correct to do so

Bingo! There you go, sounding like an idiot and proving my point.

Getting something into the shop for people to buy is deployment. Deployment is how science started. Look up Archimedes, because he was the guy who started math and physics, building siege engines to defeat the Roman navy. Oh yeah, and medicine and biology started with Imhotep and also the Sassanid hospital system.

This crap ideology you are pushing only came about relatively recently, and I don't remember anyone asking the taxpayers about it.

Something that only exists on paper is no good to anyone, especially since it hasn't been tested so it is not known what it's true costs are and whether the assumptions behind it are even valid. The only reason for pure theory to even be allowed to exist is because it might lead to application in future, but science has become so corrupt that the dominating majority of the "scientific" output is stupid theory, and actual application gets no respect at all, or as you say "is not the job of academia".

The corruption has gone even further, because there used to be a division between scientific fields and engineering fields, where engineering specifically meant application. But now you can get the same "That's not SCIENCE" bullshit from Professors even if you're in the engineering department.

I'll give you one of many concrete examples. Design for manufacture for antennas could really help improve wireless internet, if you could get handset antennas to narrowcast data instead of broadcasting it, thereby avoiding interference. Try pitching that to a Professor and you'll get shot down.

Next, try AI-based packet scheduling and collision prediction for wireless handsets. The topic is a complete fraud, because you have no idea when the other handset is going to transmit without knowing the future. But you can get lots of Greek squiggles out of that topic, so you'll get greenlighted.

and often times the top level academics

So if there's a problem with academics it's because they're not top level academics, and somehow only the tiny percentage who are top level count... You love your No True Scotsman fallacies, don't you?