Let me give you another example of why it is necessary to have basic science in order to make progress in technological areas.
Simply take computers. For 30 years we have been dealing with what's called Moore's law; that is, the capability of a computer doubles every 18 months, roughly. The reason that's been happening is because the scale of the structures on the silicon—and it has been essentially all silicon that you're dealing with—gets smaller every 18 months. You make them smaller, the distance between them is decreased, they are faster, and you are able to store more. That's essentially what's been happening in that technology.
Within the next 10 years, you will be in a situation where you have reached the size of the silicon atom. You cannot go any further with that particular technology in terms of what has been, really, one of the major revolutionary things that have changed our society over the last 30 years. You have to go to something that deals with things at the atomic level. You have to get into quantum and nano objects. And no one knows what the next technology is going to be that enables that computer progression to take place.
Who are the people capable of doing it? It's the people who understand quantum mechanics, the people who understand what happens when you get to the quantum level of interactions of things in various materials. It may be something different in a revolutionary way from silicon. But if you don't have that mix in your country of people who are capable of understanding how to exploit, given the basic knowledge, and the people who are pushing the basic knowledge, working together, you're not going to be able to make the sort of progress when you run up against those sorts of questions that are not just expanding the technology, they're expanding your understanding of how the world works.