Eric S. Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University with Eric E. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet (parent company of Google), recently argued that America’s research funding is the key to jump-starting the U.S. miracle machine:

For more than a half century, the United States has operated what might be called a “Miracle Machine.” Powered by federal investment in science and technology, the machine regularly churns out breathtaking advances.

 The Miracle Machine has transformed the way we live and work, strengthened national defense and revolutionized medicine. It has birthed entire industries — organized around computers, biotechnology, energy and communications — creating millions of jobs. It’s the reason the United States is the global hub for the technologies of the future: self-driving cars, genome editing, artificial intelligence, cancer immunotherapy, quantum computers and more.

Our machine is the envy of the world. And yet, while other nations, such as China, are working furiously to develop their own Miracle Machines, we’ve been neglecting ours.

Read more: America’s ‘Miracle Machine’ is in desperate need of, well, a miracle