Government should choose the game not the winners
Concentration decisions, to invest in alternative energy or not, to invest in biosciences or not, to invest in computational and network infrastructure or not, are essential choices a nation must make.
Public sector leaders, with the counsel and cooperation of private sector experts, can and must choose a game to invest in and then let the evolutionary pressures of market competition determine who wins within that game.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), NIH (National Institutes of Health), and other effective government entities pick games. They issue gan challenges. They catalyze the formation of markets, and use public capital to leverage private capital. To refuse to make such game-level choices is to refuse to have a strategy, and is as dangerous in economic life as it would be in military operations. A nation can't "drift" to leadership. A strong public hand is needed in a particular direction.