The Soviet Union’s stunning launch of Sputnik sixty years ago on October 4, 1957, was far more disturbing to our national psyche at the time than the threats we see today. It jolted America out of its technological complacency.

And America responded. We invested in a generation of scientists and engineers through the National Defense Education Act. And we created NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, to assure we were never surprised or surpassed by rival powers in space or by new technologies. Within 12 years we had landed on the moon, placed vital reconnaissance and scientific satellites into orbit, and began the IT revolution that grew from the Apollo era computers.