I heard the whole speach. In light of the bulk of comments in this discussion, I find it a bit ironic that the entire emphasis of the speach was to explain, with specific examples, how significant advances in technology across the board arise from and depend on basic research, and more importantly, that the general public does not understand/believe this.

Simply stated, the private sector cannot afford to make long term reaseach investments, for obvious reasons. It's the long-term, less-structured forays into new science that drive technology in new directions. The resistance to validating these claims stems from the misconception is that publicly-funded research is not subject to productivity quota or quality control, which could not be further from the truth.