also, tax carbon emissions

The national electric grid(s) are remarkably reliable, given their ad-hoc architecture, but there is massive room for efficiency improvements. Support changes to local power provider rate schedules that link utility profits to aggregate demand reduction. Give regional RTOs, and the govt owned BPA and TVA, more tariff flexibility, but grade them on avg wholesale energy and transmission costs.

This shift is beginning to take place in DoD software already as every level of the command hierarchy is expected to do more with less. Multi-year billion-plus contracts to huge defense contracts have unacceptable levels of failure. Place sensible guidelines on new contract ceilings, make it easier to create funding vehicles, and give preference to fixed cost / IDIQ over Time & Materials.

DARPA is still funding research into next-gen software (semantic web, artificial intelligence) hardware (self-healing chips) and networks (cognitive radio). The most valuable change a new administration could make would be to replace the politically appointed head of DARPA, who the project managers report to (PMs control the purse strings) with a SMALL bipartisan committee along the FCC model.