"The US has NASA, Los Alamos, White Sands, Area-51, and all kinds of massive experience with science/industry and the types of invention and "productisation" of technology that comes from having huge deserts to play with expensive toys (rockets, weapons)." ... LHC? That is all.
While I don't disagree with this by any means, you are talking an incredibly specialized asset in the LHC. The difference is that Silicon Valley was not built to play with <particular> specialized assets, so much as it was built to <develop specialized assets> to play with in general. In that regards, it was built to make toys to put in 'the sandbox'. In this view, having a sandbox to play in is quite useful. Not only is it motivating, but its "open plan" facilitates a broad imagination for useful experiments. Rather than a single-framework of experiment designed for a singular and very specialized asset.
