We created the whole artificial intelligence community and funded it. And we created the computer science world. When we started [IPTO, the Information Processing Techniques Office], there were no computer science departments or computer science professionals in the world. None.

I'm not sure one could start the old ARPA nowadays. It would be illegal, perhaps. We now live under tight controls by many people who don't understand much about substance.

People that you have to persuade [to build up big things] are too busy, don't know enough about the subject and are highly risk-averse. When President Eisenhower said, "You, Department X, will do Y," they'd salute and say, "Yes, sir." Now they say, "We'll get back to you." I blame Congress for a good part of it. And agency heads are all wishy-washy. What's missing is leadership that understands what it is doing.
We are becoming incapable of handling a technology challenge of any major magnitude. We are losing the ability to do big, complicated things.

What's missing is leadership that understands what it is doing. The whole thing is just off the rails.

Charles M. Herzfeld, a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va., fifth director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1961, which was later renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and director of Defense Research & Engineering from 1990 to 1991, in a ComputerWorld interview. (Source)