Sandia is not in house government, it is an FFRDC or federally funded research and development center, which are weird quasi governmental entities that are meant to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of in house government red tape, and the downsides of short term contracts. Think faster hiring/firing and higher pay than government, but longer term funding and goals than contractors. All the national labs are FFRDCs and there are a few others.
My dad worked for one for decades - the MITRE corporation, which is a nonprofit, and interestingly enough got the first .org domain. They also run CVE, and do a variety of R&D and legacy systems work, most notably air traffic control. They also entered vehicles in the DARPA challenges in the aughts, though did not do well.
> ...which are weird quasi governmental entities that are meant to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of in house government red tape, and the downsides of short term contracts.
And I guess when I said "government agencies" I was being too specific. What I really mean is government should build up government-controlled technical capability, which could be "weird quasi governmental entities," state-owned businesses, government agencies themselves, or some combination. Pretty much anything, just as long as it's not a privately-owned business entity.
My dad worked for one for decades - the MITRE corporation, which is a nonprofit, and interestingly enough got the first .org domain. They also run CVE, and do a variety of R&D and legacy systems work, most notably air traffic control. They also entered vehicles in the DARPA challenges in the aughts, though did not do well.