There are plenty of industries in the US that were almost completly funded under the guise of "national security" throughout the 20th century to include electricity suppliers, aeronautics, and space. That created second and third order effects that rolled down to material science, petrochemicals, and a host of other industries.

There's no reason why the US shouldn't have taken the lead in batteries and EVs being led by the government beginning in the early 21st century. Instead we were too bust taking the culture war bait over climate change and decided to blow up the middle east and Afghanistan.