Let's not get into 'races' with other nations.

The White House recently released a report that puts forward the idea that we shouldn't try to get into a computer 'arms race' with China.

While it would be imprudent to allow ourselves to fall significantly behind our peers with respect to scientific performance benchmarks that have demonstrable practical significance, a single-minded focus on maintaining clear superiority in terms of FLOPS count is probably not in our national interest. Engaging in such an “arms race” could be very costly, and could divert resources away from basic research aimed at developing the fundamentally new approaches to HPC that could ultimately allow us to “leapfrog” other nations, maintaining the position of unrivaled leadership that America has historically enjoyed in high performance computing.

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— PCAST Report, Designing the Digital Future, p. 67
(FLOPS= FLoating point OPerations per Second)

Singularity Hub echoes the sentiment:

As far as any scientific, or political, competition is concerned you have to look at China as a major player. One would think that would go without saying, but I’m not sure if the US, or the West in general, understands what that really means. The old paradigm of one nation leading in all fields is going to fade. Not just because of China. There are dozens of other nations (India, Turkey, Brazil, etc) clamoring to take a larger role in the global economy. So yeah, let’s avoid an arms race. It’s unclear if the US would ultimately win, and there’s no shortage of challengers willing to take China’s place even if it did.

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Seems like a good idea to me.
If we focus on the basics of an industry, then they should naturally advance without having to specifically pour resources into a single area. Of course, there's something to be said for competition in advancing technology, but as the article points out you don't need a government to do that, companies are perfectly capable of it.
That said, I wouldn't mind if the government(s) invested a bit more in certain areas. *coughspaceprogramscough*

Edit: Although that reminds me that Russia is re-opening a space tourism company in 2013, I should post that later today...
Edit 2: Forgot to put in link, /facepalm