Comment by magicalist

> That's the product of math from the point of view of mathematicians. But is it the point of view of those funding math?

Yes, and your examples are exactly examples of what the GP quote is talking about.

Of course people paying money want applications, which includes "power" in your kind of reductive framing (applications to war being only one of many types of applications, or we could redefine any gradient provided by expanded understanding as "power", in which case the choice of word just seems melodramatic).

What we've also learned over the centuries, a lot more clearly in the last few, is that seemingly pointless or applicationless understanding can very quickly become useful. This is why it's clearly worth still funding pure math.