A technology expert opens the film by taking apart a smartphone, tracing each component back to its origin: a camera developed with U.S. State Department funding, GPS technology built during the Cold War, touch screens and internet infrastructure that all began as publicly funded research rather than corporate invention. Economist Mariana Mazzucato leads the argument that companies like Apple and Google get credit and profit for innovations governments actually financed, while paying comparatively little back in tax. The film travels to Airbus, where the company partners with the European Space Agency on 3D printing research, and to the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, where researchers develop orphan drugs for rare diseases that private industry finds too costly to pursue alone. Denmark serves as the closing example, its government acting as a direct venture investor in new technology rather than just a research funder. Interviewer Chris Kijne pushes the sources toward a harder question: what happens to public investment in innovation when governments absorb the costs but never share in the rewards.