[ItsMe000001]

You actually make his point stronger: Given the difficulty, there are far too few people in it. Instead, people flock to the easy stuff. That's because who pays you if you don't get results within a few years at most? Which is hard for hard problems with no known solutions.

Basic research with no concrete plannable payoff is not exactly what private business is good at. Food for thought, Silicon Valley is based on unlimited debt-based government R&D spending during WWII, private investors only came later to an already fertile field that had lots of very concrete results to show: https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo