In Boise, Idaho, Micron Technology has pledged $10 billion over a decade to build a research institution devoted to problems that may not yield answers for years — perhaps longer. The announcement arrives at a moment of rare abundance for the memory industry, when artificial intelligence has transformed what was once a commodity into a critical constraint on computing itself. It is the kind of long-horizon bet that only extraordinary profits make possible, and the kind that only extraordinary discipline can sustain.