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The argument about France's strength at the end of the article is anecdotal (and not argued at all), and the title is misleading.

(and as a French CS student who did his undergrad in France and started a PhD in the US (and have many friends in PhD tracks in both systems), I'd actually argue that France is better at "pure/abstract research" rather than R&D. Inria is a very unusual organization, not representative of research in France at all)

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Some data: Inria is (AFAIK) one of the 3 major public research institutions in France: CNRS (the largest, multiple scientific fields, 26k people), Inria (CS, 4k people), INSERM (Medical, 6k people). There are others, but they are much less staffed. Anecdotally, I worked in a CNRS lab and I can tell you that it was very much applied. But applied research was the stated goal of the lab, and I can't say about the rest of the CNRS.

You forgot CEA (nuclear and renewable energy, microelectronics, defense,... 16k people).

You are right but it seems that the CEA is an établissement public à caractère industriel, while the ones I cite are établissements publics à caractère scientifique.

However, you are right, this distinction seems pretty arbitrary to me, as the ONERA (aerospace) too is classified as "industrial" and not "scientific" research establishment.

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