# Governments rarely fund systems research unless it leads directly to a widget Governments will begrudgingly support systems research if there’s a clear widget that a specific government agency wants, like a stealth fighter or a Saturn V rocket and it’s clear that systems research is the only way to get there. Even then it often requires some heroic individual effort to drive the project to completion. But most systems research has the flavor of “we need to do this useless thing because we think that it might address the issues with this other useless thing which would then get a system working that is mostly worse than what we already have, but *might* get better than it one day.” In other words it’s hard to *justify* without several leaps of faith. The hard-to-justify nature of systems research runs headlong into the imperative of (at least western democratic) governments to nominally have chains of accountability. Even if a program officer buys into the system’s potential, they need to be able to justify it to a director who needs to be able to justify it to another director who might need to justify it to a congressperson who might need to justify it to their constituents. ### Related * [[§Government Constraints]] * [[There is a fundamental tension between government accountability and the opacity necessary to do high-variance work]] * [[Systems Research]] ### References * [[pikeSystemsSoftwareResearch2000]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Governments+rarely+fund+systems+research+unless+it+leads+directly+to+a+widget) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Governments+rarely+fund+systems+research+unless+it+leads+directly+to+a+widget)