Before that, that was all with graphene (it got many companies grants for completely bullshit projects), then the blockchain, then anything "energy/climate" related. And of course AI.
Yes, it's dead easy once you know the tricks and have enough network. And yes, most of these projects end with nothing usable at all, and nobody seems to care. It's not engineering, it's politics.
The fact that it would be supposed to help economy is bullshit. You don't create value when you, uh, dont have any positive output. So in the end, it's not helping anything, it's just draining resources. It just benefits to a minority of people living off it, that's not creating value. That's absolutely not sustainable. But it's not a surprise that those who benefit from that money on an individual level would defend the model at all costs.