I do have an absolutist view on government research, but it's because I believe states to be morally illegitimate. I'm more agnostic on the possibility of government funded basic research to be net productivity enhancing. There are theoretical econ reasons to be very skeptical of any central planning venture, though.

One way to think about it is that basic research is pretty easy to fund, from an entrepreneurial strategy standpoint. You hire a bunch of nerds and cut them checks when they request more funding. If that tended to be profitable, we'd probably see successful businesses doing it, especially since there are plenty of improvements that can be made to my "Just pay the nerds" model.

Since that doesn't work as a business model, we now need to explain how a bunch of bureaucrats are able to identify value adding ventures when entrepreneurs with direct skin in the game can't. It's far more likely that this just isn't a value adding venture. Again, you'd have to think on the margins. Maybe private industry would only fund the highest valued 20% of research, but that might account for 80% of the total value.