Humans aren't really capable of making 20 year plans to invent new technologies and implement them on a schedule. We don't know enough about how it works, we do

Humans aren't really capable of making 20 year plans to invent new technologies and implement them on a schedule. We don't know enough about how it works, we don't know what of many choices to make. What you can do is keep working to improve it and hope you'll get something useful. But it's silly, obviously not something you can do, to make such a large research project with a 20 year goal and so many unknowns and say we will have it with high likelihood. Research has to work toward broad goals and investigate new areas. In 1900 could you have made a 20 year plan to invent cell phones and all the technology needed for what we have today? No one would suggest that, but you can invest in basic science and engineering and you'll get some useful things along the way, radios, maybe repeaters, ever smaller ones and better batteries. But you don't necessarily get a specific thing.