EDIT: more succinctly: are there clear reasons beyond the historical and social that fundamental research in one field receives large investment versus another?

EDIT: more succinctly: are there clear reasons beyond the historical and social that fundamental research in one field receives large investment versus another? —- I think stuff like this is awesome (though I have absolutely zero experience in physics research let alone particle physics research), but I was having a conversation with a mathematician friend, and I didn’t really have a good answer for this question: is there a good reason we put $17B (or might) towards something like this as opposed to something like the Langlands program, or some of the millennium prize problems, etc? I mean there are some obvious historical answers (ie the links between particle physics research departments of energy and defense), as well practical answers like the fact that throwing money at experimental and hardware problems seems like a more direct path to success than just hiring mathematicians to work harder… But I couldn’t necessarily come up with a good answer that spoke to why might we actually value (financially) this kind of research over others. Is it just inertia? Every researcher wishes their field had massive amounts of funding of course. And in the grand scheme of science research, this isn’t all that much funding I suppose? Anyways, it’s amazing that we can undertake massive international research projects like this. Just interesting to think about.