Thanks for these elucidations. To make it more general, could I say the idea is more or less "fundamental, difficult research is likely to encounter problems ahead of the rest of society, and is therefore relatively likely to find useful spin-off solutions" ?

After all, it is possible to predict in hindsight that CERN would be perfect to develop a useful hypertext sytsem. But if one wants to use the unexpected, unpredictable benefits of a project as one of the arguments for funding, there has to be a rationale why this particular project or field is especially likely to lead to unexpected benefits.