If you want to know why DC think tanks are so cretinous and dysfunctional, you have to ultimately begin with personnel. The black pill is that they are filled with the poli-sci and international relations credentialed equivalents of pool project manager and LinkedIn girls but

even worse by virtue of being uglier and being self aware enough of this reality that it only makes them all the more resentful. It's a literal spawning ground for aspiring Hillary Clinton dopplegangers. Every self important midwit Redditor personality trait rolled into an actual

physically bounded space where their well akshually stupid ideas get pedigreed as very serious business by their proximity to the figurative heart of darkness. The simple c'est la vie attitude of these sorts of people in the private sector simply results at worse a loss of money.

The ones in the public sector are so self important that when the good idea fairy visits, the usual end results is dead bodies because their desire to appear useful only serves to accentuate their incompetence.