Defense Use-It Research Grants is forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection. It sits in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-INC-0090, within the Government Perverse Pattern family. The core principle: forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
Forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection.
Plain-English Definition
Forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection.
Feynman Explanation
Burn the budget to keep the budget.
Core Principle
Forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
Burn the budget to keep the budget.
Examples
- Late-quarter speculative DARPA-adjacent obligations.
- Baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
When this element shows up in a diagnostic, the instinct is to train people out of it. Training rarely moves it. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: burn the budget to keep the budget. Every element in the Incentives dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality. It is amplified whenever baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality. Inside organizations that shows up as baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to rolling, milestone-based research funding. The test of any redesign here is simple: after the change, can you name what the organization is now doing less of? If not, the payoff structure did not actually move.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Rolling, milestone-based research funding.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Rolling, milestone-based research funding.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
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Federal funds subsidize new lanes while states absorb perpetual maintenance.
Federal policy forces homeowners to rebuild doomed structures while waiting on mitigation buyouts.
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Where Defense Use-It Research Grants is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- Field guideIncentives: definition, types, examples
The parent field guide for this element.
- ReferenceThe laws of incentives
Goodhart, Campbell, and the Cobra Effect.
- EssayWhy Government Transformation Stalls
The public-sector version of this pattern.
- ReferenceThe incentive glossary
Definitions for every mental model, bias, and fallacy in the corpus.
- CourseIncentives 101
The free ten-part primer on reading a payoff structure.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Defense Use-It Research Grants
- What is Defense Use-It Research Grants?
- Defense Use-It Research Grants is forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection. It sits in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-INC-0090, within the Government Perverse Pattern family. The core principle: forcing exhaustion of annual research budgets pushes agencies to fund speculative work for baseline protection. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Defense Use-It Research Grants?
- Baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-INC-0090).
- How is Defense Use-It Research Grants exploited?
- Baseline-protection logic outweighs portfolio quality.
- How do you design around Defense Use-It Research Grants?
- Rolling, milestone-based research funding.
- Which behavioral dimension does Defense Use-It Research Grants belong to?
- Defense Use-It Research Grants is classified in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Government Perverse Pattern", class "Perverse Incentive". Its permanent identifier is HBT-INC-0090 and its evidence grade is C.