Sounds to me like the claim is—with the perspective of somebody who has lived an entire professional life within the federal research award system—that it actually was highly efficient.

So whether or not they were competent, and whether or not they succeeded at finding anything, that’s the true nature that existed to find in the first place.

What’s your basis for the assumption that “the waste” was there to find, particularly on the “burn it all down immediately” scale at which the grantmaking system was “reformed”?

I don’t have any reason to believe the grantmaking system is particularly inefficient. If I was in charge with saving money I would look at consolidating welfare and slashing the bureaucratic apparatus. Research grants wouldn’t even be in my top 10.

But this is what I mean, people are claiming that the government as a whole is efficient. I think that’s trivially false, and saying “doge didn’t find waste in research grants therefore the government is efficient, also doge is incompetent” is completely faulty logic.