GPUs are in a weird bubble captured by weird finance tricks in the private sector. They put money into that, taxpayers are going to freak out.

If they can make progress on QOA and HHL algos, that has value.

But the main thing they're trying to avoid - and this can't be understated - is dependency on US tech firms when quantum gets good enough to be practical for those sorts of problems.

Since WW2, Europe has happily been a consumer of US produced tech. The last 10 years has caused a revisiting of that view. It's an exercise for the reader to figure out the factors leading to that, and whether they think it's sensible or not.