Taxes won't fund what I want. Taxes fund what is wanted by the people with the power to create political will. That is, as I said, a matter of a high-school-style popularity contest, except that the stakes are life and death. Do you really think the voters whose political will elected Donald Trump and Scott Morrison — or the mass media who directed that political will — should be in charge of whether we get secure operating systems, public libraries, or ICBMs? Should that political will determine whose research gets funded? The idea is absurd.
I think the point is that F-35 seems to get funded no matter how popularity contest goes. It is not completely beyond imagination that seL4 could be funded similarly, since both do serve military need. In fact, DARPA already funded some seL4 work.
