Only if you’re constantly trying to zero the budget after it’s built.

I disagree with this as well to some extent. I see how much big corporations spend on "maintenance" and all the bureaucracy involved. It's easy money for them and their employees. Too easy.

The problem with Europe is that they starved their tech sector completely. IMO neglectful to the point of corruption. The salaries of EU-based engineers was just laughable compared to US. And they outsourced a lot of the software work to foreigners and basically ended up with low quality solutions, compromised by foreign nations from all sides. In terms of tech, EU governments have been extremely incompetent... They could not have failed worse if they tried. So now there is a lot of fixing to do. Radical fixing.