No department, government or commercial likes giving up resources, once it has them. This can cause them to become quite inefficient.

In commercial companies, this is corrected for by financial pressures (imperfectly). In government systems there is no obvious mechanism. Instead it's a lot more ad-hoc. This allows for things like "starving the beast" to break government functions. Conversely it allows for a lot of public money being funneled into private hands.

A better option is to have systems in place to control spending. Critically, those systems need to have people who understand what is being done. They simultaneously allow for reduction in spending when appropriate (or at least stop run away), but stop the chainsaw to the knees approach (e.g. DOGE under musk).

A good example would be something like the UKs NHS NICE (National institute for Clinical Excellence). They keep drug prices under control in the NHS. They are powerful enough to give pause to the drugs companies, they stop the government from going "chainsaw massacre" directly and they keep the NHS efficient in their area. They are also small enough to not bloat themselves as easily.

They act as a 2 way shield. They stop governments sticking their oar in too directly. They also keep the service efficient and updated.

Basically we need localised intelligence to filter what rolls down from higher government, while keeping those below accountable.

In this case, it seems like they over trimmed the science. Some stand down from full height is reasonable, but no mothballed facilities were kept to rapidly spool back up in an emergency.