Why should the government, rather than industry or universities, provide the money to put a network of supercomputers in place  Because there is a range of problems that can be attacked only with the massive data-managing capacity of a supercomputer network
No business or university has the resources to purchase by itself enough machines for a whole network, and no business or university wants to invest in a part of a network if no mechanism exists for coordinating establishment of the network as a whole
It fails to address the question of who would maintain the network if the government, rather than industry or universities, provides the money for establishing it.