I wonder if we systematically underestimate the level of rationality of major governments.

Data point: the internet is almost completely a creation of government. Some say entrepreneurs and corporations played a large role, but except for corporations that specialize in doing contracts for the government, they did not begin to exert a significant effect till 1993 whereas government spending on research that led to the internet began in 1960, and the direct predacessor to internet (the ARPAnet) became operational in 1969.

Both RAND and the internet were created by the part of the government most involved in an enterprise (namely, the arms race during the Cold War) on which depended the long-term survival of the nation in the eyes of most decision makers (including voters and juries).

EDIT: significant backpedalling in response to downvotes in my second paragraph.

RAND has a lot of good work (I like their recent reports on Iran), but keep in mind that big misses can undo a lot of their credit; for example, even RAND acknowledges (in their retrospective published this year or last) that they screwed up massively with Vietnam.

I wonder if we systematically underestimate the level of rationality of major governments. Historically, they haven't done that badly. From an article about RAND:

This is not really a relevant example in the context of Vladimir_Nesov's comment. Certain government funded groups (often within the military interestingly) have on occasion shown decent levels of rationality.

The suggestion to "develop a definition of friendliness and then get governments to mandate that it be implemented in any AI or something like that." that he was replying to requires rational government policy making / law making rather than rare pockets of rationality within government funded institutions however. That is something that is essentially non-existent in modern democracies.