well, it can be, but I don't think this has to be a rule.

evil research can be performed by powerful governments, so they have enough money to buy a supercomputer. E.g. you can't build a nuclear weapon only with a supercomputer: you need skilled people (they are normally well paid), you need uranium, you need a whole nuclear plant to enrich the uranium. You need rocket scientists. You need rockets. You need a region where you can perform tests.


the Seti@home project on the contrary was started because the university was low at funds and couldn't buy another fast supercomputer. Distributing tasks is done by two older supercomputers. They can't compete with the fastest supercomputer on Earth, the nipponic Earth simulator.

Fortunately Seti@home computes at a speed of 40 Teraflops / s. eh, eh, the Earth simulator reaches only 35 teraflops / s.