To quote from the movie The Right Stuff...

Gordon Cooper: You know what makes this bird go up? Funding makes this bird go up.

Gus Grissom: He's right. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Large scale technical projects almost always get funded to achieve a political goal. From that initial funding, culture will tend to take that in other directions, especially if there is enough freedom and lack of corruption in a society to allow and encourage innovation.

Politics, which includes war, is one of the biggest drivers of cultural change. Many of the 20th centuries technical innovations were driven by the wars, WWI, WWII and the Cold War. We also see innovations being driven by political currents other than war, for example, electric vehicles.

The downside is that politics is typically driven by violence or the potential of violence. This can be outright, as in full on war, or simply oppression of a disfavored or disadvantaged group. Conflicts often arise as power shifts from one group to another, typically over competition for resources.