My experience in playing wargames over 40 years is there are two main camps regarding the philosophy of wargaming. One camp likes a game more based on strategy and predictability and the other camp prefers more randomness and thus want things more dice oriented. You may call it the chess people and the gambling people.
Those people who fall into the predictable camp want directed technology. Tech all be itself is already a risk because I may or may not obtain it. I am already taking a risk going for Tech, why would I have to risk what type of tech I am going to receive? This just makes the game more random and lessens the strategy aspect of the game. This group, if they had their way, would pick a purchased Tech approach which you see in some games. I pay X and I get Y. This makes the game all about strategy decisions and not dice rolling.
The gambling people want every game to be different. They either want, or are willing to have, bad dice in one game and good dice in another game to achieve their goal of randomness. They want Tech to be very good if they are lucky or spend a bunch of money on nothing, or of little value, if dice go bad. The “newness” of every game is more important than the finding and playing of a predictable boring strategy game.
For me, as I want as little dice as possible in any game, I prefer the predictability of knowing what I am doing is going to work assuming my strategy is valid. I may lose the game but if I lose it is because my strategy is flawed and the choices I made did not work rather than I just rolled poorly. Conversely if I win it is because of my good strategy and good decisions rather than just getting lucky dice.
Knowing I am in the predictable camp I NEVER play with technology because all the Axis and Allies technology solutions are very random in nature and are thus not attractive to me. If a technology policy had to be implemented, I would propose directed research AND the technology does not go into effect till the Turn after it is discovered. Both limit the randomness of technology.