Just 20 seconds advance warning is going to help 75 million people in the affected area save their lives or avoid injury.
BTW, the whole business is a tad beyond "science" and has crept into "engineering application" ~ it's not like they want to discover what causes earthquakes, or that they can prevent them. After all, we know what "causes" earthquakes ~ the earth moves!
I say spend ALL the money on this project. Do thousands of boreholes. Drop in gazillions of measurement devices.
20 seconds warning probably wouldn't even help the first people to detect the signal of an impending earthquake. How would you possibly notify 75 million people in that time period?
Ping, I'm glad the earth moves for someone.