Concept
Civilizational debt
The obligation that accumulates in law, ethics, psychology and institutions when a capability is created before the understanding of it, and which is repaid with interest — the later it is taken up, the more it costs.
The concept is built by analogy with technical debt in software: rapidly building capability lets you defer the difficult work, but it does not cancel it.
The interest here is not metaphorical. The later a society takes up a question, the worse the position it decides from: under pressure, in haste, and after the technology has already become a fact and formed interests around itself.
The analogy has a limit. Technical debt has an owner who is aware of it; civilizational debt does not.