I'm not sure I follow what you're saying. From my own testing, I do not see any issue with unlocking the various game functionality when researching technologies that do so. Make sure to validate your files with Steam and see if this still happens in a brand new game.

Could you please provide a save file show casing your issue. You can post it over on discord in gc4-commons with a small explanation of your issue. We'll be able to load it on our end and better understand what you're seeing.

For example when you says, "any access to the ability the topic covered" and "you never get the button that allows you to do the task", what exactly do you mean ?