Closing The American Frontier In
“The Administration’s assault on the American science enterprise threatens the underpinnings of U.S. prosperity, security, and standing in the world.”
Last week I attended a public event at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that put the Trump Administration’s actions on science in perspective. While the talk and panel discussion on “The State of the Science” were decidedly nonpartisan, they made clear that the Administration’s assault on the American science enterprise threatens the underpinnings of U.S. prosperity, security, and standing in the world.
The United States has been a technological and economic juggernaut since the end of World War II. U.S. dominance was partly because the war had devastated most of the industrial world but was sustained by the partnership forged during the war between the government and the scientific community. The Trump Administration’s actions and policies are a direct attack on that partnership, on the government and academic science communities, on the international collaborations that are increasingly indispensable to scientific advances, and on the core value of science as an endeavor to uncover truth. Its wholesale assault on our scientific enterprise – slashing budgets, attacking leading research universities, harassing foreign students, and attempting to suppress inconvenient facts – threatens to undermine our security, prosperity, and global leadership for generations to come.
Allow me to indulge in a bit of science policy history. Vannevar Bush was science advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and oversaw the scientific and technological advances that were critical to Allied victory, such as the development of sonar and radar. My father was a physics student at the University of Pennsylvania during the war and, as an essential war worker, he contributed to those developments. As the war was coming to a close, Bush wrote a report to President Truman, Science: The Endless Frontier, which laid out a vision for a continuing partnership between government and the scientific community. It begins:
“Progress in the war against disease depends upon a flow of new scientific knowledge. New products, new industries, and more jobs require continuous additions to knowledge of the laws of nature, and the application of that knowledge to practical purposes. Similarly, our defense against aggression demands new knowledge so that we can develop new and improved weapons. This essential, new knowledge can be obtained only through basic scientific research.
“Science can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.”
– Vanevar Bush, July 5, 1945
Science: The Endless Frontier
Bush’s vision helped build a thriving post-war collaboration between the government and the scientific enterprise in our colleges, universities, and in industry. The National Defense Education Act, enacted in 1958 after the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite, further expanded the Federal Government’s support of universities as centers of scientific and technical training. Scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs spawned innovations in electronics and computing – from the transistor to integrated circuits, the internet and artificial intelligence; in medicine – from vaccines to personalized cancer treatment and genetic therapy; in aerospace – from communications to navigation, weather, and climate monitoring.
The United States made itself a magnet for innovation by building scientific partnerships around the world. Those partnerships led to economic and cultural relationships that helped expand American power and influence and advance Western democratic values. International collaborations have enabled “big science” endeavors, like large particle accelerators and the human genome project, that are too big for any one country.
The Federal government’s role provides an element of democratic governance in defining the social goals of the scientific enterprise, a model that many or our partners have emulated. Despite its initial success, the Soviet model was not effective in building economic growth through innovation. Without U.S. leadership, there would have been less innovation and growth and we would be far more dependent on other countries for things essential to our livelihood.
The post-war economic and technological boom could not be sustained indefinitely. Other countries would inevitably catch up. This was evident 20 years ago, when Congress asked the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine for recommendations to enhance the U.S. science and technology enterprise. The 2007 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm laid out the challenging trendlines and laid out three potential future scenarios: business as usual, plus optimistic and pessimistic cases, with recommendations for how to realize the more optimistic outcome. Since then, the rapid rise of China’s research community and the lack of follow-through on the report’s recommendations has led to a further erosion of the U.S. position. An Australian study in 2023 found that China had the lead over the United States in research output in 37 of 44 critical technology areas.
No one imagined that the United States would veer off course and deliberately sabotage one of its greatest assets, but this is exactly what the Trump Administration is doing. Its drastic cuts to research funding and to international scientific cooperation have put us on a much gloomier path. The Administration has slashed funding for science agencies that fund basic research and science for the public good, has attacked leading research universities, and has harassed foreign students and scientists in ways that make the United States a much less appealing destination. The proposed reorganization of the State Department would eliminate the Office of Science and Technology Cooperation, which is critical for U.S. participation in overseas research projects and attracting other countries’ support for projects in the United States.
There is no evidence of a coherent strategy underlying the Trump Administration’s actions. They are incompatible with its professed goals, as stated in President Trump’s March 26 letter to science advisor Michael Kratsios, to secure U.S. scientific leadership and revitalize the science and technology enterprise. Rather, these actions appear to be designed to undermine universities and the U.S. academic community as an independent source of authority. If allowed to go forward, they will result in immediate damage to our scientific leadership in the world. To cite one prominent example, when Nobel laureate Ardem Patapoutian complained on Bluesky that his NIH Grant had been frozen, he received an open-ended invitation to move his lab to China. European research institutes have launched programs to attract scientists displaced by U.S. funding cuts. We are poised for a major exodus of scientific talent.
These actions will do lasting damage. The engines of our economy are built on discoveries and innovations from decades ago. If that pipeline runs dry, the engine of innovation will sputter to a halt, leaving us dependent on technology developed in China and elsewhere, putting our economy and security at risk. These setbacks will not happen all at once but, once they occur, they will be hard to reverse.
Scientific values include a devotion to seeking the truth and to the free exchange of knowledge. Nowhere is that more important than in responding to the climate crisis, whether by improving understanding of the underlying science, by finding ways to limit the scale of climate change, or by coping with its effects. The Administration can try to hide the truth by blocking the planned National Climate Assessment and preventing government scientists from attending the Ocean Summit. That will not stop the climate from changing, but it will leave us less able to deal with that change. As President Adams said, “facts are stubborn things.”
There is an alternative. Congress could fulfill its constitutional responsibilities by passing a budget and appropriations bills that maintain robust funding for science in the public interest. Science organizations can rally their members to speak about the importance of science and support scientists whose careers are being derailed, as the American Physical Society is doing. The courts can block lawless cuts to federal science budgets and staff, arbitrary attacks on universities that resist coercion, and actions that intimidate and violate the rights of foreign students and scientists who are here legally and contributing to American society.
Above all, the American people need to make clear which path they prefer.
Mark Goodman is a senior scientist who retired from the State Department after a thirty-year career in nuclear policy. He has extensive experience in multilateral nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament issues. Dr. Goodman is a non-resident fellow at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, and a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 280 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.