Nothing has changed. What you describe today existed 50 years ago, and what you describe as being research 50 years ago, exists today.

The actions of the administration serve to force all academics not behaving as you describe research to start doing so, though. The criticism you have, is manufactured.

You clearly didn't read the article. Dr. Tao provides a concrete example of the type of funding that very recently lead to an order of magnitude speedup of MRI imaging and likely has many military uses he is not allowed to speak about (my speculation but I'd bet on it). Your statement is false.