In addition many scientists involved (like Oppenheimer) later faced political persecution during the McCarthy era.
American atomic research succeeded despite, or perhaps because of, intense state control and funding
Consider that at the same time the Third Reich also had a nuclear weapons research program, and it went nowhere.
I don't particularly think that the secrecy or control of a single group really reflects on the overall culture however. We wouldn't call phreakers authoritarian just because they weren't publishing their exploits in the newspaper or letting any new person fully into their circle.
Also the prosecution and harassment of communists/leftists and minorities in the US during that era is why I stipulated less oppressive rather than unoppressive.
An Australian nuclear scientist working for the UK Rutherford (New Zealander) labs | Tube Alloys | MAUD program told them how to.
It took a while to convince the US scientists who were mainly interested in making big hot piles for power.
The actual building of atomic weapons (Trinity, Fat Man and Little Boy) took place under a fully authoritarian ultra secret State directed militarily controlled program that cost a significant chunk of national GDP.
The example you chose appears to be both incorrect and the very opposite of whatever point you wanted to make.
Anyways, we have the Internet, I'm not sure it matters _where_ innovations are created anymore. It certainly does not seem to be stopping China on any level.
America is going to have to give up the "World Police" (a.k.a. The Military Industrial Complex) badge and move into it's relative political middle age with a little more care and aplomb than the last 6 decades have allowed for. The haze of WW2 is far behind us now.
The Manhattan project succeeded because it was consuming a significant portion of the US GDP at the time, the scientists were forced to live on site with their families and every word they said was monitored.
Military projects, especially making the most powerful weapon in history for use in the largest war up to that point, are always done with as much secrecy as is feasible. Living on-site was also practical: the reason the site was as isolated as it was was in part because of secrecy, the families being there was both to improve security and for convenience. Finally, yes, every word they said was monitored. But they were scientists and their families working on top secret machinery of war, which ended up changing the course of history in a significant way, they quite literally ushered in a new age. They knew they were monitored and that this was one part of the price to pay for working on that project.
In contrast with that age: now all our words are monitored, even inane ones that are exchanged between people who would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.
I'm confused, are you claiming the enemy was not consuming a significant portion of their GDP on their weapons program?
the "necessary but not sufficient" concept applies here.
My crude take on the underlying root cause is resentment, discontent, and similar feelings. Happiness is reality minus expectations, and a whole lot of folks are unhappy life did not turn out how they thought it would.
https://warwick.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/researchers_point_t...
"Scientific fraud has become an 'industry,' analysis finds"
We also have a strategic interest in draining intelligent individuals from other countries and nationalizing them in ours, which science funding plays a major part in doing.
One of the reasons why its complicated, however, is that the University environment has changed significantly in the US. What used to be academically-motivated institutions dedicated to the pursuit of education are now, essentially, just boring businesses, with more middle managers than educators. As one example, UCLA has a $9.8B endowment. Their athletics programs brought in $120M last year (though, they spent more, and the university itself had to provide gap funding of $30M. yup.) IPAM was receiving $5M/year in NSF funding (DMS-1925919). One obviously extreme way of looking at this: UCLA could have funded Terrance Tao's mathematics research group for six years with the money they used to save a hundred million dollar athletics program that's somehow still losing money.
This is a priorities issue for universities, through and through. But, Universities have slowly evolved their priorities to bloat their managerial class, which has forced them into impossible financial situations where the only way out is to bias investment into revenue generating verticals like maximizing the size of the student body at any cost on the backs of no-default student loans, international students, and athletics programs. Research takes a back seat.
I am all for public funding of science, but even many university researchers would argue, as a part of the system, that its broken (for reasons which extend even beyond those I've brought up). That's why I struggle to take a solid side on this issue; I want science, but what I want more is a University system that actually takes education and research seriously.
With most actions, there's nothing being remedied, just an assertion of control. The action isn't tied to an improvement goal or a remedy with rationale.
As Tao noted, in cases where a remedy for a wrong is mentioned, the remedies being proposed by the administration do far more harm to any ostensible victims than the original asserted wrongs.
Nothing about their actions is in good faith in terms of improving academics in the US, nor do they even try in most cases to pretend to be trying to improve academics at all.
Two reasons.
First, private philanthropy is neither sustainable nor sufficient in scope.
Second, because government funded science is free from having to produce immediate results in order to satisfy the whims of a specific patron such that funding is continued.
> It seems like an obvious channel for corruption of science.
Yes, relying on private entities to fund scientific research does seem like an obvious channel for corruption.
I agree with you but there's irony (and a possible lesson about motives) in the current situation.
The market can't provide public goods like basic research since it's non-excludable. This is a market failure, causing inefficient allocation of resources.
Therefore, the government has to provide it. This can improve efficiency of resource distribution, if done well.
Whether it's done well is not a foregone conclusion. That's why we need effective and technocratic state capacity, free from corruption and independent of political influence.
> I don’t really understand why so much of science is funded by the government instead of by private philanthropy.
Like if I want to fund a pet study that I’m interested in, can I just call up Harvard and offer the lab $1M to work on it? I’ve never heard of anyone doing that, but I’m not really sure why it doesn’t exist (which is why I’m asking if anyone else knows).
And those tend to be: things that are perceived by the donor as having high immediate returns, things that are perceived by the public as having high immediate returns and thus are good for buying status, and things that provide a convenient channel for the donor to exercise power via the donation, making it away to enjoy wealth while also getting a tax break for it.
Basic science doesn't tend to fit any of those, which is why science funded by private philanthropy is small compared either to government funding of basic science or total private philanthropy.
Would would ANY private enterprise (i.e. pharmaceutical company) want to fund research that would enable that?
The immense money (the US spends over $200B a year in cancer 'treatments') that these companies would not be making anymore would deter any such research.
Same goes for many other scientific discoveries. Some are for the greater humanitarian good, not for private enterprise profit maximisation.
Of course any company would take this deal and make a boatload of money (though less than the $200B / year).
Undercutting all its competitors would be a bonus, not a deterrent.
This has happened so many times throughout history. New tech comes in, does the same thing cheaper and better, old companies die out kicking and screaming.
Companies and their shareholders only do things that are profitable.
You can't really enroll graduate students for a 5 year PHD project if their funding can be pulled at a moment's notice like this.
The best and brightest simply aren't going to want to come to the U.S. for an uncertain future where they'll be harassed at the airport every trip and then defunded or deported at any time for "political" reasons (a.k.a. racism, bigotry, religion, ignorance and anti-intellectualism).
Amazingly, we're only 200 days into this administration.
We have 3 years, 5 months and 12 days left, assuming we still have free and fair elections in 2028.
For the next several years, the administration is going to continue to dismantle our country's foundations brick by brick, enabled by Congress and SCOTUS. The attack on immigrants is in full swing, but the total takeover of science, public education, universities and mass media is actually just beginning.
The midterms are in 2026. A swapped House (and/or Senate, but less likely) would drastically shift power.
Those doing and supporting what's happening a) care only about power, b) honestly think they and America is superior, c) both and d) think this time is different assuming they are educated and know history.
Hopefully people remember this for next time.
But that happens in unprecedented amounts in a developed and organised country, maybe soon developing...
- science funding is controlled by the state (and thus politics) in many leading countries, especially China. Doesn't seem to hold them back
- the US pays people vastly more than other countries, and will continue to have the ability to fund expensive research more than others. Maybe it will regain the political will to do so in coming years
You're right that uncertainty is deadly to investment, and signing up for 5 years of a PhD is certainly an investment. But it's hard to see this turn into an actual brain drain, if only for lack of a better place to go.
After all, why bother doing research when the guy ultimately responsible for choosing your funding will take a sharpie to any data you collect if it looks bad?
Probably not. Grants were always under political control, right? This is just shifting political control from one part of a government agency to another part of the government agency.
> The order also instructs agencies to formalize the ability to cancel previously awarded grants at any time if they're considered to "no longer advance agency priorities."
Now? One of your grad students says something a little too on the nose on Bsky, and your lab gets shut down.
Sure. In the same vein, you have always been at war with Eurasia.
My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education. Is there not another way to fund these projects? Is there not a better way to engage students into these projects? I don't recall most students having a wide array of choices when it comes to taking on these opportunities.
Is this not a chance to improve a rather ancient and clumsy system?
I seriously doubt that there is any will to improve the system.
> My understanding is the grants you're talking about are generally for small student salaries as they work on a given project simultaneously with their continued education.
Grants cover a much larger part of the work at labs. Basically, a grant could be paying anything except tenured salaries and administrative costs.
That is the case with so much of what is happening now. If these things are possible, the system was already broken.
The three branches of government are supposed to be checks and balances against each other. But turns out two of the three don't have any actual power to enforce their mandates. This has worked as long as the three branches grudgingly respected each others role. But now that the executive branch simply decided to ignore the other two whenever convenient, turns out there is no recourse.
Future people must endeavor to split up power even more, make more functions more independent and shielded from political manipulation, and prevent the rich from monopolizing and corrupting political office, government, mass media distribution, and journalism.
The problem is that a big percentage of the population is ok with this, and in that case it doesn’t matter if it’s illegal or not. There is a reason why, even if allowed, governments didn’t do these kind of things: population didn’t want it.
It has always been my impression from a distance that Americans believe the federal system was perfectly designed and is inherently robust, when in fact there have been concerns from day one about what would happen if it fell into the hands of a leader who didn't care for the law.
And that's where you are now.
But re: the executive orders, actually it is not clear that they can do this. As with many of Trump's EOs it may simply be illegal because -- newsflash -- Trump is a crook and he has no intention of following the law if it limits him.
This is a man who tried a coup and who has broad immunity for anything he does that even looks like governance, so why would he let a little thing like the law trouble him? It didn't bother him when he exported people to El Salvador without due process. It doesn't bother him that his "emergency" tariffs almost certainly lack a legal basis.
I don't think the good faith reasoning about the system being broken by design really matters: the USA is falling victim to an accelerated Hungary-style fascist restructuring.
Nixon looks like a boy scout by comparison.
Having politicians exercise more direct control over this type of spending is good and as it should be. The concept of people taking money via force from other citizens yet answering to nobody is dystopian. The sort of people who support this idea are often, it seems, those who suspect their ideas and plans are so deeply unpopular that people could not be easily persuaded to fund them directly.
Right, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is under executive control? Is it not the case that Congress usually decides, one way or another, where the money goes, and it's the executive's job to see it does?
"The Trump administration has suspended the funding of Terence Tao and the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA."
Maybe it's just Twitter's algorithm that only serves me the decent replies - but these at least have a point, antisemitism is running utterly rampant in academia these days. In no relation to Qatari funding, one might assume...
But I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s one of those “enlightened centrists.”
UCLA has $8 billion in endowments and the state universities in total have $30 billion in endowment funds. How many years could they fund Tao and his institute if they really wanted to?
This last election was the end of American democracy.
Until we have actual penalties for the people in charge, it doesn’t even matter whether the courts uphold this stuff or not.
He does want to fundamentally change it into an domestic empire -- a monarchical executive ruling over vassal states that have their own governments but must pay tribute.
Well... he wants it to look more like a mafia arrangement because he was jealous of those guys back when he had a mafia lawyer in the 1970s. He likes to pressure people to do him little favours in return for protection (which is literally what he was impeached for the first time). He thinks he can direct industry to do what he wants (and it looks like industry kind of agrees). It is clear he intends to meddle in state law.
They, the people around him, believe in what amounts to a unitary executive that converges on a form of monarchy. It's more or less central to the belief structure of a far-right guru, Curtis Yarvin (who is an ex tech guy and a nasty little racist dweeb):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin
(He explicitly uses the word "monarch")
There are many Yarvinists in the executive branch. There are also many in the AI community, and Musk consulted Yarvin about The America Party.
Asserting control over academia is a Yarvin thing (and also a Viktor Orbán thing, because the model here is Hungary, quite deliberately, which is why e.g. Tucker Carlson and CPAC hang out there). That is what is going on here. They are injecting the executive into every part of academic life.
An arms embargo vs Israel would be wildly popular among Dem voters - but don't ask campaign staffers about it unless you want to be marked as "no response" [0].
0 - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/uncommitted-le...
And so now, I have to police my free speech and participation in the public sphere because I'm afraid someone might choose to nuke the lab. That's some bullshit there.
Vigorous adherence to the First Amendment by the Administration and, failing that, vigorous enforcement of it by the federal courts.
More seriously, nothing, and that’s the point.
Wtf US
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/06/jd-vance-ohi...
yes, actually, it is bad if a bunch of racist lunatics are personally in charge of things, and increase their personal power to make arbitrary decisions based on their stupid hobby horses or deeply dumb opinions.
yes, actually, this is different to when Biden or Obama or Bush presided over a functioning government, that had people you may or may not disagree with having some influence on things, this Trump Reign system is personalised autocracy.
yes, actually, it is bad if the government's sole agenda is "implement dumb ideas from dumb people" and "fuck the left/non-whites/immigrants/scientists".
it's especially dumb to be so unaware of why the world is so good now. it's not luck, it's centuries of hard work by our ancestors. why don't 50% of children simply die? because of medical research, healthcare, food subsidies, etc etc etc. why does the internet exist? because the US government funded a dumb thing for a while then a lot of other people and countries spent a lot of money and effort to make it this.
Trump has been learning from Winnie the Pooh. How very Communist of him.