Trump’s Science Adviser Wants to Overhaul “Increasingly Calcified” U.S. Science Enterprise While Science Funding Lags

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

23 July: This article was updated to include comments from Jennifer Jones and Colette Delawalla.

A report released this week directs the U.S. government to spark a “new golden age” of science by ushering funds toward artificial intelligence, fostering closer relationships with private industry, and dismantling and rebuilding the federal science funding process.

The report was written by Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He outlined his recommendations to Congress at a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on 22 July. 

Kratsios intended the report to emulate a letter written to President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Vannevar Bush in 1945, called Science, the Endless Frontier, which set the foundation for the current U.S. federal science process in which federal funds support university research. “As we celebrate the United States’ 250th anniversary, we have the responsibility to renew our foundations once more,” he wrote.

Kratsios listed four goals to guide this approach to U.S. science: to “prioritize the individual scientist over legacy institutions,” to “fundamentally change how research dollars are allocated, distributed, and assessed,” to “set clear scientific goals and build the industrial muscle to translate scientific discovery into technological strength,” and to “prepare our research enterprise for the AI revolution.”

“If you think about this report in the context of everything else this administration has done, it really is about weakening independence, weakening accountability, [and removing] scientific integrity protections in favor of empowering political appointees,” said Jennifer Jones, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The report recommends a handful of federal priorities to achieve these goals, including the Genesis Mission, a “national effort to harness AI for scientific discovery at a scale no other nation can match” led by the Department of Energy (DOE).

At the 22 July hearing, Kratsios said the Genesis Mission “is the crown jewel of American AI for science” and announced that federal agencies have committed more than $5 billion to the project. So far, 278 awards have been made, the largest being a three-year, $60 million grant for a project that will “help deliver nuclear facilities faster and safer” with the use of AI, according to the DOE. 

“There are some examples in STEM where AI is valuable,” such as increasing power in computational modeling or identifying new Earth-like planets at scale, for example, wrote Colette Delawalla, founder of science advocacy group Stand Up for Science, in an email. “But AI will never replace curiosity-driven scientific advancement,” she wrote. 

Some scientists viewed the report as a way for the government to justify steering research funds toward private industry and increasing political interference in science. “I think they’re trying to turn it into a venture capital model,” Jeremy M. Berg, a computational biologist and former director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, told The New York Times. 

“Under the hood,” the report is a “vision for faster technology development and commercialization while underinvesting in the fundamental research, expert peer review, and scientific workforce that make those advances possible,” Keivan Stassun, an astrophysicist and member of the National Science Board prior to its dissolution by the Trump administration, told Science.

What’s interesting about the report, Jones said, is what it doesn’t mention. “There’s no mention of scientific integrity, no mention of protections for independence, it’s just the opposite,” she said. “There are no clear systems of accountability” explained in the report, and its suggestion to funnel funds to individual researchers rather than institutions such as universities also means more research could occur outside of universities’ established and robust systems of accountability, she added.

The recommendations in the document largely align with recommendations made by former National Academy of Sciences president Marcia McNutt in June. In the annual president’s address, McNutt encouraged the scientific community to “better understand the needs of industry” and embrace the use of AI to increase research efficiency. 

At the hearing, however, Kratsios agreed with Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX), chair of the committee, that the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine required more federal oversight, especially in light of its recent report on climate attribution science that Babin said raised “transparency concerns.” Kratsios said he looked forward to working with Congress to codify the recommendations made in the “new golden age” report.

Funding the Golden Age

The vision the report presents is accompanied by recommendations from Kratsios and Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, for the FY 2028 budget. These recommendations include prioritizing funding for physical sciences, including quantum physics, chemistry and materials sciences, mathematics and computer sciences, engineering, and biological sciences. 

For FY 2028, “agencies should align their R&D investments, where appropriate, with the Administration’s national missions,” the report states, listing those “national missions” as AI, quantum computing, fusion power, the construction of a lunar base and return of humans to the Moon, autonomous robotics, and semiconductor technology. 

At the 22 July hearing, Democrats argued that the Trump administration’s actions have worked against the stated goals of Kratsios’s report. “Big new initiatives and promises mean nothing when agencies act capriciously, canceling grants midway, delaying awards for months, even after they’ve been selected through the rigorous merit review process, and blacklisting educational and research institutions,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

The report did not mention the Trump administration’s proposed FY 2027 budget, which, if finalized, would reduce the National Science Foundation’s budget by 53%, the U.S. Geological Survey’s budget by 37%, the NASA science budget by 42%, and NOAA’s budget by 28%.

“I anticipate the report will be used as the rationale for making further cuts in the budgets and staffing of federal research agencies while limiting their authority and accountability to the American people,” Neal Lane, former director of the NSF, told Science. 

The report also did not mention recent sweeping cuts to the NSF’s FY 2026 budget, the fact that the NSF currently has no director, or a June proposal from the Office of Management and Budget that, if finalized, would give political appointees final approval power for scientific grants.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

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