Teardown of American Science has Begun

We all get it that this is a Kremlin lead project to utterly destroy America’s Science and Technology leadership, right? See today’s posting on the firing of NOAA Hurricane hunters.

Get very clear on that.

Andrew Dessler in The Climate Brink:

Dear America:

On behalf of the People’s Republic of China, I would like to deeply thank the current U.S. administration for implementing policies that threaten to dismantle America’s university research enterprise, thereby helping China become the preeminent global power of the 21st century.

For decades, we have watched with envy as the United States built the world’s most powerful innovation engine through its university system. The formula was brilliant in its simplicity: substantial federal funding for basic research combined with a visa system that allowed the smartest people from around the world to contribute to American innovation. Silicon Valley, biotechnology, artificial intelligence — all grew from seeds planted in American university laboratories.

This system created a remarkable virtuous cycle: federal research funding led to breakthrough discoveries, which spawned new industries, which generated economic growth, which supported more research funding. From the internet to GPS, from genetic engineering to computer chips, university laboratories have been the birthplace of innovations that drove 85% of our economic growth.

More than half of America’s billion-dollar startups were founded by immigrants, many of whom began as international students in university labs.

While we in China have made tremendous strides in building our own research capabilities, particularly in strategic areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing, we still trail the United States in many critical fields. But, thanks to your new policies, not for long.

NPR:

Darby Saxbe is worried her research funding might get canceled.

People’s brains change when they become parents. She studies fathers’ brains, in particular, to understand which changes might underlie better parenting. And she wants to study a variety of brains.

“If you want to understand the brain and biology changes of fathers, you don’t necessarily want to only look at white affluent fathers who are hanging out around a university, which is what a convenient sample might be composed of,” says the University of Southern California neuroendocrinologist. “That just makes for a better, more impactful research project.”

So with a grant from the National Science Foundation — a federal agency with a $9 billion annual budget to fund research — she’s working to include more people from minority groups in her study.

But her research proposal contained the words “diverse” and “underrepresented,” words that now appear on a list of hundreds of DEI-related terms that NSF is currently using to comb through tens of thousands of research grants. The process, described to NPR by two NSF officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the administration, aims to flag research that may not comply with President Trump’s executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Historian Steven Beschloss in America America:

So many of us have refused or only reluctantly opened our eyes to this menace. I get it. How could we accept that a man would become the President of the United States and then focus his efforts on the destruction of the very nation and democratic institutions that have created prosperity and security? Despite the visible signs, how could we accept that the so-called leader of the free world would forsake that title and its attendant status and power to kowtow to a Russian dictator and his anti-democratic and imperialist interests?

Let’s put aside for a moment the despicable spewing of lies that Ukraine started the war, Zelensky is a dictator, Ukraine is standing in the way of peace, and the Trump regime is committed to negotiating a genuine settlement (yet excludes the Ukrainians and the Europeans). Over the last month, step by step, we have seen Trump’s surrender of America’s defenses against Russia—operations put in place to limit the damage that Putin has sought to inflict on our democratic nation. Among them:

• This weekend Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stopped cyber and information operations against Russia by the U.S. Cyber Command. This despite the fact that Russia has been a major cybersecurity threat to America for more than a decade. In addition, cyberthreat experts at Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been told to stop focusing on Russian threats.
• A month ago, on her first day in office, Attorney General Pam Bondi ended the Task Force KleptoCapture, put in place after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to target Russian oligarchs and enforce sanctions. 
• Bondi also disbanded the Justice Department’s Foreign Influence Task Force. As Reuters explains, the task force was launched during Trump’s first term to monitor and disrupt foreign propaganda campaigns, including Russia’s, “aimed at sowing discord, undermining democracy and spreading disinformation.”
• And then there’s the multiple attacks on our democratic allies, including JD Vance doubting European democracy and insisting Germany should embrace its far-right, neo-Nazi party, and Pete Hegseth claiming that it’s “unrealistic” for Ukraine to regain its pre-invasion borders and saying Ukraine would not achieve NATO membership.