Op-Eds

The Boston Globe

Trump has said that the United States has the greatest scientists in the world. The government should take care not to drive them out.

In the executive order President Trump signed last month establishing the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, he emphasized that the United States has “to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance” and do it in part by “reinvigorating our research institutions.”

I could not agree more, though I do not see how the administration’s recent actions lead to reinvigoration.

Since World War II, the federal government has funded fundamental research at universities because academic freedom allows for the most ingenious and unconventional ideas in science and technology to be explored. These ideas represent a public good. They are the lifeblood of our economy and national security, giving rise to entirely new industries and revitalizing old ones.

In recent weeks, however, the Trump administration, openly hostile to universities, has been trying to dismantle the government infrastructure for university-based explorations — a blow to American competitiveness in the long term.

First, there was a blanket freeze on grant-making. Then the National Institutes of Health, which funds the nation’s biomedical research, imposed an immediate cap on reimbursements for the indirect costs of research projects at an utterly unrealistic 15 percent.

Indirect costs include expenditures such as laboratory utilities, maintenance, and administrative and compliance costs without which the work cannot be done. Under this plan, academic medical centers and research universities will lose billions in support for biomedical research each year.

The National Science Foundation, the agency that funds nonmedical research, reportedly told its staff to expect significant layoffs. Both the NSF and the NIH have been retrospectively examining their grants to make sure they comply with Trump’s executive orders — leaving academic scientists fearful that ongoing projects will be halted.

As it is, federal support for university research has been declining for decades. In the early- to mid- 1960s, after the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite made the United States afraid it was falling behind in science and technology, R&D represented 10 percent or more of the federal budget. Today, with a much more formidable competitor in China, the US government devotes just 3 percent of federal spending to R&D.

In the recent release of a high-quality chatbot by the Chinese company DeepSeek, there is a powerful argument that the administration should, if anything, be increasing support for university-based research. DeepSeek challenged the convention that it takes enormous resources and many high-end chips to build and train advanced AI. It also proved that US export controls on those chips will not stop China from inventing its way around them.

Trump called it a “wake-up call,” and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen dubbed it AI’s “Sputnik moment.” If the United States intends to stay ahead in AI, it has to consider what other conventions can be challenged, and universities are essential to this effort.

Why? Because our educational mission sets us apart from other large organizations. We constantly welcome a steady influx of young talent with fresh ideas. Our students, postdocs, and young faculty are the opposite of complacent. They want to prove that they are smarter and more original than the people who came before them. They are in the business of putting conventional wisdom out to pasture. So they are essential to our economy and national security.

If the United States truly wants to lead in science and technology, four things have to happen:

1.  The United States must fund university-based science and engineering at a level commensurate with the degree of competition we face from China, the world’s other great superpower in science and engineering.
2. The United States has to do a better job of supporting the most important new ideas emerging from university laboratories or risk losing them to competitors. This has happened too many times, including in essential technologies such as the batteries for EVs, which China now dominates. Instead, our government should figure out how to take advantage of US university research before any other country does.
3. The United States needs to continue attracting the finest students from around the world and develop policies that encourage these brilliant people to remain in the United States after they earn their degrees. Nationwide, international students earn more than half of all US doctoral degrees in computer science, engineering, and math. The best people come to US universities because we do the most advanced science. If we lose one, we lose the other.
4. The administration should avoid interrupting ongoing projects or limiting the ability of universities to support them and frustrating scientists. Trump has said that the United States has the greatest scientists in the world. The government should take care not to drive them out of science or out of the United States.

Since World War II, the ideas born in university research laboratories have helped to make America great. Universities’ contributions should be recognized, and the systems that allow them to contribute should not be recklessly derailed. Otherwise, we will be — as China and Russia wish — a nation in decline.

L. Rafael Reif is president emeritus and the Ray and Maria Stata professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.