This could be understandable if some rationale was provided, but it's worse than that:
> Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned.
They've not even made it official. They're just randomly flagging.
I genuinely don't understand how the titans of industry who support the Republican party don't understand that science is the foundation on which their entire fortunes are built.
Because science is an abstraction for ann incredibly wide range of human activity some of which benefits industrial applications and some that doesn’t.
They already have that fortune. So, they dont care and dont have to care. Moreover, someone else using science to create fortune is just another competitor and a threat to said fortune.
It benefited them in the past, that allowed them to build up their fortunes. Bill Gates, for example, is now a big holder of farmland. Science allows others to build up fortunes that challenge theirs, and hurts the stasis in which they become gilded aristocracy.
Lowering their taxes while burning everything to the ground benefits them now.
I'd argue that it doesn't actually benefit them now since they have more access to comfort than they could ever conceivably consume in their lifetime but I do absolutely agree that they think it benefits them because people who have accumulated wealth to that degree are highly fixated on making the number go up.
A less just, less stable society is far more likely to demonize and destroy billionaires. If you have such a high level of wealth the most rational action is charitability to insure the wealth of people who surround you to prevent instability and lower the chances you'll be the victim of a crime carried out due to desperation.
I imagine some of them think that the industrial sector could replace academic sector for foundational scientific researcher ("the free market solves all known problems"). I imagine others believe we are headed for a huge crash that affects the whole world, in a way that having a large academic scientific establishment will not help. Just go live in a bunker in NZ until society rebuilds itself, or whatever (Altman). I suspect a few of the folks are just looney, and don't think rationally (Thiel).
In my opinion, it’s been a problem for a long time. Sure, the titans of industry are very interested in the profitable applications of science, but they are generally less interested in investing in science, let alone the science itself. Science is seen as a cost center, and research is inherently risky. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, both were backed by monopolies (the Bell System was the phone monopoly, and Xerox had patents in xerography). The former was subject to special government rules due to AT&T’s constant anti-trust troubles, and the latter’s culture was heavily influenced by ARPA due to ex-ARPA people like Bob Taylor.
I am reminded by this quote from an email exchange between Bret Taylor and Alan Kay, published in 2017:
“As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions.
“It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact.
“It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.”
Their fortunes are already built. They have shifted into defensive posture. They don't care about enabling more people to do discovery, that actually puts their position at great risk of disruption. What they want is to have very little innovation, and be able to capture the innovation that squeaks through.
I do genuinely unable to understand because even if the United States is descending into fascism or whatever, research is the last thing that an effective state wants to disrupt and scientists are the last group that an effective state wants to alienate.
I'm not just referring to restrictions on collaborations with foreign researchers, although I frankly do not see how that meaningfully reduces the ability of opponents to benefit from US research unless we kill open publishing as well. I'm talking about the last year and a half of destroying the ability of every basic researcher I know to work in a stable and predictable environment.
This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership.
Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy.
See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many many years, to reward those who are in the favored status, and kill those who are disfavored. Decision making is random and capricious, just be sure to bribe those at the top with whatever favors you can.
"In response to Inside Higher Ed’s questions about Science’s reporting, an NIH spokesperson emailed a statement Thursday that referenced just one set of grant programs: the Institutional Development Award (IDeA). NIH’s website says the awards go to Puerto Rico and 23 states that “historically have had low levels of NIH funding."
"The recent update to IDeA grantees was a clarification of longstanding policy, not a new directive,” the spokesperson said. “IDeA program funding has always been restricted to U.S.-based institutions and entities, with foreign institutions, non-domestic components of U.S. organizations, and all foreign components explicitly prohibited. This reflects Congress’s intent that IDeA funds be used exclusively for research capacity building within the United States—and specifically within eligible IDeA states and territories. NIH’s statement didn’t mention any other grant programs or answer multiple written questions.” [1]
The article says that these restrictions on research with a "foreign component" have been in place since at least 2003 but have only recently been clarified to include the researchers themselves.
It's actually more surprising to me that NIH and NASA research co-authored by non-Americans was supposedly not requiring scrutiny under the "foreign component" rules before this.
Many graduate students, faculty and post-docs are foreign citizens. So banning them from conducting research could potentially shut down big research projects. It is not surprising to me that the NIH and other funding agencies didn't want to do this. (It is also unsurprising to me that the current administration would have few qualms about disrupting research: we know they don't care, ask the cancer studies that had to be saved with private Foundation funding last year.)
Before you start throwing disruptive rules at projects, you generally want to know that there is a critical security concern for that specific work. Most research just gets published a few months later, so foreign interests can just read it in a journal and download the dataset.
It's interesting after reading briefly about this, but I think previously NIH funding was more permissive to directly awarding funds to foreign nationals/groups. But interestingly enough, China doesn't do the same for say foreign researchers trying to collaborate with chinese researchers. (Unless you already live there etc etc). So it was indeed asymmetrical.
It's a decent bet that they are truly foolish. I've said this before. If the administration isn't acting as agents of a hostile nation trying to destroy America from within and scuttle its global leadership, they're doing a great job acting like it.
Short of them just turning a nuke on a large city, I can't think of better ways to harm America without fomenting an actual uprising than what they're doing to us today.
Autarky requires imperialism to grab the resources needed to be fully isolationist. So it's really both, until they hit the tipping point to become fully isolated. But this is something else. This is just the anti-science ignorentsia coming together with the xenophobic white supremacists to screw America. They say Trump can't bring people together, but he's done a great job of uniting all the worst people in the country.
The country elects an autocrat who fires experts and puts stooges in positions of power. Surprise-surprise that leads to idiotic policies, some of them mimicking the best of hits of Soviet Union.
I knew that most research had ties to government funding but it was only recently that I realized the scale of it. Along with the pullback of any government funding remotely resembling DEI, policies like the one described in the article wouldn't decimate research from my previous understanding. In terms of influence, it's now clear to me that the government controls anywhere between 75 to 99% of academic research. I feel foolish for believing all the details in subsequent papers from the research about why their work is necessary or important. It turns out, all of it is because the government requested it and really nothing else.
that's not entirely true, it is to some degree. by convention there have been a few buffer layers between actual grant allocation and naked politics. funding gets allocated to someplace like NSF, NIH, ONR or DARPA. Those organizations have directorates or area concentrations. Each directorate has a program manager (the terms vary based on org) who puts out request for proposals (grant applications).
The PMs are generally chosen from the sciences, and are responsible for authoring RFPs that meet strategic goals, and negotiate with the PIs (grant recipients) about terms and sizes and such.
So there are really two political realms, above the funding agency, and underneath, and its entire function is reconcile those worlds in a pretty vague way with a certain amount of autonomy given to the PM.
This isn't 100% great, but if you have good PM, some good science does get funding. While this seems like a lot of machinery, if you short circuit all of it, and have the presidents direct flunkies make funding decisions, that basically means that almost no real science gets done.
Can we take a step back and review the article and the underlying information? I am very much against any arbitrary and often unnecessary government interference. I also publish.
Lot's of weasel words.
This is not unprecedented. Restrictions tied to foreign collaboration are not new, NIH has done this as far back as 2018 if I recall. Yes, foreign research restrictions have escalated recently.
We have no official statement for either agencies. Collaborating on sensitive or classified material with identified FOCI coauthors is and always have been highly scrutinized activity. Title 32 CFR 117.11 is old. It goes back as far as DoD 5220.22-M in the '90s.
NISPM-33 Office of Science and Technology Policy efforts have been around since 2018 too or so (i am sooo old :/).
This appears to be a continuation of escalation of research-security, rather than a wholly unprecedented break from prior policy.
This could be understandable if some rationale was provided, but it's worse than that:
> Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned.
They've not even made it official. They're just randomly flagging.
Unclear arbitrary rules are the best way to rapidly induce a chilling effect.
If the enemy is the science happening then a lack of clarity is a highly effective tactic.
I genuinely don't understand how the titans of industry who support the Republican party don't understand that science is the foundation on which their entire fortunes are built.
Because science is an abstraction for ann incredibly wide range of human activity some of which benefits industrial applications and some that doesn’t.
They already have that fortune. So, they dont care and dont have to care. Moreover, someone else using science to create fortune is just another competitor and a threat to said fortune.
It benefited them in the past, that allowed them to build up their fortunes. Bill Gates, for example, is now a big holder of farmland. Science allows others to build up fortunes that challenge theirs, and hurts the stasis in which they become gilded aristocracy.
Lowering their taxes while burning everything to the ground benefits them now.
I'd argue that it doesn't actually benefit them now since they have more access to comfort than they could ever conceivably consume in their lifetime but I do absolutely agree that they think it benefits them because people who have accumulated wealth to that degree are highly fixated on making the number go up.
A less just, less stable society is far more likely to demonize and destroy billionaires. If you have such a high level of wealth the most rational action is charitability to insure the wealth of people who surround you to prevent instability and lower the chances you'll be the victim of a crime carried out due to desperation.
I imagine some of them think that the industrial sector could replace academic sector for foundational scientific researcher ("the free market solves all known problems"). I imagine others believe we are headed for a huge crash that affects the whole world, in a way that having a large academic scientific establishment will not help. Just go live in a bunker in NZ until society rebuilds itself, or whatever (Altman). I suspect a few of the folks are just looney, and don't think rationally (Thiel).
In my opinion, it’s been a problem for a long time. Sure, the titans of industry are very interested in the profitable applications of science, but they are generally less interested in investing in science, let alone the science itself. Science is seen as a cost center, and research is inherently risky. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, both were backed by monopolies (the Bell System was the phone monopoly, and Xerox had patents in xerography). The former was subject to special government rules due to AT&T’s constant anti-trust troubles, and the latter’s culture was heavily influenced by ARPA due to ex-ARPA people like Bob Taylor.
I am reminded by this quote from an email exchange between Bret Taylor and Alan Kay, published in 2017:
“As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions.
“It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact.
“It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.”
https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/
The titans of industry not understanding the importance of science beyond its profitable applications doesn’t surprise me at all.
Their fortunes are already built. They have shifted into defensive posture. They don't care about enabling more people to do discovery, that actually puts their position at great risk of disruption. What they want is to have very little innovation, and be able to capture the innovation that squeaks through.
if you "genuinely" want to understand, start considering the opposite - what is the easiest way to defend policy like this?
"science with outside helps the other side" - done.
Current administration sees US as losing its positions, so the main answer is to close the leaks that feed its opponents with US effort
I do genuinely unable to understand because even if the United States is descending into fascism or whatever, research is the last thing that an effective state wants to disrupt and scientists are the last group that an effective state wants to alienate.
I'm not just referring to restrictions on collaborations with foreign researchers, although I frankly do not see how that meaningfully reduces the ability of opponents to benefit from US research unless we kill open publishing as well. I'm talking about the last year and a half of destroying the ability of every basic researcher I know to work in a stable and predictable environment.
But it isn't required in order for them to get richer at this point.
This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership.
Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy.
See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many many years, to reward those who are in the favored status, and kill those who are disfavored. Decision making is random and capricious, just be sure to bribe those at the top with whatever favors you can.
See my top-level comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48238900
"In response to Inside Higher Ed’s questions about Science’s reporting, an NIH spokesperson emailed a statement Thursday that referenced just one set of grant programs: the Institutional Development Award (IDeA). NIH’s website says the awards go to Puerto Rico and 23 states that “historically have had low levels of NIH funding."
"The recent update to IDeA grantees was a clarification of longstanding policy, not a new directive,” the spokesperson said. “IDeA program funding has always been restricted to U.S.-based institutions and entities, with foreign institutions, non-domestic components of U.S. organizations, and all foreign components explicitly prohibited. This reflects Congress’s intent that IDeA funds be used exclusively for research capacity building within the United States—and specifically within eligible IDeA states and territories. NIH’s statement didn’t mention any other grant programs or answer multiple written questions.” [1]
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/05/22/r...
I do not know yet if this was NIH tricky wording to insidehighered.com, or if it is really restricted to this one small program.
The article says that these restrictions on research with a "foreign component" have been in place since at least 2003 but have only recently been clarified to include the researchers themselves.
It's actually more surprising to me that NIH and NASA research co-authored by non-Americans was supposedly not requiring scrutiny under the "foreign component" rules before this.
Many graduate students, faculty and post-docs are foreign citizens. So banning them from conducting research could potentially shut down big research projects. It is not surprising to me that the NIH and other funding agencies didn't want to do this. (It is also unsurprising to me that the current administration would have few qualms about disrupting research: we know they don't care, ask the cancer studies that had to be saved with private Foundation funding last year.)
Before you start throwing disruptive rules at projects, you generally want to know that there is a critical security concern for that specific work. Most research just gets published a few months later, so foreign interests can just read it in a journal and download the dataset.
It's interesting after reading briefly about this, but I think previously NIH funding was more permissive to directly awarding funds to foreign nationals/groups. But interestingly enough, China doesn't do the same for say foreign researchers trying to collaborate with chinese researchers. (Unless you already live there etc etc). So it was indeed asymmetrical.
I wonder when the trump administration will ever decide if it wants to Be isolationist or global imperialist.
They're not mutually exclusive
It's a decent bet that they are truly foolish. I've said this before. If the administration isn't acting as agents of a hostile nation trying to destroy America from within and scuttle its global leadership, they're doing a great job acting like it.
Short of them just turning a nuke on a large city, I can't think of better ways to harm America without fomenting an actual uprising than what they're doing to us today.
Autarky requires imperialism to grab the resources needed to be fully isolationist. So it's really both, until they hit the tipping point to become fully isolated. But this is something else. This is just the anti-science ignorentsia coming together with the xenophobic white supremacists to screw America. They say Trump can't bring people together, but he's done a great job of uniting all the worst people in the country.
Being isolationist or global imperialist implies articulating different strategies and values.
This is an administration that has neither of those.
The country elects an autocrat who fires experts and puts stooges in positions of power. Surprise-surprise that leads to idiotic policies, some of them mimicking the best of hits of Soviet Union.
I knew that most research had ties to government funding but it was only recently that I realized the scale of it. Along with the pullback of any government funding remotely resembling DEI, policies like the one described in the article wouldn't decimate research from my previous understanding. In terms of influence, it's now clear to me that the government controls anywhere between 75 to 99% of academic research. I feel foolish for believing all the details in subsequent papers from the research about why their work is necessary or important. It turns out, all of it is because the government requested it and really nothing else.
that's not entirely true, it is to some degree. by convention there have been a few buffer layers between actual grant allocation and naked politics. funding gets allocated to someplace like NSF, NIH, ONR or DARPA. Those organizations have directorates or area concentrations. Each directorate has a program manager (the terms vary based on org) who puts out request for proposals (grant applications).
The PMs are generally chosen from the sciences, and are responsible for authoring RFPs that meet strategic goals, and negotiate with the PIs (grant recipients) about terms and sizes and such.
So there are really two political realms, above the funding agency, and underneath, and its entire function is reconcile those worlds in a pretty vague way with a certain amount of autonomy given to the PM.
This isn't 100% great, but if you have good PM, some good science does get funding. While this seems like a lot of machinery, if you short circuit all of it, and have the presidents direct flunkies make funding decisions, that basically means that almost no real science gets done.
Xenophobia makes for poor science.
Well, we can't have have the non indoctrinated taking away our freedom. USA USA USA.
Can we take a step back and review the article and the underlying information? I am very much against any arbitrary and often unnecessary government interference. I also publish.
Lot's of weasel words.
This is not unprecedented. Restrictions tied to foreign collaboration are not new, NIH has done this as far back as 2018 if I recall. Yes, foreign research restrictions have escalated recently.
We have no official statement for either agencies. Collaborating on sensitive or classified material with identified FOCI coauthors is and always have been highly scrutinized activity. Title 32 CFR 117.11 is old. It goes back as far as DoD 5220.22-M in the '90s.
NISPM-33 Office of Science and Technology Policy efforts have been around since 2018 too or so (i am sooo old :/).
This appears to be a continuation of escalation of research-security, rather than a wholly unprecedented break from prior policy.
This happens when a country is preparing to go to war. It's what happened with nuclear research around the start of the Manhattan project.
The US is currently at war by all definitions except a declaration of war.