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A quick report from the world of science and academia.
Strange times indeed. Grant proposals my lab has been working on for months have disappeared. I’m seeing and hearing of several nodes in my network which are in federal positions just disappearing.
I also advise students who are building software products for clients, and of both clients that are government agencies, NASA and US Forest Service, today I have learned that one has essentially cancelled the project at its end stages and the other has been MIA for weeks (Ironically, the cancelled product was a system that would significantly improve the efficiency of a key NASA analysis workflow).
Today I see news that the NSF research experiences for undergraduates, which trains undergraduates to conduct real research and which I personally credit with making me into a scientist, is being shuttered across much of the country.
The grant I’m relying on to complete my PhD is on shaky ground according to people close to the problem, and I fear that funding cuts could affect the only backup plan I have, which is continuing working as a teaching assistant. (A luxurious $15k per year + tuition remission). The key expert on my committee in the tech I’m using is at NASA and I fear for the longevity of his position.
Feels like the government is just dismantling the world I’ve spent my life working to become a part of, and I can’t say that I quite understand why.
I’m in a hard science field with direct applications to societal benefits. I believe that what I’m working on is something many would recognize as important. And I also think there’s a pretty clear link between training people who do this sort of thing (STEM generally) and national wellbeing and competitiveness.
I could understand this all better if it was just Trump doing it alone. Sort of a lower class rebellion against the educated class. But what really has me confused is the fact that it’s being spearheaded by Musk and “tech” people.
When DOGE was first announced I thought, great! I deeply dislike Trump but maybe this will make it actually be quite worth it in the end if we can fix the behemoth of government and make it more efficient. Maybe the country will be able to start to build things again, like the tech guys say, it’s time to build! But what we got was quite different from that hopeful version of me had in mind. SV types spearheading the dismantling of the US institution of science. That was not on my bingo card! Why was this the first move of DOGE? Noah Smith argues that it’s an ideological purge rather than an attempt at efficiency, and I guess that makes sense. Ultimately science funding is quite small potatoes in the federal budget. So why is it among the first major target of the administration and DOGE?
I don’t want to catastrophize here. Science in the US is being weakened and downsized, and somewhat purged for touchy topics, but it’s not being destroyed. I’ll probably be able to pull through and finish my program, at least that’s my current hope.
Yet it seems quite obvious to me that these moves are going to significantly weaken the US against competitors such as China. Science has its flaws, but it’s still the secret sauce of western societies’ success and a key part of the economic engine. I’ve always thought of Elon Musk as a big picture, long term thinker who understands the role of science and technology in human advancement. So I’m at a loss for why he would direct focus onto weakening science in the US as among his first moves if his interest really is with the medium to long term success of the US.
There are four categories of government spending:
The first category should be defunded. The second category should spawn a discussion on what the purpose of government is. Is it to maximize global utility? At what point should we tradeoff between a citizen's wellbeing and another nation's citizen's wellbeing. The third category should spawn a both a practical debate on the tradeoffs between various alternatives (including returning the money to the taxpayers). The fourth we should keep funding.
However, I'm currently in favor of fast, indiscriminate cuts. We are dealing with a quickly metastasizing cancer and we need aggressive chemotherapy to address it. Chemotherapy so aggressive that yes, hair will fall out and the body will feel deathly sick. Once the cancer is removed, we can again discuss the latter three categories dispassionately and objectively, and fund areas that meet the bar.
The most important question for any such categorization system is where you put the 75% of spending that is the major entitlement programs. There is almost no point in even discussing whether one should approach the problem with fast, indiscriminate, chemotherapy-like measures or not without at least putting that one in a category.
Agreed. Something like half of the federal budget goes towards elder care, which populists usually recoil at when you talk about touching. But then they turn around and talk about the "bloated budget" and how ostensibly easy it would be to cut it, like its 99% subsidies to transsexuals or something.
This trend applies to state budgets too. Here in MA our largest line item will soon be home healthcare for the elderly. This program is a triple FU to young people between the wealth transfer from young to old, the way it keeps housing resources tied up in an inefficient manner, and the pitiful wages being paid out to the PCA workers themselves.
Cutting it, or even reducing its growth is politically impossible. The media coverage of even feeble efforts to rein in the spending has been viscious.
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