Trump fires NSF's oversight board
science.orgThis should feel personal to a lot of us. I have hopes of applying to the Small Business Innovation Research fund (https://seedfund.nsf.gov), a program that gives small companies a good chunk of money without taking equity, in order to encourage development of technologies deemed of national importance. I’d be curious if anyone here has tried applying in the last 18 months.
I was helping some people working on their phase I SBIR throughout the first year of Trump, and they often didn't know who to report to, as the firings were so relentless and pointless and completely disorganized. They got the highest possible rating upon completion, but have not been able to apply for Phase 2, so the project is effectively dead as they pursued other opportunities.
It's hard to imaging a more wasteful and destructive set of actions over the past year, except just shutting it all down. Money was still spent, less than usual, but in a way that ensured it was squandered, and that seeds that were planted could not grow.
However, it was apparently reauthorized on April 14, as my NIH newsletter this week linked to this April 21 announcement that SBIRs and STTRs are back!
https://grants.nih.gov/news-events/nih-extramural-nexus-news...
Im not getting how trump can fire anyone? Does he have the authority to do that?
The US government is not currently in a state of following the law or constitution. People get fired, and if authority was not there, a lawsuit 9-18 months later might rectify it, and in the meantime the fired employee has moved on. DOGE cuts were extreme, capricious, and the only rhyme or reason was to try to hyperpoliticize the science to meet what people were guessing that Trump would want. On the grant side, they cut grants in an explictly racist way, according to a Reagan-appointed Republican judge that ruled aganist them way back in June of 2025; what was the remedy? Merely to reinstate the grants.
Who is going to stop a lawless Trump administration? Eventually the courts, at least at the lower levers. The Supreme Court is hyper political and continue making politically-driven rewriting of law, at least as much as the public lets them. Congress has completely abdicated their constitutionally mandated roles, such as being in charge of taxation and tariffs. The government has been completely taken over by a single party, and that party is burning the Constitution and its principles.
As for another example of gross mismanagment, of many many many more I could go on about, the National Cancer Institute's review board was completely disbanded, and put under the National Science Foundation where reviewers have less cancer experience, for example. To a pointy-haired-boss, that might sound like a cost savings measure but it's still the same cost, you just have less experienced people doing reviews.
All this is happening and getting reported on, but it doesn't get attention because every day is pure chaos filled with outrageous violations of what used to be normal activity in the government. And its all covered up by the most popular mainstream news sources, and there's a large body of the US population that has been completely brainwashed and literally refuses to accept any criticism of the Trump administration, outright rejected facts because it hurts their feelings.
I'm still not quite sure how anybody is required to follow an order of someone that doesn't have authority to do what they're doing.
What happens if you refuse to be let go by someone that doesn't have authority?
You're arrested for trespassing. Remember, the president also effectively controls the security team, the DoJ and the military. It's just a king again, and you're asking the sane question:
"Why would anyone follow the mad, old king?"
And the answer is around the same:
"Because he will hurt you."
> You're arrested for trespassing
By who? and on what grounds?
The only people that have authority to fire are the people that are heads of that institution.
The president has no connection to this institution. He does not have any power in this context. His power stops at the federal level and even then his power is limited. Nobody has to abide by his orders. Yet, there are plenty of people doing so. Im not understanding why.
If he doesn't have authority to do what he is doing, nobody has to follow any of his actions. In fact I think there is an obligation not to follow the orders of a criminal.
This is the "how can she slap?" style of reasoning.
I feel like you didn't really read my comment.
People on this site would literally say "actually you can't do this" as they're being taken away to somewhere to never be heard from again.
Its an astounding level of naivity from people who have undoubtedly read textbooks filled cover to cover with a human history almost entirely consisting of subjugation through violence.
Is there any evidence of this happening? Sources.
I read your comment and im not seeing it. Show me the evidence of this happening, because this sounds like wild speculation.
The president does not have the right to make trade deals or tariff. Trump has tariffed basically the entire world, and is now paying that money back to... The family of his cabinet.
The president does not have the power to declare war. We are at war with Iran.
The president does not have the power to unilaterally dissolve agencies or reproportion or refuse their funds or budgeting. Yet the department of education is being shuttered and numerous agencies are in ongoing lawsuits for DOGE.
It is illegal for the president to use the office for advertisement or personal gain. Yet he openly allows bribes to advertise products from the white House, creates cryptocurrencies, gives high-level positions to family.
The president is not allowed to direct an angry crowd to the capital with the express intent to stop the wheels of democracy and prevent the peaceful transfer of power. And yet.
The DOJ announced they will not prosecute the predators from Epstein's list after explicitly violating a law from Congress repeatedly for months on disclosing related files.
Congress is too afraid of his power to hurt their reelection. 33% of SCOTUS are his picks, with another 33% being aligned with the party, creating a supermajority. We've seen the majority of military leadership replaced this year. We've seen a plurality of agencies institute loyalty tests, most importantly the FBI. ICE has been repurposed to a private military / secret police.
You seem to believe there is some divine mandate that enforces the constitution. That the president must follow the rules.
There is not. He is not. He got away with it and continues to get away with it. We no longer live in a polite, rule-based society.
Because, fundamentally, might makes right. And the president of the United States has consolidated enough power that there is basically nothing to stop them but how far their cronies are willing to go.
So why can he do this? Because he can. And there's nothing you can do about it. And if you fight back there will be repercussions.
> So why can he do this? Because he can. And there's nothing you can do about it. And if you fight back there will be repercussions.
LOL. We'll see. You sound like you want this to happen and you dont care about the outcome. Good luck with that.
My alignment is to the common good. Im happy to work against a criminal that has no basis for these actions. We'll catch up, sooner rather than later.
Anyone who can read the above and interpret it as charitable to the administration cannot possibly be a serious person.
You asked a question and I told you the actual answer.
If you're presented with the option to resist and force their hand so you can try to challenge it legally, please do, I respect that idea. But not everyone is willing to make personal sacrifices like that. Of course, everyone should still make sure to vote.
But at the end of the day, we only have representation because of the implied threat of violence if we didn't. And it very much seems like that threat being implied is not effective in this administration.
> If you're presented with the option to resist and force their hand so you can try to challenge it legally, please do, I respect that idea. But not everyone is willing to make personal sacrifices like that. Of course, everyone should still make sure to vote.
I dont see this as us forcing their hand.
I see this as them forcing our hand. We have all the power and they have none.
The longer we wait to get involved to make the world a better place, the worse it will get, for you and the people you love.
There really isn't a choice any more.
They flip a bit in the DB that makes you an ex exmployee and your badge doesn’t work, you can’t login to systems, your emails don’t work, etc.
It’s not that hard.
To prevent it, someone in IT would have to actively prevent bosses from having those kind of admin privileges which in itself would be illegal.
Who would do that? and by what authority?
Look at the body cam footage of the armed takeover of the Institute of Peace on youtube, or here's a politico article:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/doge-institute-peac...
Or Musk "deputizing" his private security guards to be federal agents for his purposes:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
A new department head gets installed, DOGE selects people to fire, has complete access to IT etc.
What's not to understand? The government was completely in the control of Trump and DOGE. What type of "authority" do you think did not exist? This is the standard authoritarian playbook that's played out many times over the world over the past century, it's not hard to understand.
Thats a federal institution. Is this institution federal?
Edit: thanks for the links. You can tell they are operating without authority. I had been totally unaware of this
Maybe go back and edit or delete your other ignorant comments now that you’ve actually learned something. You sat here derailing the conversation for an hour because you lacked the motivation to look up facts.
I don't need to delete my comments. The stand the way they are. Im comfortable with making mistakes and being wrong. And btw its not a derailment to ask questions related to jurisprudence of this administration's criminal actions.
I agree with this attitude and think it's helpful.
In the modern age there's no one set of things that people have seen, no common base of knowledge, and the process in this comment thread was super informative in the sense that if I had provided some links to start, a lot of confusion could have been avoided.
Maybe you need to be less comfortable with being wrong and educate yourself about politics more before you comment a dozen times with misinformation then claim you’re totally innocent and were just “asking questions”. That shit is so common amongst trump supporters. Not sayings you are but you’re playing the same game as they do.
I was transparent in where I was at. You are making statements based on nothing. We are all human, we make mistakes, your the one with the problem if you cant see this.
You almost seem proud of your ignorance, maybe you should be learning something from this rather than just being fine with your hour of arguing misinformation. If you are truly not ashamed of bring ignorant and spreading FUD because of that, then I guess there’s nothing more for me to say to such a person. You didn’t just make a mistake, you sat here and doubled and tripled and quadrupled down for an hour while people tried to correct you over and over and you simply didn’t even look up anything, only coming to your realization after someone fed you a link.
This is why they say lies go round the world before the truth gets its shoes on.
I'm in academia, so NSF cuts are very misguided in my view, and hopefully will be reversed in the next administration. But the first two sentences of your post immediately contradict one another. You say America is in a state of lawlessness, and then immediately describe the American legal system. So that's exactly what following the law in America has always meant. America is a common law country, not a civil law country... Litigation and court precedent is how laws are tested and affirmed in common law countries, unlike civil law countries. So that legal system isn't lawlessness, its the way law works in common law countries, which America is one of the few not using the Napoleonic code.
War can only legally be declared by Congress. America is currently at war with Iran. Is the current war legal?
I would say no. That doesn't mean it's not happening, just that the law was ignored.
well that specific scenario is its own mess of competing authorities. Theoretically, the president is commander in chief, so he controls the armed forces. But congress has the authority to make a declaration of war. But the president as commander in chief can direct troops for national security or other purposes. Military action can happen without a war being declared. It becomes a bit of a game of semantics because the argument is that war is different than military action, then the legal interpretations of words and whatnot becomes the focus. Courts tend to not really go too deep into this issue, I suppose. It's something of a gray area. So the counterpoint is that the law wasn't ignored, it was interpreted differently, because of this concept that military action isn't necessarily war. Courts usually will spell out these interpretations more clearly and refine the law, but when it comes to war, I think they don't want to litigate that too quickly.
Oh good God, I can't listen to this intellectual rot a single second longer.
This is not a gray area unless you're intentionally pretending to be an idiot to steal power.
Congress is the only branch allowed to declare war. Taking targeted military actions against another country repeatedly on their own soil with no provocation is not a "special military action" it's a fucking war.
It's not funny or coy or clever to pretend otherwise. The intent is abundantly clear and it is abundantly clear it is being violated.
All right, let's say that the current war isn't legal, and neither was Korea, Viet Nam, Grenada, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Libya. It's not what the Constitution says, but it's been that way for a long time, across multiple presidents of both parties.
The current setup has gone from "only Congress can declare war, requiring a majority of Congress" to "Congress has to pass a War Powers resolution to stop the president from going to war, with enough of a majority that they can override a presidential veto". That is a massively different standard, and was done without amending the Constitution.
So I agree with you. Just don't try to make this something special to Trump, because it's not.
I got "rated limited" by HN after 2 whole comments. Rediculous.
Anyway, I agree with you fully. And I firmly believe the world would be a better place had we actually weighed each of those conflicts and voted to officially declare war or not. Those presidents knew what they were doing and should be tried for it.
Just like Trump should be today.
He's not special, but I'm not sure I can bring LBJ or Nixon back from the dead and stop the Vietnam War. Meanwhile this is an active conflict that can be stopped now.
Though I would argue that, yes, this time is different. At least those pretended to have a justification.
Im not quite sure what you are getting at. Its true we are a common law country, but then what? Finish your thought.
People like you sanewashing the actions of this admin are a major part of the problem.
Even if this were how the system was designed, it is time to acknowledge that it is fundamentally broken and needs change. It is mind boggling that the response to these issues amounts to WONTFIX.
The change starts with us not follow the orders and actions of a criminal.
SBIRs have been mucked up since last fall. The program lapsed and it just got reauthorized for certain departments. Without that reauth only those who had phase 1's could apply for phase 2's.
Hey got any details about how to apply for a phase 2 if you had a successful phase 1? I know a group that would be very interested...
It depends - some agencies you can apply directly without doing a phase 1. Others you need talk to the TPOC of the Phase 1 to find out the process or you have to be invited.
In the current environment - I would contact the TPOC - it could just be stuck in limbo.
many thanks!
I know several people who have. They cannot even get awarded funds right now. All funding is being directed to grant mills.
some of us are also scientists who hold NSF grants (and hope to continue to hold them...) :)
There’s only one reason to get rid of all the smart people, shenanigans are afoot.
Dr. Jessica Knurick has done a great job IMO breaking down how authoritarian governments co-opt science to their own ends and end up destroying it in the process. Here is one such article, https://open.substack.com/pub/drjessicaknurick/p/the-authori..., but she has lots of posts and short form videos explaining the topic.
Another example, aside from Lysenko, is Elena Ceausescu. Basically used her position of power as wife of the authoritarian figurehead to enforce her own version of scientific reality.
This quote in particular struck me as way out there.
“Maybe one way to say it from the administration's perspective,” Stassun says, “is that this group of presidential appointees was advising the Congress to not follow the president's wishes."
its very transparent what they're doing
they're almost certainly going to replace all the board memebers with political loyalists. the board members served six year terms specifically so they'd span multiple administrations and stay independent.
firing them all at once lets you stack the entire board with people. it's not about making science better, it's about removing the people who'd say no.
That works... for the duration of this administration. Given the precedent, though, there's no reason for the next president not to fire all the new ones and replace them again.
The current administration does not appear to care at all about what the next administration will do, which should terrify us. It's like a kidnapper who doesn't seem concerned with you seeing their face.
So is this a 2400% reduction in the number of NSF board members?
That would leave one remaining member lol. I guess it would be infinity percentage reduction according to his math.
This is a reference to RJK Jr's pronouncement that Trump has a "different way of calculating percentages". Seems apt to me in this context.
Very much another "Emperor's New Clothes" situation.
If the pathology was entirely within his own privately-owned company that'd be one thing, but Americans are going to continue to get hurt because of it.
It's just own-goal after owl-goal with this administration.
Federal research funding (NIH, NSF, etc) becomes economic power. I personally think the government should get a return on their research dollars but basically federally funded research has been given away to private companies since 1980 [1]. Interestingly, the Bayh-Dole Act was signed by president Jimmy Carter in a lame duck Congress after Ronald Reagan's election victory.
Federal research (via DARPA) is what gave the US so much control over the Internet. NIH funding into drugs gives US pharma companies a lot of power. mRNA technology was the product of decades of government-funded research. The US can (and does) wield that power to extract concessions from other countries.
In a little over a year American power on the world stage has been eroded, even destroyed, to a scale that I never would've predicted or thought could happen so quickly.
This is what I find so crazy: these moves are beyond performative politics. It's actually destructive to American power and corporate profits. Culture wars are meant to distract people while the government transfers money from government coffers to the wealthy. Culture wars aren't meant to be the goal. We're in a new era here.
And of course it's going to be China who fills the research void.
Well done, everybody, the system works.
>It's just own-goal after owl-goal with this administration.
The presumes that "Trump Administration" and "United States of America" are the same thing. The reality is that a Venn diagram of them would be two circles that barely touch. Is it really an "own goal" if you gravely injure your victim while you rob them?
No. They are 100% overlapping because democracy. Even if you didn't vote for Trump, you are part of the United States of America that voted for the Trump Administration to represent it.
Until the Trump Administration is replaced, the "Trump Administration" _is_ The United States of America.
It's certainly not what an increasing amount of the population want to be true, but facts can be sticky like that.
Here's hoping that democracy continues...
I have colleagues and friends around the world who are done with Americans over the lack of meaningful political action
It's not just American right wingers turning off the world. The world sees how unexceptionally gen pop reacts in the US as our local politics destabilize everyone
America is a normal country now. All the WW2 heroes are dead and soldiers since were imperialist aggressors. We don't dare worship Vietnam vets or middle east vets as those conflicts were not so valorous. That we have to point back so far to feel good about our history says a lot about how long America has been falling apart.
For decades Academics been saying the decline of America started in the 1950s and has accelerated only as countries we bombed to hell to stay ahead normalized. I tend to agree.
America has really not been that great this whole time. But like every other nation, Americans been propagandized by each other to believe their American made bullshit don't stink.
In my career I have had endless obligations and expectations put on me by peers not out there protesting to cover my healthcare. IMO that's says it all about much Americans care about each other.
To billions of exploited sweatshop workers the average American is not much better than the billionaires.
Well thanks for joining up to post this. Are we supposed to worship people to be a good country?
> For decades Academics been saying the decline of America started in the 1950s and has accelerated
What academics? Links please.
> To billions of exploited sweatshop workers the average American is not much better than the billionaires.
Nor are the Europeans or East Asians.
> In my career I have had endless obligations and expectations put on me by peers not out there protesting to cover my healthcare. IMO that's says it all about much Americans care about each other.
What?
> To billions of exploited sweatshop workers the average American is not much better than the billionaires.
Then it's extremely important to prevent those sweatshop workers from immigrating to the US (legally or illegally), where they and their natural-born citizen descendants will vote against the interests of the average American.
National Science Board. Not the entire NSF.
Good catch. I've replaced the title above with the article's HTML doc title.
(Submitted title was "Trump fires all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation", which was probably just an attempt to fit HN's 80 char limit that had collateral damage)
Hi dang, I sent you an email about all my comments showing up as dead and another problem, could you take a look when you get a chance?
Thanks.
I didn't see your email for some reason, but we banned your account around the time that you posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47725717, which is obviously not ok to post to HN, regardless of who you're talking about.
I’m trying to understand what rationale could be behind this decision. America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community. All the hyperscaler could build up because the engineers felt good in America. This might not kill it, but it risks it.
What could be the reason he’s doing it, how does he benefit from it, or thinks he benefits from it?
Perhaps you answered your own question. I think our confusion sometimes stems from assuming those in charge must want to benefit that which they are charged with stewarding.
Seems pretty clear to me.
It A) gives business funding that would otherwise have to give up equity to VCS or sell to PE or whatever other forms of private, for-profit funding. And B) takes away money that could go to the military or ICE or other programs that could be used to concentrate Trumps power or aggrandizement.
> America has grandly benefitted hugely from their scientific community.
Has Trump and his friend benefited from this program? No? Then this doesn't matter.
Thanks
the honest answer is it's not really about science at all; its about removing independent oversight.
the "benefit" from his perspective is the same playbook trump admin has been running across every federal agency, he wants to replace independent experts with loyalists, remove checks on executive power, and redirect spending toward admin priorities.
the board members served six year terms specifically to insulate science funding from political cycles. that's a feature to everyone else and a bug to this administration.
Thank you
What are the equivalent institutions in China? Do they do open houses?
I disagree with this move, but the people who lost these positions were in temporary advisory roles. This isn’t a career job for them.
The article says 8 members are replaced every 2 years and the terms are 6 years long. Between 1/4 or 1/2 of them would have been replaced during this presidency, and whoever gets placed now will start to be replaced by the next administration.
As for China: They’re not known for having independent advisory committees overseeing government decisions. They’re definitely not known for inviting foreigners to come join their government to oversee their spending. So if you’re implying these people are at risk of going to China to serve the same role, that’s way off the mark.
I expect this will have downstream effects on more careers than just these 24 people.
> As for China: They’re not known for having independent advisory
They’re not. But I’m currently pessimistic about America’s ability to maintain technological leadership beyond the early 2030s and I’d like to see what the alternatives are. (I’ve been impressed by what India is doing, both in research and commercialization, as I have with Ukraine. I’ve been impressed by EU research.)
I don’t share your optimism that these positions will be replaced. I don’t know why you think they would be.
Oh they’ll be replaced, by toadies and GOP Youth interns looking for a salary and resume boost
China absolutely has a national academy of sciences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Academy_of_Sciences
They have and do oversight, generally with scary commie sounding names but presumably the same day-to-day as the NSF.
The article talked about the board pushing back on political decisions. Do you really think Chinese oversight boards push back on political officers? Do they take to the press to lambast Xi?
Politics are different in China, certainly nobody is going to the press.
But they also have a culture where lots of politicians have technical degrees, and they've gotten better results as far as government and science. You don't have the problem of "global warming isn't real for cultural reasons" in the first place.
The Soviet Union had great math & science research infrastructure and leaders who were science and technologists. They still had political pressure that conflicted with science.
Why would we think China is any different?
You don't have to be convinced. I'm in Wuhan right now and self-driving cars and autonomous delivery vehicles are pretty common. They have nice electric Buicks here because the local org that worked with GM for the brand has surpassed GM at building Buicks.
The US of 2026 has specific ideological pressure against scientists that is not nearly as bad as the cultural revolution but in the same direction.
It's not about which science would be good for Americans, or what would be the most effective directions to pursue, which way is best to minimize corruption while we invest in things that benefit everyone -- it's about the existence of particular scientific facts being politically incorrect therefore they must be suppressed, and additionally these scientists are effeminate elites and we hate them.
China does not have these attitudes in 2026. They have problems and are not perfect but they're probably better on "give scientists the ability to influence policy".
My priors are that you can’t remove political pressure on science _anywhere_ it’s a natural outcome of humans doing science. And I’m responding to the specific idea that technical political leaders are immune from that. History shows that’s not true.
Right, terrible example. China is the largest emitter of global warming gases and it’s growing. They don’t care for economic reasons, just like other nations don’t care for cultural reasons. Compared to democracies though, China also has added internal, domestically approved genocides, jail time for Hong Kong dissidents, IP theft, external influence ops, and are currently rattling to destroy a neighboring democracy. But I’m glad to hear their middle managers are actually technical. That’s good news for everyone.
Cumulative Historical Emissions (1850–Present):
US ~537Gt
China ~312Gt
>The article says 8 members are replaced every 2 years and the terms are 6 years long.
So it's similar to working for the UN or IAEA where most jobs are fixed term.
Oh so only 1/2 to 3/4 of them were terminated far outside of norms. I guess only 50%-75% corrupt anti-science activity is totally ok.
Why not find out and let us know? You’re implying an answer without knowing what it is
China is the only hope
It would be quite amazing if people in the US realized how much brain went to China in the last 16 months. I am a govie (contractor) and just what I know alone is …
What do you know?
Why do you ask? Do you assume those fired NSF workers want to go work in China now? Or that China manages its domestic variant of the NSF better and accepts people critical of the CCP ideology?
Our entire economy is built on scientific advancement and advantage. The dismantling of everything to maximize executive power in order to maximize grift and corruption will have effects for decades.
This is the American version of the cultural revolution. We’re pushing people to be plumbers instead of scientists.
> Our entire economy is built on scientific advancement and advantage.
Devil's advocate: Only productivity gains, not the entire economy, are built on scientific advancement. But wages haven't grown with productivity in half a century, so the loss of scientific advantage won't affect wage growth, therefore the economy will be fine.
(I know it's not convincing, but it's the best I can conjure.)
Seems like your advocacy of the devil still supports the parent comment’s speculation of this being a cultural revolution appealing to workers who have been “left behind” (e.g. coal miners who didn’t learn how to code).
>We’re pushing people to be plumbers instead of scientists.
What?! Who's doing that? Plumbers and scientists are not interchangeable cogs. Big brain scientist won't make good plumbers and plumbers won't make good scientists.
And plus, so what if they would be doing it? Why do you make it sound like being a plumber is like being a leper somehow? The world needs plumbers too and they make a pretty penny. See that US warship that wasn't combat effective anymore because the shitters broke. You can't win a war with starbucks sipping scientists, you still need roughnecks willing to get their hands dirty, fight, build and fix things.
Maybe you’ve been in a coma, but there’s this dude in the White House that has imploded science funding. We’ve probably displaced a quarter million people directly, and universities are attriting more as foreign students aren’t coming.
The copium offered is “go become a tradesman”. It’s just pandering nonsense offered to keep smug old people living in 1970 in line.
>The copium offered is “go become a tradesman”. It’s just pandering nonsense offered to keep smug old people living in 1970 in line.
Yeah sure, because every american/westerner can become a 500k/year tech bro, no matter their IQ, and we don't need domestic skilled trained plumbers because democrats can replace them with a gorillion imported illegals.
Who pays the plumbers, bro? Who trains them?
1. The people who call the plumber
2. Ausbildung
I would tend to assume that the people overseeing the NSF are accomplished scientists. China has been more than happy to recruit those for at least the past couple decades. That said, I doubt this move negatively impacts their careers so I don't expect this alone would motivate any of them to leave the country. Other things might though.
> Or that China manages its domestic variant of the NSF better
Prior to Trump probably yes. Post Trump almost certainly.
> and accepts people critical of the CCP ideology?
Obviously not. But why are you assuming that those removed from their posts were vocal critics of the CCP?
Most people in china are not members of the CPC. And yes, they clearly are more competent.
And so Vannevar Bush’s legacy slips away from us all…
Interesting history. From the wiki:
"A Senate bill was introduced in February 1947 to create the National Science Foundation (NSF) to replace the OSRD. This bill favored most of the features advocated by Bush, including the controversial administration by an autonomous scientific board. The bill passed the Senate and the House, but was pocket vetoed by Truman on August 6, on the grounds that the administrative officers were not properly responsible to either the president or Congress."
Also mentions the preceding organization OSRD (Office of Scientific Research & Development) and that they had tried to exempt it from conflict of interest regulations.
Time for scientists to return to the Invisible College: a guild of science that keeps their research to themselves for the benefit of their own membership.
Sounds like a industry wide union.
From the administration's perspective, why was this a good idea? I'm scouring the web but I'm struggling to find a steel-man. My best guess is that this is to control where the research dollars go which I'll summarize below, but wondering if anyone has better ideas.
From what I've read it seems the administration is very anti-social sciences, and very pro nuclear, AI, quantum. Thought from what I can tell most of the funding already goes to the hard sciences [1]. There were cuts proposed over the last few months but they were shut down by congress [2]. I suppose by cutting off the head of the org it's an easier fight to cut funding FY2027?
[1]: https://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/all
[2]: https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2026/04/nsf-lags-trump-proposes-...
An expected part of Project 2025[1]. The end goal is to install Trump allies as heads of every agency that matters to their agenda, and to shut down all agencies that don't. This way by end of 2028 there is nobody left in government who can speak out against what they're going to do next.
If you have not read Project 2025 in a while, I encourage you to revisit it[2]. In summary it's a point-by-point plan to take over the entire federal government in order to enforce a single political ideology and suppress dissent. You can track[3] it as it gets implemented.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 [2] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade... [3] https://www.project2025.observer/en
Trying to find a silver lining and think positively...
Will a future administration have an opportunity to build something new and better from scratch which would not have been possible due to institutional resistance before it was all burnt down?
If we're really, really lucky.
Destroying institutions is one heck of a lot easier than building new ones.
It's not even about rebuilding. Some things when destroyed can never be recreated, like trust, oceanliners, or the practice of Dísting. The initial event of destruction creates an expectation that it will happen again. Once it does happen the process accelerates itself until the full expectation is that whatever thing, concept, or practice can never exist again as anything more than a fleeting revival.
Institutional longevity is what differs developed countries from failed or failing states. Whole point of having institutions is to make sure rules dont change every 4, 6 or 8 years.
Some amazing new administration can come up with tons of good ideas, but they will only become real institutions if they survive for decades to come. Institutions are not just government agencies, law or people. Tradition and longevity are probably even more important.
Do you want to build a company in a country where all the law, tax code and regulations are replaced with amazing but brand new one every 4 years? Probably not?
And changing rules are much worse for scientific research because most often it span decades or even generations of scientists. People will just choose to go live and work somewhere more stable.
That’s the best case scenario - requires a lot of people currently involved in this to be jailed or executed before we can even begin to move on though. I’m not super optimistic.
Let us not say executed.
It's a harsher punishment that they live to see the rebuild of what they turned to ash.
Let us not hesitate to seek justice.
I fear that the capture of American media and the DOJ is too far gone, and that following through with proper punishment for the naked corruption of this regime would be unpopular. “Let bygones be bygones.”
Oh, to live in an America where white-collar crimes and financial treason were actually punished…
I'm very much with you for "punish" and "jail", but if you are insisting on execution like commenters upthread, we will part ways there.
The punishment for treason can be death. Risking the lives of American intelligence agents and military operators for financial gain is plainly treasonous. I am not convinced beyond a doubt that that has not happened in this government.
With your focus on death as punishment — the day after an apparent assassination attempt no less — it seems we have less in common than I supposed. I’m not with you after all.
And if we find out that at least one of these assassination attempts was staged as a part of the greater kayfabe, what would your reaction be then?
Aside from the point, my support for judicial executions due to treason against the United States is not support for extrajudicial executions, like the ones that ICE has been carrying out. I think Italy and Romania are decent examples of countries becoming better off after executing their authoritarian figureheads, although I don’t think that there are grounds for that in the United States yet.
Execution != assassination, as the latter has a lot less success in creating real, long-lasting change than the former.
Neither the Butler, Pennsylvania nor the White House Correspondents Dinner incidents were staged — that's conspiracy theory nutter nonsense.
(Not that there aren't elements within the Trump administration who might contemplate a false flag operation, but it will be obvious if they try it because they aren't clever enough to pull it off.)
Furthermore, both Ceaucescu and Mussolini were extrajudicial executions.
Nixon is a better precedent for the USA because it demonstrates that we're already capable of ejecting a criminal president without bloodshed. It wasn't a perfect process (the Ford pardon was terrible) but in the end Nixon still lost power.
Describing the political machinations of institutional academia as a category where summary executions are applicable is the type of thing that led to the Soviet Union instituting Lysenkoism for decades and other profoundly anti-intellectual absurdities since all the academics were just randomly killed for a generation. We don't need that. That's hysterical emotional overreaction which is the opposite of rational academic behavior. The NSF will just get funding in the next administration, this isn't the end of the world. If they just hasten the grant awarding pipeline in 2028, it'll be a blip in the scheme of things lol, these grants can be like 5 years long. You're talking about a field of very smart people, everyone is just being more frugal and putting off big purchases and doing research that isn't expensive and things aren't blowing up lol.
Even if so, it doesn't matter, because 4 - 8 years later it'll be reversed again. And because it takes longer to rebuild than dismantle, it will never be the same.
This is the cycle now. 180 degree turns in policy every 4 or 8 years. There's no long term planning.
China and Russia must be enjoying this.
every headline coming out of america is so god damn nauseating. empire on rapid collapse.
I suppose that's a very effective way to stem the tide of pesky educated libruls. Not so smart now, are you?
Just another day of America getting exactly what they twice voted for.
Since science.org has made all their content inaccessible behind cloudflare here is a mirror of the article text, http://pastie.org/p/3coKAFruPfdJjw5s2H9tbX/raw
There are so many bots/trolls on HN now, it's crazy.
How do you 100% determine a comment is form a bot/troll?
100%? You don't.
But when you see people confidently stating unreasonable things in short posts, it's a common tip-off for a bot/shill/zealot/troll. When they assume a starting point that is two standard deviations out of most peoples' Overton Window, and they don't defend it, just kind of "Of course X is true", that's someone who is blasting propaganda, not having a reasonable discussion. They just want to say "X is true" enough times that people start to believe it.
As I said, that's not 100%. For any individual instance, you can look at their posting history. But for a comment section, when you start to see such posts taking over more and more of the discussion, you can say that the discussion has been taken over with very close to 100% certainty, even if you can't be certain about any one post.
Simple. He just finds a comment he doesn’t like and attributes it to a bot because surely all real people agree with him and his infallible sense of things.
Are they initiating or continuing curious discussion? If so, then by all means they are following the most important HN guidelines so nothing can really be done.
Unfortunately there's a large grey zone (IMO) between what the rules forbid and curious discussion that's productive. Those that seek to game the system don't generally stand out as bad actors since that would hinder their goals.
Bot/AI generated comments are specifically against the guidelines (and also implicitly, given the fact that bots aren't curious).
Lots of comments here where people simply refuse to understand the mission:
Trump's goal is to destroy the United States of America at the behest of his foreign handlers.
You can deny it all you want, but it is the only thing that matches up with all his actions.
Every American here has allowed the quickest decline of a superpower in history. The damage to our country is irreparable and going to result in a worse life for generations to come
Sadly, while there is plenty of onus on the average American Joe/Jane/Joaquin Phoenix, this is also the result of systematic defunding of education streams, increasing disparities, and big propaganda over the last 50 years.
Best I could tell, we were already there. DJT is simply a symptom. He’s what results after too many years of misrepresentation.
He gets blamed for being the cause because those who actually led us into the decline don’t want to own their role in the mess. The fact that he got reelected is proof the status quo had lost the plot.
Sure, he’s a scoundrel, but ultimately he’s a scapegoat.
Agree and disagree.
The US has been on a downward spiral towards 'this' for a long time, but Trump literally self-selected to be the face of the intentional rapid acceleration of it.
Calling Trump a scapegoat is incredibly kind to his intentional destruction and, to still put it far too kindly, "vindictive nastiness in attempt to profit" (which, I think, also depressingly describes what has become of the US tech sector).
If the status quo system was doing their job(s) there would be no DJT in the WH. Full stop. Not once. Certainly not twice.
But rather than own their failure, they work - hard - the “OMG it’s all his fault” narrative (read: deflection and distraction) and it works. So well, they keep doing it.
But repetition of a lie doesn’t make it true. Concession to buy into a lie, also doesn’t make it true.
No doubt DJT has his flaws. But he’s still a scapegoat. Why? Because no one is asking “How did we get here?”
That's a good point. Thanks for making it clearly.
Essentially the US cannot improve it's current direction unless it can have an honest discussion about how it got so bad in the first place, with all administrations under the spotlight for failing to address the decline.
Ironically, it's accelerating away from honesty.
Yes. In short, Trump didn’t just happen. Plenty of incompetence and negligence preceded him. The red carpet was rolled out. The engine was primed. If it wasn’t Trump it would have been someone else. That’s not his fault.
"How did we get here?" - No one really wants to ask this question. We've had decades of tax policy, trade policy, health policy that created tremendous wealth inequality.
In Q4 2016 (upon Trump's first election), the bottom 50% owned just $1 trillion out of $90 trillion.
The system failed them. Trump is a populist.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distr...
Odd, why can't Trump be both cause and symptom?
Surely, he has made things uniquely worse, and in ways that would not have happened without him.
The undercurrent of dissatisfaction which led to his popularity was already there. And has been for decades. Do you blame the drought, the dry kindling, or the match?
You don't get the wildfire without all three, and anyone paying attention can observe the looming danger and the inevitability of ignition. Who lights the match matters. But is only a small part of the contributing circumstances.
Trump is at least in part directly responsible for said undercurrent of dissatisfaction. He's been part of the wealthy scammer class for decades, providing the drought, kindling and matches. The fact that he's the most visible of the bunch and popular thanks to being on TV doesn't remove his deep connections to the root cause.
The wealthy have been manufacturing these issues for decades now by buying up the entire media apparatus and gutting systems to the bone so that they can squeeze out a bit more blood to drink.
> The wealthy have been manufacturing these issues for decades now by buying up the entire media apparatus and gutting systems to the bone so that they can squeeze out a bit more blood to drink.
This is the stronger part of that statement to me. More than individual responsibility. Collective responsibility of the powerful. It seems to me that there's plenty of blame to spread around, which doesn't negate any of it. I even see ways democrats have contributed by, for example, conspiring to exclude Bernie Sanders who plays to the same feelings of dissatisfaction as Trump, but in a different way. More build it better than burn it down.
Though I think that's what Trump sees himself as doing as well. People don't have to agree - I appreciate some things he's done and recoil in horror at others. But similarly for democrats. I was very displeased with Obama for renewing the Patriot Act while appreciating the difficult compromise of the Affordable Care Act.
Historically, US politics has been quite volatile. The period between WWII and the 90s was unusually stable and prosperous. Which I tend to credit having bombed the rest of the world's manufacturing capacity to smithereens and the recovery period for, mostly. I think we're entering a more volatile period, but who knows?
I assign a fair portion of the blame to a consciously self-serving, opportunistic match, yes.
Do what you gotta do to feel good. But giving a free pass to all the other contributors - the ones loudest about who is to blame - is foolish, at best. To each their own.
Put another way, in terms of the political status quo, what changed between his two term? Hint: not a damn thing. That ain’t his fault. Your bias has blinded you
The American voter openly and obviously said "wow. Despite the numerous management failures, more of that please?"
People didn't vote for change, they voted for the same thing they had 4 years ago that changed absolutely nothing.
To quote Vaas from Far Cry 3: Do you know what the definition of insanity is?
Exactly. They were so frustrated and disgusted by the status quo political mess that Don was still a viable choice. Twice!!!
And how did the system respond after the first win? It didn’t. It was same ol’ same ol’, and look what the led to.
Blaming Trump for the cluster fuck mess that gave him the opportunity to run and win… Sorry. Absolutely not his fault.
I don’t like the guy. But I’m not going to be foolish and blame him for winning. That’s not his fault.
Yes, Trump is a figurehead for 'everything wing with the US' but he's become that figurehead by being incredibly and publicly active in the promotion of 'everything wrong with the US'. He deserves blame well above those who voted for him.
The superpower built on the US dollar fiat monopoly that was enforced by military lead? The one that Trump is trying to reassert in a misguided attempt at preventing a decline in US quality of life down to a more realistic level? You seem to think Trump is the cause of this, and not the world gaining the ability to dictate their own affairs and not be the victim of CIA global chess games and other neocolonialist machinations. Trump is just a symptom of the backlash among the American public unable to adapt to the increasingly clear reality of the loss of purchasing power that is downstream of the rise in non-American economies and their productivity. But yeah, I guess if you view things simply, all of this started in 2016, and hasn't been brewing for decades and decades since the post-ww2 order was obviously not the end of history as once believed lol.
US financiers enjoy the benefits of the global dollar, and have immense political influence.
What's completely incomprehensible is that the people suffering consequences of the Triffin Dilemma double down on the US dollar as the reserve currency. If they really wanted to bring back manufacturing, jobs, and compete with China, we'd give up the dollars special status. It's amazing how easily it is to misdirect blame to immigrants, libs, etc. Absolutely wild.
> If they really wanted to bring back manufacturing, jobs, and compete with China, we'd give up the dollars special status
IIUC that was actually an explicit goal laid out in Ron Vara's book. It's obviously hard to tell where the line is between deliberate policy and mere narrative-chum for useful idiots to latch on to. But the impression I've gotten is that many of Grump's moves are in line with this goal, but fail to achieve it because the Dollar is so damn sticky (at least in the near term).
Also, the truth is that supporting manufacturing jobs to compete with China could always have been straightforwardly done by taking the surplus wealth gained by being the world reserve currency (ie being able to trade paper dollars for real goods), and directly spending it on subsidies for domestic manufacturing. But the policy over the past several decades has been instead to simply give away that wealth to Wall Street in the form of artificially low interest rates that create an asset bubble (ie the fake "fiscal responsibility" that the Republican party had been promoting)
MAGA are hurting the USA a thousand times more than "terrorists" ever did. Next to Trump, Bin Laden is like a schoolboy.
Don't worry - I'm sure the people he hires will be super super competent, like the rest of the folks he's hired to run departments and whatnot
So is he going to replacer them with antivaxxers, flat earthers or lyssenkists?
I wasn't aware of Lysenkoism, so thanks for mentioning it. Fascinating and eerily similar to current events.
Even more amazing is the history of Nikolai Vavilov, the geneticist persecuted by Lysenko, who founded seed banks, and the incredibly brave and dedicated staff of the Leningrad seed bank who died in excruciating pain from starvation rather than eat the seeds during the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
Trump is a disruptor. I am interested to see how this plays out and whether he replaces anyone. One thing I've learned since COVID is, unfortunately, to be more skeptical of medical authorities. We were lied to in so many ways and all the while forced to "trust the science" and so called experts. But they were caught either wrong or lying way too many times. So I am not going to assume outright all the people he fired are perfectly honest or unbiased scientists, and I hope Trump has a plan going forward. TDS is a thing, and anything he does is met with resistance. He could cure cancer and people would still be mad at him somehow.
all he builds are monuments to himself. The line about cancer gets trotted out often, is he doing anything to cure cancer? All I see is corruption, but sure must be the detractors who are deranged - that is why you can point to all the good he has done right? I mean I bet his plan is similar to his healthcare plan, or his plans for trade, or his plans for peace.
Funny that you mention TDS, as it sounds like you might have Covid Derangement Syndrome. I.e. an unhealthy obsession and preoccupation with Covid, leading it to warp your view of the world in sharply irrational ways.
Putin is happy with his investment.
Xi, we shall see.
Joke isn’t funny anymore
No, and it's just not a joke anymore.
Sorry to agree.
This decapitation of education, military, cyber-defense, public news, the arts, disaster preparedness, climate science ... the list goes on ... is so systematic that it can only be described as a fifth column effort to destroy the U.S. from inside, which Putin can't do from outside.
Meanwhile all the ceos of Apple, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, nvidia and palantir went to kiss his feet one more time. That obviously did not happen now but you would have believed it.
Presumably next he will nominate Kushner, Dr. Oz and a few donors... What a shame for a country.
I'm OK with it. You're supposed to destroy countries that are committing genocide. And Trump is doing that for us without us even firing a shot. And I really do believe Trump wants to destroy the US, as his base are not aligned with the liberal democratic values that are led by racist genocidal maniacs anyways.
There really is no moral defense of the US at this point, given the last few years of the genocide it is actively committing under both parties.
Looking forward to whoever replaces the US as the leaders of the free world. Iran? Cuba? China? Greenland?
What I find amusing is how cheaply Trump is profiting. He and his family will have made a handful of billions of dollars, whilst costing the US an incalculable number of trillions over the next few decades.
Trump will have been an incredibly cheap victory for whichever new superpowers emerge.
I half expect the entire Trump family to move to Dubai in 2029.
> I half expect the entire Trump family to move to Dubai in 2029.
Russia, maybe Israel. Not Dubai. Dubai will remain too closely tied to the next administration in the US without a major change in our energy supply. But yes I think it is highly likely that many of the criminals in this administration and the trump family will flee the country and take their pilfered millions with them once they are out of power.
They are not moving anywhere. Baron will be President one day, this is about as certainty as that Sun will rise tomorrow morning. As much as people may like or not the Trump family is now part (big part) of the fabric of the United States and he will be remember (for better or worse) as one of the most influential Presidents ever. The fact that he should be in rotting in prison (probably should have spent most of his adult life there for crimes he committed before he ever got into politics) is a moot now. He will live in NYC and Mar-a-Largo, his family is not going anywhere and will be in the White House again in 8 to 12 years.
I, and I'm sure you do too, hope you are wrong. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst!
It’s just like Gandhi said, you gotta fight genocide with genocide. Or maybe that was RTLM.
> U.S. President Donald Trump yesterday fired all 24 members of the National Science Board (NSB), the body that oversees the National Science Foundation (NSF). Many science advocates see it as the latest step by his administration to erode—some would say destroy—the independence of the 76-year-old research agency.
If the US president has always been able to fire them, then they were never truly independent.
TBD, the defining trait of this administration is illegal acts that get overturned later. The point of this isn’t to be right, it’s “you might beat the rap, but you won’t beat the ride” abuse of process.
Are you claiming the US president does not have the right to fire them?
I reject the premise. The President is not a king, he isn't presumptively allowed to fire anyone he'd like. The statute establishing the National Science Board (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1863) does not give him any such power, so he doesn't have it.
NSB members are executive officers, the statute is silent on removal, and Article II makes presidential removal power the default. Silence means he can fire them.
Article II says no such thing. Humphrey's Executor established a useful compromise between "the Constitution is silent on removal" and "come on, is it really impossible to fire a postmaster?", but Trump has chosen to defect from that compromise so I no longer feel bound to accept it. Until he reinstates all independent agency heads he's purported to fire, I don't accept any removals he performs without explicit authority as legitimate.
if a court overturns or reinterprets that, then it is the law. America is a common law country, not a civil law country. The process of litigation and court precedent is how laws work in a common law country, so I don't see how your framing of the situation is really all that valid.
Common law countries also benefit from common interpretations of laws, which leads to stability for both the citizens who live and businesses that operate in that country. “Calvinball” is technically possible in all common law countries, as long as you move fast enough for the courts to not catch up. So while you are technically correct, I do not want to live in the version of America where your technical correctness is tested to the limit of its bend-but-not-break strength.
There’s a lot of political commentary in these threads about how dumb the admin is this and that, sarcasm, etc. but is anyone able to share why this is such a truly beneficial org to our country? I’m just out of the loop on this and I’m genuinely asking, I have never really heard of them. But by the reactions in the comments they’re like the most blessed org of our country and accelerate innovation and advancement of the USA. It’s just a foundation? Please just let me know, I’m not trying to be weird and I’d appreciate being civil about it.
From the Wikipedia article about the NSF:
> With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing [...] Since the technology boom of the 1980s, the U.S. Congress has generally embraced the premise that government-funded basic research is essential for the nation's economic health and global competitiveness, and for national defense.
This is the kind of scientific research which companies don't generally pay for because it doesn't have direct commercial application, but that companies and the economy benefit from enormously because you can use the results of that science to build a great deal of useful commercial things.
The more important research is the kind that the economy doesn't especially benefit from, but which needs to happen in order to improve the quality of human life.
I had a job paid by the National Science Foundation, doing genomics research on children with extremely rare (sometimes unique) genetic diseases. We did publish papers, and Big Pharma can glean a little bit about how we handled the biomedical informatics of managing data across different highly specialized labs, maybe a researcher will incrementally improve GWAS across the field. But that research was important because actual human children were suffering and needed help.
> This is the kind of scientific research which companies don't generally pay for because it doesn't have direct commercial application
Tom over at the Explosions&Fire channel (and Extractions&Ire channel) just published a video[1] about his academic career. In it he noted that in Australia where he's located, the defense companies were an exception to that general rule, and did indeed sponsor a fair bit of basic research, including his PhD. I assume in areas they figured had potential, but still.
Even so, Australia still has the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) so there's that funding and research too, which actually has, per capita, about a similar funding (equivalent of US$9B adjusted), though they generally do most of that research 'in house' versus funding it externally.
.
See sibling comment - NSF also funds science which doesn't have direct or indirect commercial applications (I shouldn't have implied that only commercial applications matter): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906005
What kind of an agenda does studying Gendered impact of COVID-19 in the Arctic carry?
They fund more than 10k research grants a year. These grants are for research into basic, unapplied science that would be extremely unlikely to get funding from the private sector. But this research is the foundation for the applied science whose breakthroughs power our economy.
Basic science also increases our understanding of the world and universe, an admirable goal in its own right.
So... This is worth a personal Google search on your part. This organization is a large part of the life blood for all research and development in the United States. It funds research, students, projects.
You know how the US had people from all over the world trying to get into our schools, and how they regularly figured things out important economic healthcare and other discoveries by being ahead of the curve? This group is a huge reason why.
Here's a good link for just 9 things that came from nsf funded studies. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/science/federally-funded-... the first being GPS. There are way more and the obvious ripple down effect of having trained people who went into industry and innovated in the private sector.
> You know how the US had people from all over the world trying to get into our schools, and how they regularly figured things out important economic healthcare and other discoveries by being ahead of the curve? This group is a huge reason why.
A lot of people from all over the world are trying to get into US schools because it's a way to get a US visa, and legal residency in the US is valuable enough that people are willing to go to great lengths in order to obtain it.
This isn't just a hypothetical, a guy I know from Europe who is currently enrolled in a master's degree program in the US told me outright that the primary motivating factor for him to get a master's degree was because it was the most expedient way for him to get a visa to the US. I know other people who have deliberately enrolled or sought to enroll in higher education programs in other countries they wanted to spend time in, as a way of getting a visa, plus in some cases a stipend from the government of that country.
Certainly some people who attempt to immigrate to the US via the educational system are in fact doing valuable research work - but I think the vast majority of them are not, and I don't really trust the current leadership of the NSF to set up systems that accurately discern between research programs that genuinely benefit the country or the world; and research programs that are actually an excuse to get US visas to smart but ultimately mediocre people from other countries who would prefer to be in the US rather than their own country.
As someone with a bit of higher education experience. There was a large amount of Chinese students paying cash to do their Ph.d's in the US. Probably 50% of the student body in some schools. A large portion of that 50% went immediately back to China after obtaining their degrees.
How many of them had children on US soil before returning?
Of the ones I knew, zero. They got their degree, put all of their stuff in the apartment dumpster, a lot of it brand new, and left. Can't speak for others.
NSF is one of the primary agencies supporting research in the US. It’s not a “foundation” in the sense of charitable foundations if that’s what’s confusing you about their name. The base research engine that fuels the US in most disciplines comes from support like NSF, DOE, NIH. Damage those, and you damage the foundation upon which a lot of our intellectual strength sits.
> the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities.[5][6] In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation
EDIT: other folks beat me to it
> It’s just a foundation? Please just let me know
We are each responsible for learning ourselves, and we live in a time where that is easier than ever. I find it odd your default position is to assume it is not important.
My default position is not to assume it’s not important. I’m actually assuming it’s important from everyone’s negative comments. So since I don’t know much about what sort of advancements they’re engineering ( no one is really answering the question specifically I guess bc I can definitely wiki search them too.) so I want to know historically what have they improved and funded that has benefited society etc. so yeah I guess I can just ask AI since you’re saying don’t talk to other humans here…
The platform you're using- a website on the Internet- was funded for, and developed by, NSF (many other orgs contributed). They played a critical role in the 1980s when the net was in a period of tremendous growth. They helped enable the transition of the internet from a military/academic research project into a huge driver of the economy. That's just one example but they played critical role in developing many other science and technology.
I find in conversations like these, if I don't know something fundamental like the NSF's role in American science, it's pretty easy to do a short bit of research before commenting. It's not bad to ask questions, but I figure if the question has a basic factual answer in wikipedia, it's best to start there.
Some basic research on Wikipedia would help you learn a lot, I suspect.
It's not odd, given the rest of his comment ("they’re like the most blessed org"), it's just plain and simple dishonesty from someone who thinks a top-level comment casting doubt is better for the agitprop than a million follow-ups with explanation.
This entire thread has swiftly descended upon by bots, shills and sockpuppets. It'll be flagged before any hope of finding good faith conversation in the morass.
It's wild how efficient they are, sometimes.
It's just weird to see it here, honestly. I wouldn't have expected the ROI on this board to be worth it. It just feels, whatever the admins think, more like reddit with this crap.
The problem with green alt accounts trolling threads like this has been getting worse for a while. I don't know what can be done about it other than to just flag them, but that doesn't stop them.
Yeah but is anything really that important in the long run? We’re all just weird monkeys who are all going to die eventually. If President Trump really wants to do something, why not just let him do it and stop complaining? Do you really want to make President Trump sad?
Is this a serious comment?
> why not just let him do it and stop complaining?
Because I have to live on this planet for a few more decades. I feel like I'm being trolled?
Okay yes I am joking.
There, I added an extra sentence to make it approximately 20% funnier.
I think you are right that we should focus on the fact that the president raped children, invaded Iran with no plan and for no reason when he promised not to start a war, and violates the constitution and law daily without consequence.
We are all failing morally for not revolting at this level of corruption.
He raped kids and the entire GOP is helping to cover that up.
He raped kids and the entire GOP is helping to cover that up.
You're not expected to be in the loop for why every minor org in the government is helpful to the country, much like I'm not supposed to know the roles and responsibilities of everyone else in my company.
But if I have a specific question regarding what some entity does, I can always look into it on my own time, rather than have a default stance on what they might do/not do.
My stance is completely neutral. My comment was about the temp in this thread being extremely negative and so I’m asking how come? What are they doing please enlighten me. Not bc I think it’s the opposite, bc I’d like to be educated by my peers in order to be on their side or atleast have a discussion. I didn’t realize this is wrong by pretty much all who has responded to me. Telling me to google it myself and I’m not genuine and I’m being called names.. this is. Wild.
My understanding is that the national science foundation supports scientific research presumably through grants. Academia is already having a lot of funding troubles, so this likely means things will get worse in the academic sciences.
https://i.ibb.co/qM5xgPZ6/fascism-five-stages.png
The NSF is an independent federal agency that funds roughly a quarter of all basic academic research in the US, laying the groundwork for technologies like the Internet backbone and MRIs. The NSB is its governing body, composed of top scientists who serve staggered six-year terms specifically so no single administration can wipe out the entire board at once. That continuity is designed to insulate scientific priority-setting from political pressure, ensuring American research funding is directed by objective merit rather than political patronage. Dismissing all members simultaneously removes the exact oversight mechanism built to prevent political offices from dictating scientific agendas.
From a political science perspective, this is an institutional move Robert Paxton described in his stages of fascist development. His framework identifies patterns where political actors weaken or bypass independent bodies designed to constrain executive power. In Paxton's fourth stage, the exercising of power, an executive consolidates control by actively dismantling these checks. Centralizing control over scientific governance by firing the board for opposing a budget cut is hollowing out an independent institution; it's a pathway Paxton documented whereby institutional checks are weakened in ways that accumulate over time.
https://election.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Pa...
Wiki: "With an annual budget of about $9.9 billion (fiscal year 2023), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities.[5][6] In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics, and the social sciences, the NSF is the major source of federal backing."
Personal: Always saw them as contributing to PBS kids shows I watch growing up.
You don’t think it’s worth it to research this yourself. That’s what the NSF is for, on a bigger scale! LMGTFY: https://www.nsf.gov/impacts
I appreciate the link. Maybe someone has some more specific information or has been personally impacted? I guess it’s not worthwhile to talk to others and I should just ask AI. Have a nice day.
The AI you ask is based on technology developed by (not exclusively) researchers funded by the NSF.
They see "foundation" and assume MacGyver and Pete Thornton work there.
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I’m real. I’m from USA. Just trying to ask a question. The responses have been enlightening. I’m learning so much about myself.
I'm kind of wondering how old you are? You could find this stuff out for yourself, you know.
You've never heard of the National Science Foundation?
I'm not even American and I've heard of it. The NSF's mission is to promote science and engineering in all 50 states.
Nope never heard of it
