More from the OpEd...

... "There's a fire sale on American academics right now," according to University of Washington biology professor Carl Bergstrom, "which could ultimately undermine the country's enduring position as the world leader in biomedicine."

The Head of the National Science Foundation announced his resignation on April 24th. Cuts to the NSF have including cutting research on how artificial intelligence tools could mitigate bias in medical information. Research on how to help our citizens detect AI-generated deepfakes has also been cut. A number of terminated grants sought to broaden the diversity of people studying science, technology and engineering. Study on disinformation were also terminated by DOGE.

Several countries, both friendly and adversarial, are capitalizing on the crackdown on American research, particularly in the sciences, to bolster their own academic and research institutions. According to a recent article in Science, universities worldwide have "reported seeing an uptick in applications from U.S.-based researchers."

European political leaders have already made plans to benefit from the "intellectual windfall" from the U.S. A letter reviewed by Reuters, and signed in March by 13 European countries (France, Germany and Spain) urged the EU Commission to move fast to attract academics fleeing the United States.

The European Research Council, an EU body that finances scientific work, told Reuters it would double the relocation budget for funding researchers moving to the EU to 2 million euros ($2.16 million) per applicant to cover the cost of moving to a European institution and setting up a lab. ...