THE United States is the largest science funder in the world, remaining ahead of China in total spend on R&D. This funding is distributed through supporting universities and through funding agencies like Nasa, the US Air Force research programmes, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other agencies. This budget is now controlled by executive orders from Donald Trump.

The NIH has been particularly prominent in reports on the edicts that Trump has sent out over the last week. Trump ordered a halt on meetings, communications, travel and training for the around 20,000 scientists and administrators that are salaried by the funding agency. A short halt in this kind of spending is common for around a day during a change in administration in the US, as each government has its own priorities and gets to set its funding agenda. The current situation is unusual because of the length of the pause, which continues for 11 days.

The NIH is the largest biomedical research funder in the world, funding everything from genetic research to epidemiology, cancer, vaccination and public health. Similar to Britain, where the board of the national funding agency (UKRI) is appointed by the minister for science, innovation and technology, the heads of the funding agencies in the US are direct appointments by the US president. (The current board of the UKRI includes people with histories in nuclear power, financial investment, oil and gas, computer processors and university management). 

Additional moves by Trump over the last week have been made to facilitate even more political appointments, making the firing and replacement of Civil Service employees by the president much easier. 

Trump attracted attention for appointing of Robert F Kennedy Jnr as health secretary, an anti-vaccine activist who denies a proven link between HIV and Aids. The future healthcare availability for uninsured Americans has not been outlined. The US has also withdrawn from the World Health Organisation, to which it has previously contributed around $1 billion a year (2022-23), 15 per cent of all funding the organisation receives.

Trump has also withdrawn the US from the UN Agreement on Climate Change — the US is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases at 15 per cent of the global total. Trump has also ended the investment in reducing carbon emissions abroad. Trump attempted to implement both these last changes in his last term, but they were reversed once he left office. 

The science areas that have been named as priorities for US science investment include quantum computing, AI, and space travel. With the arguable exception of space travel, a favourite project of Elon Musk, these topics have already been leading the global science agenda, and do not represent anything particularly surprising. 

The only notable feature is their link in the interests of the tech billionaires prominent at his inauguration, whose money and global cultural influence through internet assets has put them at the centre of the Trump administration. Billionaire oligarchs setting political agendas is nothing new. What is perhaps interesting is that these concerns are also strongly associated with the Effective Altruism agenda. 

This grouping reached headlines last year after the downfall of one of its largest donors, Sam Bankman-Fried. The concerns of effective altruists centre around the “existential threats” to humanity. Climate change is not classed by these wealthy men as an existential threat; billionaires intend to rely on wealth inequality to plan for their own survival through environmental disasters — as long as some few people survive, it’s not an existential threat. Trump also revoked an order regulating AI. As the contribution of computing and AI to greenhouse emissions rises, it is clear where the interests of the mega-rich lie.

Trump’s inevitable patter about free speech and lack of regulation returns along with promises to defund publicly funded universities and attack (through taxes, fines and litigation) any private universities which stand up against Trump’s agenda. 

First in line in this agenda was the automatic closure of DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion) initiatives in publicly funded institutions, and the firing of people who held DEI-relevant roles. 

This instruction specified that people holding these roles could not be reassigned to other work. Although by no means a science-specific move (the change radically alters US military recruitment and training, and has been used to threaten retailers and other businesses), DEI in the education and knowledge-creation sectors takes a prominent role because of the need for differing perspectives and viewpoints in this field. 

Of course, corporations have manipulated DEI for their own ends in so-called “woke capitalism.” But the anti-DEI move is more than symbolic: it is a direct attack on minorities. It remains to be seen whether those in charge of carrying out the sackings will have the nerve to stand up to a rule clearly intended to destroy the careers of people minoritised in science. 

The ascendent right in the US also has an obsession with gender definition and gender-non-conforming people. Immediately effective in the military, trans people and people who are known by non-binary pronouns will be forced out of government-influenced roles. 

The biggest pledge in spending plans that Trump has made is to increase spending on the military. Perhaps some of it will go to the US Air Force foreign outreach research programmes, huge budgets which lead scientists worldwide by the hand towards the US government’s agenda. 

It is important to understand that Trump’s policies are not a uniform attack on science: they support the science the mega-rich want. Hence the craven editorial in Nature ahead of his inauguration, congratulating him on his “win” and pleading with him that “the more you can support science, the better it will be for the United States.” Expect plenty more where that came from.