The United States has spent more than 80 years as the world's undisputed innovation leader, built on a partnership between the federal government and research universities that produced everything from the Internet and smartphones to CRISPR genome editing and the neural networks powering generative AI. That partnership is now under direct attack from the very government that once championed it, according to a major analysis in Foreign Affairs.
L. Rafael Reif, president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described how the current administration hollowed out research funding agencies and froze or terminated university grants. The disruption affected $1.4 billion worth of scientific projects, a January 2026 analysis in Nature showed, "Hvylya" reports.
The administration is also dismantling the merit-based system under which research funds have traditionally been awarded after peer review. In its place, Reif wrote, Washington hopes to institute "a system based on political favoritism, offering advantages to universities that submit to its ideological demands." Research areas the administration dislikes for political reasons - including climate science and messenger RNA vaccine development - are now effectively off-limits for scientists seeking federal support.
Reif traced the roots of the current crisis back to World War II, when presidential adviser Vannevar Bush enlisted academic scientists to develop technologies key to victory. After the war, Bush urged U.S. leaders to continue funding university research. "New products and processes are not born full-grown," Bush wrote. "They are founded on new principles and new conceptions which in turn result from basic scientific research." This government-university partnership eventually produced federally funded discoveries that contributed to nearly every drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration between 2010 and 2019.
In 2023, the United States still spent $78 billion on basic research in university and government laboratories, more than any other country. But China increased its own basic research funding nearly fourfold between 2013 and 2023, reaching $57 billion when adjusted for purchasing power. Beijing's 2026 budget draft includes a 16.3 percent increase in central government spending on basic research, while Chinese leader Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized basic science as the key to technological self-reliance.
Earlier, "Hvylya" reported on why China's elite believe their window to technological dominance is narrowing.