US President Donald Trump’s administration will redirect billions of {dollars} in federal analysis funding away from universities to individual scientists and AI-focused initiatives, arguing the overhaul is required to assist the US compete with China.
The plan, outlined in a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy report launched on Tuesday, comes because the administration warns that China has reached parity with the US in analysis and growth spending over the previous 20 years, “a situation America did not face even during the Cold War”.
“Beyond the sheer scale of its spending, Beijing is treating scientific research capacity as a central pillar of global competition, elevating decision-making to the highest level and taking a tightly integrated approach to partnerships across its sectors,” the report, “Science: A New Golden Age”, stated.
“This all-of-society approach has allowed China to surge resources towards basic scientific research, advance rapidly in technologies of key national interest, and drive improvements in its innovation process, where entrenched interests have resisted change.”
In response, the US will reconfigure its annual federal R&D funds of round US$200 billion away from funding schools and “legacy institutions” and in direction of individual scientists as an alternative, in pursuit of sooner and extra “agile” new analysis organisations with AI as a core focus, the report stated.