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‘We’re no longer attracting top talent’: the brain drain killing American science | US news
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2026
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Out of all the things Trump continues doing to destroy our place in the world, undermine our values , this is one that may never come back
The big problem is the US spent 80% of the world's entire biomedical research budget, and world governments were happy to avoid local spending.
Now, Trump has killed all new drug pipelines for the USA, which fed a $1T local industry.
But the rest of the world is not stepping up, they are spending 100-200x times more on fighter jets.
Fighter jets were critical for COVID.
For sure the ridiculous us money for little benefit to us citizens at high us consumer cost is ridiculous. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s been a lot of medical r&d benefitting all our lives. We want that to continue and the us should prefer that it be here
But the thing is it’s across all science and technology. US has benefitted from brain drain from other parts of the world, some of the best scientists coming here for the best rewards. That’s a good thing (for the US).
Reversing that brain drain is a bad thing (for the US) and this is a scenario where a very few individals can make a huge difference. If we don’t have a critical mass of researchers to become a desirable destination and we don’t have research opportunities, and yes if we don’t have opportunities for rewards, the brain drain flows the other way. That’s great for the countries retaining more of their top researchers, but bad for the US, bad for the researchers if there are less rewards and bad for everyone if it results in less opportunity. and this is a people thing so an indidual staying away affects other individuals and new researchers see which way the brains are draining and a poor reputation for supporting science and research may not be overcome in these peoples lives
WAS. It's over. NIH is gone.