Funding Failure Puts US At China's High-Tech Mercy

The CHIPS act authorized $81 billion for the agency, promised to double its budget by 2027 and directed it to“address societal, national, and geostrategic challenges for the benefit of all Americans” by investing in research.

But there was one very big snag. The money still has to be appropriated by Congress every year. Lawmakers haven't been good at doing that recently. As lawmakers struggle to keep the lights on, fundamental research is quickly becoming a casualty of political dysfunction.

The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act authorized billions in new funding for the National Science Foundation over five years. So far, based on what's been appropriated and a proposal for fiscal year 2025, federal investments are on track to be about $15 billion less than Congress targeted.

That's bad because fundamental research matters in more ways than you might expect.

For instance, the basic discoveries that made the Covid-19 vaccine possible stretch back to the early 1960s . Such research investments contribute to the health, wealth and well-being of society, support jobs and regional economies and are vital to the U.S. economy and national security.

Lagging research investment will hurt US leadership in critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, advanced communications, clean energy and biotechnology. Less support means less new research work gets done, fewer new researchers are trained and important new discoveries are made elsewhere.

But disrupting federal research funding also directly affects people's jobs, lives and the economy .

Businesses nationwide thrive by selling the goods and services – everything from pipettes and biological specimens to notebooks and plane tickets – that are necessary for research. Those vendors include high-tech startups, manufacturers, contractors and even Main Street businesses like your local hardware store. They employ your neighbors and friends and contribute to the economic health of your hometown and the nation.

Nearly a third of the $10 billion in federal research funds that 26 of the universities in our consortium used in 2022 directly supported US employers , including:

• A Detroit welding shop that sells gases many labs use in experiments funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense and Department of Energy.
• A Dallas-based construction company that is building an advanced vaccine and drug development facility paid for by the Department of Health and Human Services.
• More than a dozen Utah businesses, including surveyors, engineers and construction and trucking companies, working on a Department of Energy project to develop breakthroughs in geothermal energy.

When Congress shortchanges basic research, it also damages businesses like these and people you might not usually associate with academic science and engineering. Construction and manufacturing companies earn more than $2 billion each year from federally funded research done by our consortium's members.

Disrupting or decreasing research funding also slows the flow of STEM – science, technology, engineering and math – talent from universities to American businesses. Highly trained people are essential to corporate innovation and to US leadership in key fields, such as AI, where companies depend on hiring to secure research expertise .

In 2022, federal research grants paid wages for about 122,500 people at universities that shared data with my institute. More than half of them were students or trainees. Our data show that they go on to many types of jobs but are particularly important for leading tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Intel.

Those same data let me estimate that over 300,000 people who worked at US universities in 2022 were paid with federal research funds. Threats to federal research investments put academic jobs at risk.

They also hurt private sector innovation because even the most successful companies need to hire people with expert research skills. Most people learn those skills by working on university research projects, and most of those projects are federally funded.

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High stakes

If Congress doesn't move to fund fundamental science research to meet CHIPS and Science Act targets – and make up for the $11.6 billion that's already behind schedule – the long-term consequences for American competitiveness could be serious.

Over time, companies would see fewer skilled job candidates and academic and corporate researchers would produce fewer discoveries. Fewer high-tech startups would mean slower economic growth. America would become less competitive in the age of AI. This would turn one of the fears that led lawmakers to pass the CHIPS and Science Act into a reality.

Ultimately, it's up to lawmakers to decide whether to fulfill their promise to invest more in the research that supports jobs across the economy and in American innovation, competitiveness and economic growth. So far, that promise is looking pretty fragile.

Jason Owen-Smith is a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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