Science & securityMIT president calls for investing in basic science to maintain U.S. edge

Published 24 March 2017

President Trump’s proposed budget slashes at least $7 billion in funding for science programs. That course of action would put the United States at a competitive disadvantage, argues L. Rafael Reif, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Since World War II, the U.S. government has been the world’s biggest supporter of potentially transformative science — which is a key reason why the country continues to have the highest share of knowledge- and technology-intensive industries in the world, amounting to nearly 40 percent of the economy,” Reif writes in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs.

President Trump’s proposed budget slashes at least $7 billion in funding for science programs. That course of action would put the United States at a competitive disadvantage, argues L. Rafael Reif, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

“Since World War II, the U.S. government has been the world’s biggest supporter of potentially transformative science — which is a key reason why the country continues to have the highest share of knowledge- and technology-intensive industries in the world, amounting to nearly 40 percent of the economy,” Reif writes in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs.

He argues that to maintain America’s competitive edge, the country needs to take an approach different than Trump’s: “One successful way to cultivate economic growth in the United States is clear: Government provides the resources for basic science, and universities supply the talent, the training, and the commitment. The results inspire innovation, private investment, and further research and development, generating new products, new industries, new jobs, and better lives on a large scale.” Reif contends that “throttling back on investment in basic research is a way to increase economic insecurity, not reduce it, and threatens to shrink the country’s horizons in several ways.”

The technological and scientific breakthroughs of recent years “were built on the hard work and generous funding of past generations,” Reif notes. “If today’s Americans want to leave similar legacies to their descendants, they need to refill the research pipelines and invest more in the nation’s scientific infrastructure. If they don’t, Americans should not be surprised when other countries take the lead.”

The full essay is now available at ForeignAffairs.com. The entire forthcoming issue, examining policy in the new administration, posts online 18 April.

Reif’s pre-released essay includes the following insights, and much more:

“Despite the remarkable success of the U.S. innovation economy, many players in both government and industry have been pulling back from the types of bold long-term investments in fundamental science that could seed the great companies of the future. The entire innovation ecosystem is becoming more shortsighted and cautious. And by failing to invest sufficiently in basic research today, Washington risks creating an innovation deficit that may hobble the U.S. economy for decades to come.”

“While other nations are vigorously investing in scientific discovery, in recent years, total research-and-development spending in the United States, both private and public, has stagnated…. Between 2009 and 2015, federal spending on research and development of all kinds decreased by nearly 20 percent in constant dollars.”

“The route to rising incomes ultimately runs through new technologies. In 1987, the MIT professor Robert Solow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for an economic growth model that proposed that rising real incomes are largely dependent on technological progress.”

“Further cuts in research budgets will discourage the cultivation of desperately needed young scientific and engineering talent. This is not merely an academic issue, because a high proportion of U.S. science and engineering Ph.D.’s go into industry.”

“Declining public investment in science is linked to another emerging threat: a less patient system of private investment to carry discoveries through to commercialization.”

“The future of U.S. scientific, technological, and economic innovation depends on increased federal funding for basic research and increased effort by the private sector to move new technologies into the marketplace.”