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This could be understandable if some rationale was provided, but it's worse than that: > Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing thes

• munk-a 5mo ago
  Unclear arbitrary rules are the best way to rapidly induce a chilling effect. If the enemy is the science happening then a lack of clarity is a highly effective tactic.
  • platinumrad 5mo ago
    I genuinely don't understand how the titans of industry who support the Republican party don't understand that science is the foundation on which their entire fortunes are built.
    • watwut 5mo ago
      They already have that fortune. So, they dont care and dont have to care. Moreover, someone else using science to create fortune is just another competitor and a threat to said fortune.
    • groundzeros2015 5mo ago
      Because science is an abstraction for ann incredibly wide range of human activity some of which benefits industrial applications and some that doesn’t.
    • jmalicki 5mo ago
      It benefited them in the past, that allowed them to build up their fortunes. Bill Gates, for example, is now a big holder of farmland. Science allows others to build up fortunes that challenge theirs, and hurts the stasis in which they become gilded aristocracy. Lowering their taxes while burning everything to the ground benefits them now.
      • munk-a 5mo ago
        I'd argue that it doesn't actually benefit them now since they have more access to comfort than they could ever conceivably consume in their lifetime but I do absolutely agree that they think it benefits them because people who have accumulated wealth to that degree are highly fixated on making the number go up. A less just, less stable society is far more likely to demonize and destroy billionaires. If you have such a high level of wealth the most rational action is charitability to insure the wealth of people who surround you to prevent instability and lower the chances you'll be the victim of a crime carried out due to desperation.
        • jmalicki 5mo ago
          They want a less just, more stable society. Allowing others to build wealth just makes society less stable from their point of view. Better to keep the poor poor.
    • dekhn 5mo ago
      I imagine some of them think that the industrial sector could replace academic sector for foundational scientific researcher ("the free market solves all known problems"). I imagine others believe we are headed for a huge crash that affects the whole world, in a way that having a large academic scientific establishment will not help. Just go live in a bunker in NZ until society rebuilds itself, or whatever (Altman). I suspect a few of the folks are just looney, and don't think rationally (Thiel).
      • cucumber3732842 5mo ago
        >some of them think that the industrial sector could replace academic sector for foundational scientific researcher Probably can't happen without huge changes to the tax code IMO. That said, I think bringing the amount of research science we have under the umbrella of academia has been bad because it's basically introduced a plausible deniability and reputation laundering layer that furthers the 3-way revolving door between academia, government and industry.
        • dekhn 5mo ago
          I don't think industry can replace academic research for a more fundamental reason. It is rare for industry to willingly research things that are not on a direct path for profitability. Profitibility is calculated in a very local manner (direct cost and revenue); it doesn't consider indirect benefits, such as a basic biology research team discovering some fundamental new detail of biology which allows another team to do a better job discovering a new pharmaceutical drug. It does happen sometimes; my employer is a biotech/pharma that does a huge amount of basic research in addition to its focused pharma research, because they know that the basic research occasionally makes discoveries that greatly improve the pharma process. IIUC, industry does get R&D tax credits- but that's probably not a good incentive system for basic research in industry. What's happening now is that a small number of science-friendly rich people are making foundations/institutes that carry out basic research (Zuckerberg/Chan, Schmidt, and a few others) but it's unlikely those will completely supplant academic research at universities funded by NIH/NSF/DOE.
    • linguae 5mo ago
      In my opinion, it’s been a problem for a long time. Sure, the titans of industry are very interested in the profitable applications of science, but they are generally less interested in investing in science, let alone the science itself. Science is seen as a cost center, and research is inherently risky. Even in the glory days of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC, both were backed by monopolies (the Bell System was the phone monopoly, and Xerox had patents in xerography). The former was subject to special government rules due to AT&T’s constant anti-trust troubles, and the latter’s culture was heavily influenced by ARPA due to ex-ARPA people like Bob Taylor. I am reminded by this quote from an email exchange between Bret Taylor and Alan Kay, published in 2017: “As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions. “It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact. “It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.” https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/ https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/ The titans of industry not understanding the importance of science beyond its profitable applications doesn’t surprise me at all.
    • epistasis 5mo ago
      Their fortunes are already built. They have shifted into defensive posture. They don't care about enabling more people to do discovery, that actually puts their position at great risk of disruption. What they want is to have very little innovation, and be able to capture the innovation that squeaks through.
      • gwerbin 5mo ago
        I don't think it's true that they want little innovation. This is a political move. It's a setup for an environment where only politically approved research can happen. So the innovation machine eventually restarts, but without all the side effects of things like unbiased public policy research and social justice movements that are politically misaligned with the ultimate goal of corporate autocracy presiding over techno-serfdom.
        • epistasis 5mo ago
          Agreed, that's a better way to phrase my own thoughts than I was able to express.
        • whateverboat 5mo ago
          But eventually, this always fails as history has shown over and over again. It might take 40-50 years, but it will fail with devastating effects.
          • epistasis 5mo ago
            Yes, and one reason the US has been so successful is because in the past 1) it was generally agreed that family dynasties should have limited ability to pass wealth generation to generation, and 2) that governance should be separated from wealth. That's all being abandoned.
            • gwerbin 5mo ago
              I don't think either your assertions (1) and (2) have been particularly consistent throughout US history. Leave aside the difficulty of defining what "successful" means, or should mean. Just look at the (first) Gilded Age. It's pretty much you claim we didn't have in the past: Family dynasties and government sympathetic to the interests of wealthy business stakeholders. It took the better part of a century of hard fighting (including literal combat in some cases) to bring that to an end, and then we had what, 40 years? before the accumulated momentum of conservatism brought on the Reagan era. And it's not a matter of just unions fighting it out in the textile mills and coal mines and railcar assembly plants either. After the Civil War the US Army was engaged in a widespread program of what would today be categorized as genocide, in service of business interests that thought they could make more money if you didn't have a pre-existing civilization in the Great Plains. Go back a few decades further and you have the Civil War itself. Slavery was first and foremost profitable for cash crop plantation owners; everything follows from that.
    • NooneAtAll3 5mo ago
      if you "genuinely" want to understand, start considering the opposite - what is the easiest way to defend policy like this? "science with outside helps the other side" - done. Current administration sees US as losing its positions, so the main answer is to close the leaks that feed its opponents with US effort
      • platinumrad 5mo ago
        I am genuinely unable to understand because even if the United States is descending into fascism or whatever, research is the last thing that an effective state wants to disrupt and scientists are one of the last groups that an effective state wants to alienate. I'm not just referring to restrictions on collaborations with foreign researchers, although I frankly do not see how that meaningfully reduces the ability of opponents to benefit from US research unless we kill open publishing as well. I'm talking about the last year and a half of destroying the ability of every basic researcher I know to work in a stable and predictable environment.
        • runako 5mo ago
          1. Much of US policy toward science is backlash to Covid vaccinations. Being anti-Science is a way of preventing Science from inflicting itself on the populace again in the future. 2. Science trends toward meritocracy, which is bad if your goal is to promote a particular social hierarchy.
          • Hikikomori 5mo ago
            It's been there so much longer, even Carl Sagan talked about it, and its inherently tied to religion.
            • groundzeros2015 5mo ago
              We just did a 30 year run of “religious people are dumb and holding bus back” and it didn’t start a science boom and just made people more unhappy and disaffected. And 2020 further revealed that science is not immune from politics or its own religious ideals.
    • barbazoo 5mo ago
      But it isn't required in order for them to get richer at this point.
    • sowbug 5mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons Step 1. Exploit the commons. Step 2. Shut the door.
    • rolph 5mo ago
      heres a bit of a fringe view, from me, and others. governments need influence, and yellow the truth,so as to manage the overall situation, thats a first assumption. now we see a lot of actions that in the end seemlike footgunning, basically derailing the foundations of civilization. perhaps this is not megalomania, greed, or sickness. perhaps, as is often portrayed in popular scifi, we are all doomed to face a terrible challange, there are only few very closed mouth individuals that absolutely know. [remember this is a fringe conspiracy hypothesis] we are being distracted and kept on the dark about impending catastrophe,so as to stave off absolute chaos,little hope of influencing anyone except by overwhelming show of force. perhaps "they" know its a matter of years, not decades until we experience that thing that suddenly, seemingly cyclically clears the board and the whole assembly begins again from square 2,or 3,not quite square one. [Re fringe;conspiracy] "they" are behaving in an all bets are off manner, keeping thier hand hidden, playing an endgame rather than making a benign effort.
    • root_axis 5mo ago
      That's just the political division. Scientists and academic types tend to lean left, the republicans are a right leaning party so they oppose them. It's not even a Trump thing, it's been like this for decades, though Trump is obviously more aggressive than previous Republican leaders.
• epistasis 5mo ago
  This is a very common thing for corrupt governments. No rules are clear, so that those at the top can dictate whatever they want whenever they want. Which means that the only safe route is to always be on very very good terms with leadership. Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy. See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many many years, to reward those who are in the favored status, and kill those who are disfavored. Decision making is random and capricious, just be sure to bribe those at the top with whatever favors you can.
  • nickff 5mo ago
    This is also very foreseeable for an administrative state, and this slippery slope has been predicted for over a century. Rule by administrators (or bureaucrats) is just as opaque/unaccountable/corrupt, and as the extent of their power grew, it was inevitable that the political leadership would exploit the power (as has already happened many times before). It seems like nobody (at least on the liberal end of the spectrum) really cared about the arbitrary use of power when it was mostly left-liberals making the choices. The way to fix this is to reduce the power of the administrative state, not to just complain about Trump, but I have little hope of a real solution.
    • mothballed 5mo ago
      NCI and NSF recipients getting a taste of what EPA, DEA and ATF was doing to the plebs all along with random "interpretations" and bad-faith presentations of them to judge and jury. Maybe that whole "the academics and bureaucrats are so smart we totally need to cede power from congress to the executive" wasn't such a bright idea after all. Of course, it's totally lost on the academic-bureaucratic class that the anti-intellectuals wouldn't hesitate to cut off their nose to spite their face by electing a president that would turn around and surprise pikachu the academics with the very machine they had helped build. Now that academics are losing their grips within the bureaucratic apparatus, suddenly they are deciding to rethink their strategy -- but it's not a coming to Jesus moment, but rather just a reactionary response.
• gwbas1c 5mo ago
  See my top-level comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48238900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48238900
• somenameforme 5mo ago
  The article mentions, oddly enough at literally the very bottom, that one of the main laws being used is the 'Wolf Amendment' [1], passed in 2011. It's what prevented Chinese from working on the ISS and arguably is why China now has its own space station. It's an extremely dumb law that's been passed and reauthorized repeatedly by every single administration and Congress since Obama who it was passed under. Just quoting Wiki since it's quite succinct and accurate on this: "[The Wolf Amendment] prohibits the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from using government funds to engage in direct, bilateral cooperation with the Chinese government and China-affiliated organizations from its activities without explicit authorization from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Congress." For another consequence of this law, when China relatively recently carried out a sample return from the Moon, they sought to share the resultant rocks/material with countries worldwide, much like NASA did in the 60s. Except Americans couldn't accept them, at least not without jumping through a million hoops first, due to this law. It's one of the ever more frequent 'I'm going to punch myself in the face because I don't like you' acts by governments. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment
  • ajross 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • casey2 5mo ago
      [flagged]
      • ajross 5mo ago
        The space station thing is a side quest that has nothing to do with the linked article. I'll happily concede the point, even though it seems pretty questionable to me. It's still not remotely true that (sigh) "Obummer" was using the law to threaten grants and censor research. Trump did that. Only Trump did that. And that's a whole lot worse than wasted effort on a dumb space station.
        • 5mo ago
• rapiz 5mo ago
  US seems to be learning from China very quick. Congrats.
  • Danox 5mo ago
    The USA isn’t learning from China. The USA is learning from Russia…
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• JumpCrisscross 5mo ago
  > They're just randomly flagging What is the purported legal authority they’re acting under? Some of the housekeeping in the next years will involve pulling those statutes.
• shevy-java 5mo ago
  There is a rationale: it is an ideology that Trump uses here. It is very similar to the 1930s, just adapted to a more "modern" era, with entertainment (if people manage to not die due to boredom, watching epic movies such as Melania ...). Did people already forget a certain billionaire raising his right arm? They are trolling on top of pillaging the taxpayers here.
• e40 5mo ago
  Sounds like they took a page from Google on how to close accounts without warning or explanation.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]