[timr]

> How much is this actually happening?

It isn't. At least, not in the way being portrayed. The people going back to China were already from China, and the people returning to Europe are largely from there as well.

The dirty little secret of US academic research is that it became almost entirely dependent on Chinese labor over the past 30 years, and that's reversing a little bit.

[danny_codes]

Exactly. The US is a leader in technology pretty much exclusively because of immigration. As that reverses, we can expect the US to fall behind, and fall further behind, over time.

[timr]

Maybe. We’ll see. I just know the reality is not a mass efflux of Americans to China. That’s idiotic.

[danny_codes]

60% of all CS researchers in America are not American. 55% of all engineering researchers.

When everyone goes home America loses the majority of it's research output, plus the extra Americans who choose to join them. I suspect a great many Americans will choose to join them, for personal or professional reasons. Why try to get a grant in the US, where the rules change whenever Trump sneezes, vs a stable, consistent system in the rest of the OECD?