[TimorousBestie]

More or less a handout to the tech industry. This is just the STTR program with even less oversight and a questionable funding source.

Curious what the plan is when the academic pipeline for training researchers collapses entirely. AI all the things?

[contemporary343]

I think it's also a way to reduce funding to universities (which are politically disfavored), since other things like arbitrary reductions to indirect costs didn't work. It also defies both congressional will in the appropriations bill (which is directorate-specific) and of course the whole charter and mandate of NSF, from Vannevar Bush's original case for it.

[TimorousBestie]

Yeah, this is all well-attested.

It’s so weird. Presumably the conservatives still want the US to be a superpower, which presumably includes high-tech capabilities like global power projection, missile defense, and persistent space operations. At the same time they seemingly want a Cultural Revolution-like decimation of intellectuals.

I don’t see how they believe they can attain both objectives at once.

[solid_fuel]

> Presumably the conservatives still want the US to be a superpower,

I used to think that too, but it seems evident the current crop of conservatives is only interested in hurting people they don’t like and funneling money into the pockets of oligarchs. It’s pretty evident now that none of this is being done out of patriotism or a genuine desire to improve America.

[exe34]

> Presumably the conservatives still want the US to be a superpower

Why would you presume that? Isn't enough that they get rich and powerful as compared to others around them?

[SoftTalker]

There's at least a subset of them who do not. They want isolationism. Almost a juche sort of mentality. Stop propping up Europe/NATO. "No more foreign wars" was their rallying point. The Iran war really brought them to the surface, a lot of them were very unhappy with the Trump administration about that.

[magicalist]

> The Iran war really brought them to the surface, a lot of them were very unhappy with the Trump administration about that.

So, like...Thomas Massie and Rand Paul?

There were only four republicans in the House and four in the Senate to vote to limit war powers, and I don't think you could claim Murkowski or Collins are isolationists.

Or did you mean this subset was "very unhappy" in like a completely impotent and meaningless way, but they'll have been 100% against it six months or 2.5 or 4.5 years from now?

[TimorousBestie]

> Or did you mean this subset was "very unhappy" in like a completely impotent and meaningless way?

That’s how I understood it, yes. So unhappy that they’ll write him in for a third term.

[counters]

But not even. At least in the domain I work in, there is virtually no interest of engaging with these NSF programs. Regardless of what's put in writing in the calls for applicants, there's still a significant prejudice that NSF - by being a part of the government - will be slow and ineffective at administering awards, and therefore it's a waste of time for any agile, fast-moving company.

On the flip-side, my academic colleagues are tearing out their hair trying to get some - any - funding to support their labs. I'm completely inundated with request from colleagues to provide an LOI or some other evidence that our company is interested in working with their lab on something. But that's even _less_ attractive for many private companies!

[wahnfrieden]

It’s a political revenge move, there’s no strategy toward a better outcome such as AI (however questionable that would be) as that’s not the point of it

[adastra22]

That seems like typical establishment / reactionary push-back. NSF is spinning up Focused Research Organizations, which are very effective ways of getting basic research done that wouldn't otherwise be funded, and to do so in a way that allows for commercial spin-offs. That's not a handout.

[TimorousBestie]

The whole point of an FRO is to have less oversight than a traditional government grant or contract.