The National Science Foundation is currently experiencing an odd silence, the kind that descends upon an organization when its leadership is unclear. The agency has been without a confirmed director and deputy director for over a year. The number of employees has decreased by over thirty percent. Once-predictable grant decisions have slowed, stalled, or just stopped. Additionally, a nomination is sitting on a desk in Washington, awaiting an unspecified hearing date.
James O’Neill is the Trump administration’s nominee to lead an organization that has covertly funded some of the most significant scientific wagers in American history for eight decades. The head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Sudip Parikh, has called on the Senate’s HELP committee to hold an open confirmation hearing as soon as feasible. His letter to Ranking Member Bernie Sanders and Chairman Bill Cassidy sounds more like a man tapping his watch than a courteous request.
The majority of Americans don’t think about the NSF until they unknowingly benefit from it, so it’s worth taking a moment to consider what it really does. Fifty years ago, the agency started the fundamental research on artificial neural networks, which at the time seemed esoteric but now powers almost all of the AI tools that are being promoted as the future of everything. In the 1960s, it provided funding to biologists who investigated bacteria flourishing in searing hot springs. This curiosity-driven diversion led to the development of PCR technology and, consequently, the contemporary biotechnology sector. Cybersecurity procedures, gene editing, 3D printing, and MRI machines. The list resembles a tour of American innovation over the past fifty years.
That is the uncomfortable reality of funding for basic science. Decades later, the benefits often result from research that at the time seemed extravagant. Scientists I’ve talked to over the years seem to believe that the NSF’s patient, quiet funding is the kind of investment no private company would ever make because no shareholder would wait thirty years for a study on thermal bacteria. Governments are the only entities capable of such patience. Few people decide to be.
Parikh and others are concerned about more than just the vacant director’s chair. It’s the pattern. Grants initiated by investigators, which are essential for unanticipated discoveries, are being withheld without justification. International cooperation has virtually stopped. Despite Congress appropriating comparable funds, outlays for fiscal year 2026 are expected to decrease by 59% from the previous year. This is noteworthy because the organization no longer has a physical headquarters where employees can congregate, clash, argue, and share. A culture of research is brittle. Once it scatters, it is difficult to retrieve.
Two years ago, China’s total spending on research and development exceeded that of the United States. Its R&D spending has increased more than twice as quickly as that of the United States, and the difference is growing. NSF supports 29 National AI Research Institutes and a network designed to keep American universities at the forefront by investing about $700 million annually in AI research alone. The agency drifts if a director doesn’t specify where that money should go, and drifting is costly when rivals are racing.
The historical echo is difficult to ignore. Following a war that demonstrated the potential of coordinated American science, the NSF was established in 1950. As you watch this happen, you can’t help but wonder if the nation still remembers the lesson or if it has just assumed that innovations will continue to happen on their own. They won’t. They have never done so. According to Parikh, the next one might originate in Beijing or Berlin, or it might originate in Baton Rouge or Burlington. A Senate committee is currently in charge of making the decision, but they haven’t chosen a date yet.
