{"text":[[{"start":7.15,"text":"The writer is a science commentator"}],[{"start":9.5,"text":"In 1944, Franklin D Roosevelt asked Vannevar Bush, then director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, how the extraordinary ingenuity shown in the war effort could be mobilised in peacetime. In answering that request, Bush, an accomplished engineer and organiser of the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, became the leading postwar architect of the US scientific landscape. "}],[{"start":33.55,"text":"Perhaps his crowning achievement was establishing the National Science Foundation in 1950. Its rotating cadre of advisers, the National Science Board, has set the long-term strategic direction of American research ever since. On Friday, the White House abruptly fired all its 22 members."}],[{"start":52.8,"text":"The purge comes after the nomination last year of Jim O’Neill, a close associate of Peter Thiel, as the agency’s new head (the tech investor is yet to be confirmed). Separately, Donald Trump has remoulded the usual presidential circle of science advisers to include 12 technology or business figures, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, and just one academic."}],[{"start":78.25,"text":"These events tell us something important: first, that Trump does not grasp the value of investing in research for the long term; second, that he does not believe in diversifying the national portfolio, and is instead betting heavily on AI; and finally that Bush’s ideas on how nations should best foster scientific enterprise no longer apply in the country that pioneered them."}],[{"start":101.6,"text":"The 22 dismissed advisers — who include computer scientists, chemists and engineers — received an email saying their posts had been terminated with immediate effect. In a statement, Sudip Parikh, who heads the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was not an adviser, called the firings “the latest in a string of erratic decisions that are destabilizing not only the National Science Foundation, but all of American science”. The country, Parikh fumed, was “abdicating” its position as a global leader in research. "}],[{"start":133,"text":"The advisers were next due to convene on May 5. According to the journal Nature, the board was preparing a report on how the US is losing scientific ground to China. The Trump administration has a habit of junking advisers with inconvenient opinions. Last year, the health department, led by vaccine sceptic Robert F Kennedy Jr, ousted members of a committee advising on immunisation policy. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not respond to a request for comment."}],[{"start":163.05,"text":"The unpredictable, politically charged climate that US scientists face today is a world away from Bush’s vision, set out in a landmark 1945 report entitled Science: The Endless Frontier. It argued that science was a proper concern of government and offered a blueprint for accelerating progress. “The most important ways in which the Government can promote industrial research,” Bush wrote, “are to increase the flow of new scientific knowledge through support of basic research and to aid in the development of scientific talent.” "}],[{"start":196.75,"text":"Underpinning basic research with stable, long-term funding, Bush insisted, was vital, because “many of the most important discoveries have come as a result of experiments undertaken with very different purposes in mind.” He cited plastics, air conditioning and synthetic fibres as breakthroughs that were newly providing mass employment and raising living standards."}],[{"start":217.05,"text":"He advocated independence from political whim, a principle still reflected in the staggered six-year terms served by NSF advisers. Bush, who died in 1974, also believed government should promote the international flow of scientific information, to enhance competitiveness."}],[{"start":232.5,"text":"His overarching principle, though, was freedom of inquiry: “Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown.”"}],[{"start":248.85,"text":"The Trump administration is moving ever farther from these principles: halting projects it disagrees with or does not understand (such as shelving mRNA vaccine research which, it now turns out, is showing promise in tackling cancer); withdrawing from the World Health Organization and climate treaties; spurning, rather than nurturing, the workforce that makes progress possible."}],[{"start":270.7,"text":"Science and technology are about more than AI, important though that is. In any case, a rising China makes the all-or-nothing gamble feel risky. Science produces technology that in turn produces prosperity — without that ongoing process, the frontier will cease to be endless."}],[{"start":295.35,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1777531802_1143.mp3"}