Bulwark Takes - Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Killing Science in America

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Sam Stein discusses the long-lasting damages of DOGE's cut on science and innovation, as academic whistleblowers ring the alarms on the impacts that could last generations. Read More from Sam Stein, "The DOGE Brain Drain Has Begun"

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Hey, guys. It's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark. I am here to talk to you about brain drain. You might be saying, what is brain drain? Brain drain is basically when smart people, intellectually capable people, leave their profession, leave their industry for reasons that vary. And that's exactly what's happening right now in the United couple weeks, I've been talking to people in and out of government who work in the field of science and medical and biomedical research. And they either are dependent on government funding, as in they get grants through the NIH or the NSF, those are two different agencies, or their universities get,

you know, some of their administrative costs covered by NIH, or these people are employed directly by the government. They work for agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services. They work for agencies like NASA, for the NIH, for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. So anyways, I've been talking to dozens of people. And to a person, each one of them is incredibly fearful of the current climate that exists because they believe people like their contemporaries, but mostly smart, young, up-and-coming scientists will decide that this is really not a climate for them. And they will not enter their field of research because they do not have the financial support, even the intellectual support, from the government. So how does this really work? I think that's

important. Let's start there. The government spends tens of billions of dollars funding scientific research across a host of different topics. They fund research directly, they conduct research, they have grantees, and they also fund the administrative costs of research. So about two weeks ago, maybe more like a week and a half ago, the government announced that it was going to put a cap on what they call indirect costs. That is the cost that the government spends to universities to help them pay for things like personnel, lab equipment, things like that.

It's administrative costs. They were going to cap it at 15%. A host of universities across the country were flabbergasted. This would have been equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars in costs that were cut from their budgets because they're dependent on the federal government to sometimes cover 50 to 60 percent of those indirect costs. So what happened? The most telling example in my reporting came from the University of Iowa. University of Iowa put up a statement on their site from the

Office of Vice President for Research. And it said, going forward, that it was going to pause, quote, the hiring of new graduate research assistants unless they are already budgeted as a direct cost on a funded project. This was like earth shattering to a number of different academics who I spoke to. Because basically they're saying we can't afford to bring on young, up and coming, talented graduate research assistants anymore. We just don't have the money for it. Think about out. One person I talked to on the front said, he saw it, quote, we were pretty stunned by it. This is a chair of a biochemistry, molecular biology department at a top university. His own university had actually had to make cuts itself. They decided that they were not going to bring on any new faculty because of this cap on

indirect costs. And then I talked to another professor at a different school who said that they were going to reduce the number of graduate school offers by about 75%. And they were weighing whether to stop a separate program that they had for undergraduate students that come from smaller, less prestigious colleges, including HBCUs. So this professor said, quote, one might ask, why are they trying to destroy the science training pipeline? To what end? And it's a great question. Now, look, the NIH has since put a pause on this cap, but only because a judge told them they had to put a pause on the cap. They were sued by about 22 state attorney generals, and they put a pause on it. And to a person, people in academia expect that at some point down the road, there's

going to be a cap or there's going to be something akin to a cap on indirect costs. And this is just also one part of a larger equation. Over the past couple of days, there has been, as you probably have seen, massive cuts to federal agencies in terms of their payroll. And this is being driven by Elon Musk. And they're going after younger employees, people who are probationary employees. By that, it means people have been basically working for about a year or less, but it's been across different fields. So you're looking at the FDA, the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, thousands upon thousands upon thousands

of employees are just gone and arbitrarily gone. Some of these people have actually had to be rehired because after the fact, Doge and Elon have discovered, in fact, they kind of matter. The people I talk to inside the government, this is different from the academics who I talked to outside the government. People I talk to inside the government are freaked out. Morale is just at all time lows. Different agencies, they are wondering whether or not they should leave. They look and they think, well, I gave up a lot to be in this field.

This is not a high-paying profession. I do this because I love this. And it just feels like my own government is attacking me. One HHS employee I talked to said this, quote, it's like there is an elephant in every room slash Zoom meeting that is pointing a gun at us. A bit of a mixed metaphor, but I get what they're saying. I talked to a NASA employee who just said it's causing a significant amount of mental anguish, especially for my probationary colleagues. These folks are fresh out of college

who do excellent scientific research for the country. I keep telling the folks on my team to try and apply for jobs as a safety net, but I'm just not sure a lot of these people's skillset transfer outside of government research. They joined NASA because, like the rest of us, we wanted to do amazing research and serve our country. And that's the rub. who sign up for a mission, who sign up for these jobs because they believe in the science, who want to commit themselves to scientific discovery, realize that this is not a place for them. And you may be asking yourself, well, you know, can't they figure out another way? Like, can't they go into private industry? Can't they, you know, figure out, you know, alternative funding mechanisms for doing what they want to do? And the answer is no. And here's why.

So if you're a private company who does biomedical research, your job is to make money. I mean, that's it. create medicines or vaccines or cures or therapies that ultimately can go to market and that can sell huge amounts of money so that you can generate profit. You are not inclined to put a lot of money into R&D, research and development, for drugs that have very low probability of long-term payoff. And that's where the federal government comes in. Our government, specifically NIH, has funded those moonshot projects. And oftentimes they don't work, but sometimes they do. And when they do, it creates an incredible reservoir of jobs, economic ripple effects, goodwill, and better public health outcomes.

And if you start taking away that spigot of funding, people have only a few other options. One is they could go scrounge around in the private sector for whatever dollars there are. But we just talked about that. The other is they can look overseas for governments that are more hospitable. And frankly, there's really one. I mean, Europe's got some, Canada, Korea, but really one country in particular is competing with us on this front, and that's China. So we're basically ceding a lot of this turf to China. But the third thing is they could just leave the field. And when you talk to folks in the field, when you talk to professors, this is what they

think is going to happen because of Doge. Hundreds of people who could have been the next, who could have had the next big scientific breakthrough are not even going to try. Possible breakthroughs on a host of different fronts won't happen. People who had dreams of becoming scientists at NASA may look and say, I can't do this. I can't put myself through this. And so when you ask yourself, well, what is a proper way to measure the impact of Elon Musk and Doge? I contend, just talking to a bunch of these folks, that you can't look at it in terms of days or weeks. You can't look at it in terms of jobs that are cut. You can't look at

it in terms of agencies that are reshaped, revamped, or decimated. You have to look at it generationally. And you have to look at it in metrics like intellectual power that we are losing. And Doge will wrap up its business at some point in time. Who knows, maybe a couple months, maybe a year. But the impact from what it has done in just this past couple weeks could be way more profound than just a year. It could last decades. And that's what people in academia are really worried about. So listen, we've done this occasionally, but I'm going to do it again. Please do not abuse the privilege. But if you are in this field, if you are operating with a government grant, if you are interested in science, but maybe are rethinking it, if you've been interacting with Doge, if you have insight into what Doge is doing, hit us up.

We have a tip line. It's thebulwark.com backslash tips. Please send in a line there. All right. And I'm going to do something stupid, but I'll do it anyway. You can also hit me up. Stein at thebulwark.com. Please do not be, but I'll do it anyway. You can also hit me up. Stein at the bulwark.com. Please do not be abusive.

I can't take it. But give me some good tips. Give me some good insights. And thank you for watching. I really do appreciate it.