Eighty years after Vannevar Bush's 1945 manifesto Science, the Endless Frontier, White House science adviser Michael Kratsios has published Science: A New Golden Age. Nature reads the new report as a warning for Europe rather than a model to follow.
Bush championed open, internationalist science. Kratsios puts national power and strategic advantage at the centre. The report, presented as the successor to the 1945 text for the nation's 250th anniversary, sets four goals: put the individual scientist ahead of legacy institutions, change how research funds are allocated, distributed and assessed, set clear scientific goals and build the industrial capacity to turn discoveries into technological strength, and prepare the research system for the AI revolution.
In practice, the report calls for more flexible funding, including fast-track and long-horizon grants, and broader support for performers beyond universities, including new mission-driven research organisations. It also describes the linear model of research, from basic science to applied work to industry, as outdated, because discovery now proceeds through iterative loops between fundamental and applied work.
The political context is not neutral. Kratsios presented the report to Congress at a hearing on 22 July and ties it explicitly to competition with China and to the Genesis Mission, which directs funds to artificial intelligence. Rewriting the 1945 framework also carries a precise meaning: the federal funding system that supports university research, born from that report, is now portrayed as rigid and in need of dismantling.
For Europe, Nature's reading is clear: a document redefining the rules of American science demands a response rather than passive observation. The risk is that researchers follow the opportunities created elsewhere, and that is not abstract, since part of the US scientific community is already looking abroad for work and funding.
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