GoKawiilTo realize ‘a new golden age for science’, the United States needs open borders and must properly fund studies in the social sciences, public health and the humanities — not just research in technology and engineering.
A 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, was seminal to the growth of US research.Credit: AP/Alamy
Last month, Michael Kratsios, head of the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), released a report called Science: A New Golden Age. The 123-page document is a response to a letter from US President Donald Trump tasking Kratsios with ushering in “a new golden age of American innovation” (see go.nature.com/8tyfk4k). But how likely is it that the report will help the country to achieve this aim?
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Such a letter from the president to the OSTP head is not uncommon. It is a signal of the government’s interests and priorities. However, Trump’s letter and the response come amid a systematic effort to reshape US research.
There’s a lot to take in. The report asks hard questions about the future of US science, including about how to support the research that provides the foundations for technological advances and how to enhance crucial scientific infrastructure. There are timely questions about the role of artificial intelligence in science and around the process of issuing research grants. The report proposes changes, too, to how the US federal research-funding portfolio is balanced, for instance. It addresses the persistent concern that grant managers and reviewers are too cautious, and proposes fresh ways to fund people who are willing to take risks and to individuals outside universities. The details need time for reflection and we plan to return to some of the report’s themes in greater depth in future articles.
Before diving deeper into the report’s content, it’s important to consider its precedents and the context in which it was produced. A key predecessor is a 1945 report called Science: The Endless Frontier, which was submitted to then-president Harry Truman by Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development at the time (see go.nature.com/4g7nufa). Produced in the aftermath of the Second World War, this fundamental document in US science policy led to the establishment of a new public funding agency for basic research: the National Science Foundation. The report and its implementation took several years and was a highly inclusive exercise with inputs from academia, industry and policymakers.
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Science: A New Golden Age has also been written during a tumultuous period, but of a different kind. It was released after 18 months of executive orders, rule changes, abrupt funding cuts, delays to grants being awarded and political interference in many scientific matters that should be the domain of experts, ranging from vaccine safety to climate change. However, unlike the 1945 report, the current one does not name the members of scientific and technical communities who were consulted. This follows a pattern: Trump’s administration has substantially reduced the flow of advice from independent specialists to the federal government, as we documented in an April News Feature (Nature 652, 1106–1109; 2026).
Science: A New Golden Age, at its core, is a set of priorities from Trump’s administration for scientific leaders to focus on. The fields named include “AI, quantum information science, semiconductors, advanced communications, robotics, advanced manufacturing, nuclear fission and fusion, and space systems”. Such large-scale instructions to the research community, without transparent consultation with its stakeholders, is rare for a democratic country — let alone for a powerhouse of research and the home of many globally respected universities and science-based corporations.
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