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We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

theguardian.com

191–200 of 606 posts

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#191
post #140
post #25

>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired." ---------------- Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.

have you seen our school systems, k12. Its terrible and in dire need of a revamp. No child left behind really screwed kids over that want to learn. We cant just let kids pass because of feelings. Made schools better, have alternative paths for kids that are not excelling like some of their peers and find school hard to sit through.

> No child left behind really screwed kids over that want to learn. We cant just let kids pass because of feelings

The whole point of no child left behind was to actually measure student performance instead of relying on feelings: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-child-left-behind-wo...

If you try to disaggregate the effects of e.g. immigration, you can see that American education is actually good: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/18bzkle/2022_pi....

White students in the U.S. do comparably to students in Korea in the international PISA test, and better than students from western europe (excluding the immigrants in those countries).

You have to compare like with like. A huge fraction of American kids grow up to parents who are not native speakers of English. That’s not true in Japan or Korea.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#192
post #25

>"Billions of dollars have been wiped from research budgets, almost 8,000 grants have been cancelled at NIH and the US National Science Foundation alone, and more than 1,000 NIH employees have been fired." ---------------- Scientists go where science is funded. A large proportion of U.S. scientists are also immigrants, who will tend to go where immigrants are welcomed.

> Scientists go where science is funded. DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic pay quite well for research and have better "labs" than most places on Earth. I don't believe they're struggling to hire either. This article is using a relatively outdated definition, functionally speaking, of "research institute". Traditional research institutions, especially academia, have been declining for decades and current funding proble…

For every scientific discipline that is well represented across modern corporate labs there are a dozen that are not. Most "serious" research is not directly connected to making money.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#193
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is about money. The killer app of the US used to be that the US was rich and welcoming to foreigners and politically quite free. China or Saudi Arabia can wave their money around, but at least some people will be repulsed by the obligation to keep their mouths shut and praise the Dear Leader. Their cultural insularity does not help either. You can live in China, but you will never be accepted as Chines…

Just to add one more point that makes the US attractive to global talent: citizenship. In particular: 1) citizenship at birth and 2) viable path to citizenship via green card. Of course, both of these are in the crosshairs for “revision”.

It's much easier to get citizenship almost anywhere else in the world than to get it in the USA by green card.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bears repeating: for everyone who insists that the US Executive Branch isn't compromised by our enemies, what different actions would someone who was compromised and trying to speedrun the destruction of American power, influence, and hegemony have taken?

[flagged]

> seem evil for enforcing immigration law

When people living otherwise-blameless lives begin getting accosted, beaten, or killed on suspicion of the legal equivalent of unpaid parking tickets, then yes, the new enforcement occurring is indeed "evil."

When they start willfully breaking all sorts of other major laws and violating court-orders to enforce the minor law, yes, that's usually evil.

When rationales last-used to jail innocent Japanese-Americans into US "internment" camps during World War II are being resurrected to declare entire nationalities as foreign invaders, yes, that sure looks a lot like the evil it was before.

When people are being snatched off the streets and then shuffled constantly between prisons purely so that their own lawyers cannot find them to challenge their detention, that is evil.

When you're not just normally deporting people under US law, but start sending them--without trial or even charges--to rot for the rest of their lives in an El Salvador torture-prison run by a paid dictator accomplice, YES, that's f***ing evil!

____

I could continue, but I won't, because those should be ample examples for normal Americans who've had over a year to watch all these well-documented things happen... and there is no amount will be enough for someone that secretly likes the evil when it happens to others.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, perhaps it is time for large, ethnically-homogenous countries that are on the ascent to adopt diversity policies of the sort that the US was approaching before the "vibe shift"

Canada is largely still homogeneous but still welcoming to immigrants and very close to the US. Rather than China totally changing cultures, I think it’s more likely that US-based companies will have large satellite offices in middle powers.

I'm Canadian and unless you're talking about the middle of Saskatchewan I don't know what you mean - no city over a hundred thousand here is homogenous.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Concentration camp” is a term that predates its (somewhat euphemistic, when done in retrospect) use for the camps eventually used in the extermnation campaign by the Nazis (which also started out as concentration camps, in the more usual sense, as part of what was nominally a deportation program.) Though concentration camps are almost always part of systematic, ethnically-targetted abuse, even when they aren't part…

Yes. For example, the U.S. also had ethnically-based "concentration camps" (but not extermination camps) during WWII.

But these are not like the concentration camps of the 1940s.

"Detention camps" are a more accurate descriptor -- both technically and connotatively -- when they are holding foreign nationals prior to repatriation.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#197
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The US government is now more authoritarian than the Chinese government. Half of what you've been told is propaganda, like the "social credit score" story. In China they put people to death for corruption, here they just get a well-paid lobbying job.

> The US government is now more authoritarian than the Chinese government

Nah we’re not playing this game.

Try asking the CCP officials in person about Uyghur internment camps, or Tiananmen Square, and see if your family isn’t all arrested.

Ask Olympian Alysa Liu how the CCP targeted her father to try to coerce her to skate for China.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#198

In all important areas such as clean energy, fusion energy, biotechnology and AI the Chinese government is heavily investing in and pushing Chinese companies to lead the world. China Is Outspending the U.S. to Achieve the ‘Holy Grail’ of Clean Energy: Fusion See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/13/climate/china-us-fusion-e... America's lead in biotechnology is slipping, while China has made synthetic biology a nation…

But related to this article, is China winning in terms of accumulating talent? I don’t think people all over Europe/Asia/Africa migrate to China. If they succeed, it’s purely with their own talent. The US still has that advantage even if it has less of it, unless I am mistaken.

China is trying. Around the time the US announced restrictions on the H-1B visa, China announced the K visa for attracting immigrants [1].

At this point in time, I don't think people are lining up to get K visa to go live in China. But if the current trajectory continues in the US, who knows how things will be in 5 years?

[1] https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-entry-exit-k-visa...

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#199
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I mean, they're both authoritarian right now. But at least one of them doesn't think science is woke. So....

if you actually think China would even entertain the idea of funding some of the scientific research conducted in the US over the past few decades, you have a fantasy view of what is going on outside the US. That political controversy wouldn't even arise because it's such a nonstarter that it could never even become a controversy.

Re: We're no longer attracting top talent: the brain drain killing American science

#200
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has a point, but there are no obvious alternatives. It's still a long way towards fascism for USA to actually lose its attractiveness, and it's not that other countries are getting more democratic either

Canada and EU are currently far more attractive if not getting kidnapped by the government and sent to an El Salvadorian torture camp is a priority for you.

Canada can't even keep their own citizen anyone trying for much of anything comes to the USA same with the EU.
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