"The recent update to IDeA grantees was a clarification of longstanding policy, not a new directive,” the spokesperson said. “IDeA program funding has always been restricted to U.S.-based institutions and entities, with foreign institutions, non-domestic components of U.S. organizations, and all foreign components explicitly prohibited. This reflects Congress’s intent that IDeA funds be used exclusively for research capacity building within the United States—and specifically within eligible IDeA states and territories. NIH’s statement didn’t mention any other grant programs or answer multiple written questions.” [1]
[1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/05/22/r...
edit: that said, from my experience, and some reporting, foreign contracts (e.g. a foreign collaborating researcher) have been regularly denied in the new NIH.
It's actually more surprising to me that NIH and NASA research co-authored by non-Americans was supposedly not requiring scrutiny under the "foreign component" rules before this.
Before you start throwing disruptive rules at projects, you generally want to know that there is a critical security concern for that specific work. Most research just gets published a few months later, so foreign interests can just read it in a journal and download the dataset.
* https://www.nsfc.gov.cn/english/site_1/international/D2/2018...
* https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260107-overseas-scho...
This is an administration that has neither of those.
Short of them just turning a nuke on a large city, I can't think of better ways to harm America without fomenting an actual uprising than what they're doing to us today.
The PMs are generally chosen from the sciences, and are responsible for authoring RFPs that meet strategic goals, and negotiate with the PIs (grant recipients) about terms and sizes and such.
So there are really two political realms, above the funding agency, and underneath, and its entire function is reconcile those worlds in a pretty vague way with a certain amount of autonomy given to the PM.
This isn't 100% great, but if you have good PM, some good science does get funding. While this seems like a lot of machinery, if you short circuit all of it, and have the presidents direct flunkies make funding decisions, that basically means that almost no real science gets done.
Lot's of weasel words.
This is not unprecedented. Restrictions tied to foreign collaboration are not new, NIH has done this as far back as 2018 if I recall. Yes, foreign research restrictions have escalated recently.
We have no official statement for either agencies. Collaborating on sensitive or classified material with identified FOCI coauthors is and always have been highly scrutinized activity. Title 32 CFR 117.11 is old. It goes back as far as DoD 5220.22-M in the '90s.
NISPM-33 Office of Science and Technology Policy efforts have been around since 2018 too or so (i am sooo old :/).
This appears to be a continuation of escalation of research-security, rather than a wholly unprecedented break from prior policy.
> Neither agency has publicly issued new formal guidance describing these requirements. Instead, officials are informing grantees individually, leaving researchers confused and concerned.
They've not even made it official. They're just randomly flagging.
Very sad to see the US fall away from the rule of law, into kleptocracy.
See also the way that grants are now being distributed at NCI and NSF. Only very large grants for many many years, to reward those who are in the favored status, and kill those who are disfavored. Decision making is random and capricious, just be sure to bribe those at the top with whatever favors you can.
The way to fix this is to reduce the power of the administrative state, not to just complain about Trump, but I have little hope of a real solution.
I don't agree. The division of power is most likely preferable. Otherwise the politician also become the beurocrat but way more arbitrary.
Of course, it's totally lost on the academic-bureaucratic class that the anti-intellectuals wouldn't hesitate to cut off their nose to spite their face by electing a president that would turn around and surprise pikachu the academics with the very machine they had helped build. Now that academics are losing their grips within the bureaucratic apparatus, suddenly they are deciding to rethink their strategy -- but it's not a coming to Jesus moment, but rather just a reactionary response.
But I'm not dumb enough to think you'll believe my words, you'll only learn by experience.
If the enemy is the science happening then a lack of clarity is a highly effective tactic.
Step 1. Exploit the commons.
Step 2. Shut the door.
I am reminded by this quote from an email exchange between Bret Taylor and Alan Kay, published in 2017:
“As I pointed out in a previous email, Engelbart couldn't get funding from the very people who made fortunes from his inventions.
“It strikes me that many of the tech billionaires have already gotten their "upside" many times over from people like Engelbart and other researchers who were supported by ARPA, Parc, ONR, etc. Why would they insist on more upside, and that their money should be an "investment"? That isn't how the great inventions and fundamental technologies were created that eventually gave rise to the wealth that they tapped into after the fact.
“It would be really worth the while of people who do want to make money -- they think in terms of millions and billions -- to understand how the trillions -- those 3 and 4 extra zeros came about that they have tapped into. And to support that process.”
https://worrydream.com/2017-12-30-alan/
The titans of industry not understanding the importance of science beyond its profitable applications doesn’t surprise me at all.
Lowering their taxes while burning everything to the ground benefits them now.
A less just, less stable society is far more likely to demonize and destroy billionaires. If you have such a high level of wealth the most rational action is charitability to insure the wealth of people who surround you to prevent instability and lower the chances you'll be the victim of a crime carried out due to desperation.
"science with outside helps the other side" - done.
Current administration sees US as losing its positions, so the main answer is to close the leaks that feed its opponents with US effort
I'm not just referring to restrictions on collaborations with foreign researchers, although I frankly do not see how that meaningfully reduces the ability of opponents to benefit from US research unless we kill open publishing as well. I'm talking about the last year and a half of destroying the ability of every basic researcher I know to work in a stable and predictable environment.
2. Science trends toward meritocracy, which is bad if your goal is to promote a particular social hierarchy.