After my first year of college, I spent 18 months living in Houston trying to save money. What became painfully clear is that people with important skills have much more earning potential than those who do not (which is the primary reason why I returned to college, studied computer science, and worked extremely hard). My earning potential during that time was laughably low, and it was shocking how much it changed upon graduation.

What is true on a personal scale is also true on a national level.

Prior to WWII, Germany led the world in scientific research. German inventions included the first practical fighter jet, the first functional helicopter, the first guided bombs, night vison, the first functioning programmable computer (the Z3), rockets and ballistic missiles, the assault rifle, and the diesel engine. As the Nazis rose in power, many German scientists defected to the US – the most famous being Albert Einstein. The US started Operation Paperclip in 1945 – a program designed to transfer knowledge from Germany to the US. The US not only attracted the top scientists from around the world, but programs like the GI bill expanded the opportunities of citizens to also become scientists and engineers.

This enabled the US to become the scientific superpower and by the 1960s the government was investing 2% of its GDP into scientific research. Advances in nuclear, rocket, radar, and other military technologies not only helped us win the cold war against the Soviet Union, but these investments also benefitted the consumer market – Silicon Valley was built on microelectronics and aerospace, and the investments also led to DNA and microbiology breakthroughs. As other countries managed to catch up, however, the government realized that our leads in defense, electronics, and biotech had to be constantly defended.

The US built big particle accelerators, big research vessels, and big telescopes. This attracted smart people from all over the world to study in the US, and many would stay to start businesses.

The US economy has transitioned from primarily a manufacturing and resource selling (e.g. coal) economy to an information-based economy. We used our scientific superpower to create companies like Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, NVidia, etc. that bring in a lot of money from other countries. We may not manufacture as many physical products that other countries buy, but we export many technology-based services that other countries gladly pay for. These jobs also tend to be much higher paying than manufacturing jobs.

The US has significantly benefitted from this scientific and intellectual investment, but the Trump administration is threatening this in many ways.

The US cannot hire qualified workers

Tech requires very smart people who have very specific skills. There is a weird dichotomy of in the US right now:

• On one hand, we want a meritocracy – only the best people should get the best jobs.
• On the other hand, we want all immigrants to leave the US.

These two beliefs are not easily reconciled. Some wrongfully assume that the immigrants working in tech are all DEI hires, but this is definitely not the case. Having worked with many people MUCH smarter than me, I know that raw intelligence cannot be determined by skin pigment, gender, or place of birth. Others believe that we can still be competitive if we limit hires to only US citizens, but this is also wrong.

Others think that we should train out-of-work coal miners to design the nextgen AI systems (which in theory could work), but this training takes a very long time, is not cheap, and corporations will not invest in this as the payoff is both too long-term and too unpredictable. The obvious alternative is for government programs to pay for this, but this fails to address immediate shortages and the current administration believes that if one wants to become educated, they must first incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt (because free education is communism).

Elon Musk knew what he was saying when he advocated making it easier to bring in foreign tech workers. Trump, on the other hand, has added a new $100,000 H1 visa fee which makes it much harder for US companies to attract foreign talent.

Some companies will pay the new fees, but this is also forcing large companies to invest more in their foreign offices (i.e. the opposite thing that most people actually want) and smaller companies will not be able to hire people at all.

I have a friend from Mexico that I worked with in my past two jobs, but now she has left the US and has taken a job in Spain. This is a loss to the US – we are in no way helping America be more competitive (and some guy named Bubba isn’t going to step in to take her job).

We are forcing foreign students out of the US

We are deporting students and making it much harder for foreigners to study in the US. With the deportations, I imagine that many students no longer want to study here (why would you invest in a degree that you may not be able to complete?) As mentioned in a previous blog entry, we have earned a lot of soft power and goodwill by inviting people to come to the US for their education. Now they will likely be forming goodwill with other countries.

The US has cut research funding

Research is a little weird because you never know where it will lead. For example, nobody knew that studying hot pools at Yellowstone during the 1960s would lead to breakthrough advances in DNA research, but that is exactly what happened. This is also why corporation almost never invest in this type of research – they tend to research very targeted areas that are already relatively well understood in hopes that they can develop an improvement that will be financially viable within a specific time window. The interesting types of research with big breakthroughs tend to be government financed.

So now other governments are implementing their own Project Paperclip to siphon knowledge out of the US and into their own economies. China, Europe, Canada, and Australia are heavily recruiting US talent right now. I was speaking with an incredibly smart (PHD, MD) NASA director last weekend and she confirmed that when a US researcher posts that their funding has been cut, they almost immediately receive multiple invitations from foreign universities and institutions.

Nobody believes that all researchers will leave the US, but researchers tend to be collaborative and to gravitate towards locations containing other researchers. It is hard to say what the US will look like when most of the research is done outside of the US – will most of the big tech work also move oversees?

What I can say is that the current US lead is due to 70 years of careful policy and funding. We have proved that we will cut literally thousands of research grants in important areas simply because the president doesn’t understand the importance. Even when we get a new president that thinks differently, researchers will not want to do long-term research in a place where that research can be cut within the next 4 years.

The brain drain is real – it has already started, and there seems to be no stopping it right now.