This kind of analysis isn't much better. First, many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]).
Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has suddenly become a very undesirable place to live if you value these things.
Third, scientific freedom is under attack in the US. And there is nothing scientists value more than the freedom to pursue their research.
My take is that most Americans can't imagine a world where they are not number one. But that is a very naive idea.
While I echo some of your points, [1] is bad example (as a Canadian).
Research money in Canada is harder to come by; a basic research grant is roughly ~5x-10x lower than a comparable American grant (students are cheaper here, so its not completely proportional, but equipment, travel, etc doesn't scale).
The example for money for poaching international researchers also comes with the asterisk that while they found ~$2B for this, they also are cutting the base funding of the federal granting agencies by a few percent at the same time, atop of that funding being anemic for decades at this point. A big "fuck you" to the Canadian research community in my opinion.
> many countries are increasing funding substantially (e.g. [1]).
This illustrates exactly my point. Canada is planning on spending up to CAD$1.7B over 12 years. That is equivalent to USD$100M per year, or 0.3% of the NIH 2026 budget. Maybe if Europe does something similar they can get to 2%!
> The US is also no longer safe
I agree that Trump's regime has made the US a less welcoming place for foreign scientists, and that budget cuts mean less research will be done. What I disagree with is the idea that "brain drain" is a significant threat to US science. We simply have such an incredible oversupply of biomed PhDs that we should welcome the prospect of other countries absorbing the supply.
Horizon Europe is a €93.5 billion budget over seven years for scientific research. The EU allocated an additional €500 million from 2025-2027 to attract foreign researchers specifically.
Horizon Europe funds everything — physics, engineering, social sciences, climate, agriculture, digital technology, space, and health. And its budget is still less than 1/3rd of the US NIH budget focused solely on health.
it's all about funding. for every 1 person nervous about intellectual safety in the US, there are 50–100 waiting to fill that spot, if not 1,000–10,000. Funding has been cut in academia, and less positions are available as a result. No country is remarkably filling this gap, aside from a hilariously few more availabilities and some more graduate student positions (who operate as the scientific labor in Europe and other countries, before graduating and having to come to the US for job opportunity).
As others have pointed out, presumably the outcome is that higher value scientists are favored, and higher impact research is demanded. When industry demands certain research, the funding appears because private entities will fund those positions and those grants. The widespread funding of all avenues of science is a great feature of American intellectual culture and hopefully it doesn't vanish. But it was a remarkably uneconomical arrangement and a total aberration of history, so I wouldn't hold my breath about it sticking around through the tides of history, it was more of a fluke, and many in academia wishing to regenerate that fluke are a bit delusional and a bit tied to the idea of a golden era like the boomers dreaming of the 1950s suburbs. A great deal of research is important science, but totally worthless for the foreseeable future on an economic basis. We might not yet conceive of why this research does have economic value, but it's so abstracted that as it stands, the value isn't tangible and it's thus impossible to defend reasonably.
Scientific freedom doesn't mean the freedom to expect a subsidized career on the basis of non-lucrative research. It's more of a privilege to have such a lifestyle that is downstream of a wealthy empire. Since America is going bankrupt, the dollar-reaper is coming for the superfluous. So, there goes your funding for conure breeding or the health benefits of community gardens and expect more stability if you're researching crop diseases or livestock vector research.
77,302,580 people voted for Trump in 2024. That is not "half the country".
Nor does he or ever did have the support of "(over) half the country". His maximum approval level in 2025 was at the beginning of his term at 47% "approve" and is currently around 36%, according to the Gallup poll.
It kinda does matter because it shows more than half the US are truly sick of the current batch of US politicians and aren't enthused enough to vote for their schtick.
Trump didn't even win 50% of the people who voted. He got the most votes (a plurality), but ~1.5% of the votes went to third party candidates, slightly more than the gap between Harris and Trump voters. One of the many reasons this "we have a huge mandate to reshape the country in the image of Project 2025" line is so infuriating; you have to go back to 1968 to find an election with a smaller non-negative popular vote margin of victory.
(Also, "non-negative" is carrying a lot of weight, since both Trump in his first term and George W. Bush in his first lost the popular vote. The idea that a wide majority of the country is conservative, let alone MAGA, is risible.)
It's over half the electorate. Stop changing the standards for democracy and holding the current ex-wrestling valet and game show host to standards than literally no one has been held to in history. It's a desperate, dishonest way to cover up the failure of the opposition to be any better.
An electorate is only as good as the information it uses to make the choice. Fewer than 10% of Americans both stated they routinely read a newspaper (in print or online) yet still walked into a voting booth in 2024 and voted for Trump.
This is, de facto, not really a differentiator any more. Only one of the countries in question asks to see my social media profiles at the border to make sure I'm ideologically appropriate.
I've heard more than 0 people complaining that it's not safe, but not a whole lot. And not the productive people either. Also, unfortunately the same opinions that get you in trouble in the US will get you in trouble in western Europe. I'm not saying it's right, just that it doesn't seem to be actually draining brains.
Secondly, it's about more than funding. The US is also no longer safe for a great many of the scientists that would normally choose come to the US to work. And even for those that aren't too worried about ICE, scientists tend to be very liberal and value freedom and democracy a great deal. The US has suddenly become a very undesirable place to live if you value these things.
Third, scientific freedom is under attack in the US. And there is nothing scientists value more than the freedom to pursue their research.
My take is that most Americans can't imagine a world where they are not number one. But that is a very naive idea.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-develop...