The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Barbara Hall
How many times have you used technology that didn’t exist years ago without a thought? Maybe today you turned on your desk light with its LED bulb, microwaved your coffee, read your email, used Google Maps to find a client meeting, checked your smartwatch, and looked up the weather report before heading to work.
Maybe this year you got a COVID vaccine, drove a hybrid car, had a mammogram or a genetic test.
Perhaps you paid your electric bill without realizing that our energy production and use have benefited from hydrofracking, increased electric grid resilience, and increased efficiencies in solar cells, combustion engines and refrigerants.
Now ask yourself: where did all of this come from?
The answer might surprise you.
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These breakthroughs — and many others — were made possible by federally funded research, much of it conducted in national laboratories and universities supported by government agencies like the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA.
Take the Internet, for example — it started as a defense project. The Human Genome Project, which now fuels everything from cancer treatment to genetic testing? Federally funded. The materials behind modern batteries and LED lighting? Funded by DOE. Smart wearables? From NASA. The tools for severe weather prediction at NOAA and the techniques that made mRNA vaccines possible all stem from public investment in long-term research.
This isn’t just history — it’s the engine still driving America’s innovation today.
Why don’t we hear more about this?
Because government-funded research doesn’t result in an immediate payoff. It asks foundational questions that take time to answer. The private sector, by contrast, focuses on near-term returns and quarterly earnings. It’s the difference between building roads and using them to get to work. Without public investment, many of the roads we now take for granted wouldn’t exist.
The national labs aren’t working alone. NSF and NIH, for example, fund much of the scientific and biomedical research done at universities such as Harvard and the University of Arizona. Their grants help train the next generation of scientists and engineers. The national labs also form partnerships with companies in the private sector and fund technology transfer programs to move breakthrough ideas toward commercialization. These tech transfer programs, which typically include universities, are a major component of the American innovation pipeline.
But here’s the problem: the Trump administration is crippling this pipeline.
Budget cuts and program freezes at federal agencies and attacks on universities are threatening the research infrastructure that built much of our current technology and is critical for our technological future.
Programs at NOAA have been scaled back substantially, reducing our ability to predict extreme weather events and model climate effects. NIH funding for biomedical research is being slashed, which could stall promising new treatments for cancer, diabetes, ALS, and tuberculosis. NSF funding is being cut, imperiling research as well as our future supply of scientists and engineers.
The success of our three-part innovation system — federal laboratories, research universities, and the private sector — is recognized worldwide today. But if we disrupt this system, we don’t just slow progress, we risk losing not only benefits that improve our lives but also a competitive edge in technologies that will shape the 21st century. These include AI, climate modeling, quantum computing, fusion technology, advanced materials for use in solar cells and batteries, water purification, construction, and more.
We owe much of our modern world to investments made decades ago by people who understood that science is a public good. Today, we need to renew that commitment to maintain our position as a world leader in science and technology. Ongoing actions of the Trump administration can do irreparable damage in a short period of time, so it’s important to ask our representatives to restore our investments in public research now.
The next world-changing innovation is already being researched in a lab or university funded by our tax dollars. Let’s make sure it doesn’t disappear before it changes the world.
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Barbara Hall has a Ph.D. in Physics and worked in materials science at Argonne National Laboratory, the Westinghouse R&D Center, and the Alcoa Technical Center. She led technology transfer programs with several national laboratories.
