Former White House science advisor warns of lasting damage from Trump-era research cuts
Introduction
By Susan A. Hughes
October 17, 2025
Through a series of executive orders, the Trump administration has halted or eliminated research funding for a wide swath of programs affecting the environment and weather, health and biomedicine, education and social sciences, agricultural research, and space exploration.
The implications of these cuts to technology development and future scientific research were discussed at a recent John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics.
Meghan O’Sullivan, the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs, director of the Geopolitics of Energy Project, and director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, spoke with Arati Prabhakar, who served as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from 2022 to 2025. Prabhakar was the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the R&D arm of the Department of Defense, and the first female director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NITS).
O’Sullivan ticked off the many positions Prabhaker has held—a physicist, policymaker, a technologist both commercially and in government, an analyst for venture capitalists—in addition to White House advisor, that make her knowledgeable about technology in this political moment. “I like to think that people who do hard sciences but then commit themselves to policy are Belfer Center type of people,” said O’Sullivan, referring to the center she leads, which brings issues of policy, science, and technology together.
In their wide-ranging discussion, O’Sullivan and Prabhaker talked about technology in national security—“If you are in the national security enterprise, you never get to stop worrying about anything,” said Prabhaker—climate change, and the current administration’s approach to both issues, as well as science funding, AI, and competition with China.
Read some of Prabhaker’s comments excerpted below.
On private versus public sector innovation funding
I feel so lucky that I have seen science and technology and innovation from really different perspectives. I led DARPA, where the favorite word is “risk.” From there I went to NIST, where the favorite word is “careful.” They couldn’t be more different, but I learned how essential each of their roles was.
Every big thing we’ve accomplished with science and technology happened because of the public and private sectors playing their roles. The universities were essential. Venture capital and private investment, entrepreneurs and big companies, were all essential.
But the foundation for all of it was the public investment that we made as a country. I think that is the most exciting thing we could argue and fight for.
Of course today we’re in the middle of an assault on the public investment in research, unlike anything we have seen in our country. It’s a combination of projects that were stopped with the funding freeze; it’s the thousands of people being removed from federal research agencies. It’s the broader attack on universities. It’s the reversal of immigration policies that brings so many important people that we need from around the world to do this work.
It’s extremely destructive to the science and technology enterprise today, but even more concerning is the damage it’s doing for America’s future.
The question of who pays for research is all about what you want that research to accomplish. I’ve worked in a specialty chemicals manufacturing company, and we were not doing the environmental research about what the health effects of our materials were. We counted on the government to do that.
I don’t want to diminish private foundations, independent donors, or philanthropic funding. It’s an important connection but not a very large share. I just think we should be clear that they are not going to be a substitution for public funding.
On AI and competition with China
The competition with China over the developments of technologies is very real. It’s astonishing what that country has accomplished economically over just a very short number of decades.
We also have to be clear that especially under [Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party] they have crossed one line after another in terms of their military actions, so it is a fierce competition.
AI is the most powerful technology of our time. What human history tells us is that new technologies can be used for good and for ill, and that people will use them for both. The whole ballgame is how do we get all the benefits while minimizing the risks.
It’s going to require grappling with laws and regulations, grappling with the downside risks to unleash the power of the technology for our society.
I am excited about the possibilities of harnessing AI to deliver new drugs in months rather than decades or finally closing educational gaps among kids or delivering better weather forecasts to people in a time of changing climate.
What’s missing today is an active role for the public sector in achieving these bigger ambitions because these are things that simply don’t tumble out of companies working in the framework of the market.
The public sector has got to do its job and manage and mitigate the harms that come with AI.
The full discussion is available online.
Photography by Mike DeStefano