Hayadan > Society and history > Science and society > Science and society > 250 years of the United States: This is how the world's greatest scientific power was built — and how it endangers its future

250 years of the United States: This is how the world's greatest scientific power was built — and how it endangers its future

Germany, Britain, and France dominated science in the early 20th century, but the United States has overtaken them through the absorption of researchers, long-term public investment, strong universities, and scientific freedom. On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, budget cuts, the elimination of grants, the weakening of research agencies, and political interference threaten the machinery that built American hegemony—while China and Europe prepare to seize the opportunity.

Illustration depicting the shift of the science center from Europe to the United States and the new scientific competition with China and the European Union — The United States built its scientific hegemony through the absorption of researchers, public funding, and freedom of research. In the year of its 250th anniversary, the question arises whether it is beginning to dismantle the system that brought it to the top. Illustration: The Science website using artificial intelligence

On July 4, 2026, the United States will mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is a time to celebrate the achievements of a country that began as a collection of colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America and has become the most influential economic, military, and scientific power in the world. But the anniversary year comes at a fraught time: precisely when the United States looks back with pride, it is jeopardizing one of the most important mechanisms that built its power.

American science has not yet collapsed. The United States has many of the world's best universities, a network of national laboratories, industries in space, chips, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, a huge venture capital market and leading centers in areas such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. American papers and patents continue to have extraordinary influence.

But the question is not just what the state of the system is today, but what it will be like in ten or twenty years. A scientific powerhouse does not rely solely on the Nobel Prize winners who already work in it. It depends on the students who choose to study there, the laboratories that are established, the grants that are awarded, and the researchers who can begin long-term research without fear of having their funding canceled due to political change.

In this sense, the threat to American science is not a future event. The process has already begun.

Before the United States: Europe was at the center of the scientific world

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the map of science was very different. The most important centers in physics, chemistry, medicine, and mathematics were located in Berlin, Göttingen, Munich, Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris.

Germany stood out in particular. The German university combined teaching and research, gave researchers a considerable degree of independence, and placed knowledge creation at the center of its mission. The model built around Wilhelm von Humboldt's reforms became an international model, and Johns Hopkins University, founded in Baltimore in 1876, largely adopted the idea of the German research university.

Germany produced scientists such as Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Otto Hahn, and many others. Britain contributed the experimental science tradition of Cambridge and Oxford universities and the Royal Society, and was home to scientists such as Ernest Rutherford, J.J. Thomson, Paul Dirac, and Alexander Fleming. France was a powerhouse in chemistry, medicine, mathematics, and physics, with figures such as Louis Pasteur, Henri Becquerel, Marie, and Pierre Curie.

The lists of Nobel Prize winners in the first decades of the twentieth century clearly reflect the centrality of Germany, Britain, and France. The Nobel Prize is not a perfect measure of a country's scientific prowess, but it demonstrates the extent to which Europe was the source of many of the breakthroughs on which modern science was built.

The United States was already a rising industrial power, with excellent universities and laboratories. Yet, before World War II, it lacked a large, continuous federal system of funding. Basic researchA significant portion of the research was funded by universities, private foundations, and commercial company laboratories.

Europe has exiled its scientists

The big turning point came after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. The regime expelled Jews, political opponents, and other scholars deemed undesirable from universities and state institutions. German universities not only lost talented people; they lost research schools, students, international networks, and traditions built over generations.

Among the researchers who were forced to leave were Albert Einstein, mathematician Amy Noether, mathematician and physicist Hermann Weyl, and many others. The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and other American institutions became a refuge for researchers who were forced to flee the Nazis.

The transition was not easy or automatic. The United States also had immigration restrictions, anti-Semitism, and opposition to the absorption of refugees. Einstein himself warned in 1941 that State Department policy made it very difficult to provide asylum to victims of fascism. Yet, compared to many other countries, the United States managed to absorb a significant portion of the human capital that Europe had lost.

The scientists who came to the United States not only brought with them the knowledge they had already accumulated. They taught students, established research groups, created new institutions, and shaped the next generations of American science.

During World War II, the United States mobilized universities and scientists for the national effort. The Manhattan Project, the development of radar, military medicine, aviation, missiles, and the first computers demonstrated to the government that organized and funded science could influence the outcome of a war and a country's standing in the world.

The contract that turned science into a national infrastructure

In 1945 he submitted Vanivar Bush President Harry Truman received the historic report Science: The Endless Frontier — "Science: The Infinite Frontier."

Bush argued that basic research was not a luxury for universities or a field that could be left solely to commercial companies. He presented it as the essential infrastructure for health, national security, employment, industry, and the standard of living.

The principle on which the system was based was simple: the government would fund a significant portion of the research, but the selection of studies would be made largely on the basis of their scientific quality and through peer review. In 1950, Congress established the National Science Foundation, NSF, and later the National Institutes of Health, NIH, were greatly expanded, alongside the research programs of the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and NASA.

It was not a complete separation of science and state. The government set budgetary frameworks and priorities, and during the Cold War, enormous resources were directed to security, space, and competition with the Soviet Union. But within this framework, scientists were left with ample freedom to choose questions, compete for grants, and scrutinize each other's work.

This is how a mechanism was built that the private market alone could not have created. Companies generally prefer investments that will yield a product and profit within a reasonable period of time. Basic research may take decades, fail, or produce a result in a completely different field than the one it was started for.

Lasers, semiconductors, the Internet, GPS, medical imaging, genomics, and space technologies were not all born from a single government program. But many of them grew out of a system in which the state was willing to fund knowledge before it was known how it would be turned into a product.

The added benefit: a constant influx of talent

From the flight of scientists from Europe to the age of artificial intelligence, the United States has had a unique ability to make the talents of other countries part of the American system.

Students came from different countries for doctoral studies, stayed in the United States, founded laboratories and companies, and became citizens. Researchers from India, China, Europe, Israel, and many other countries contributed not only to the number of articles, but to the chip, computing, medical, and space industries.

In 2023, 46% of U.S. science and engineering workers with doctorates were foreign-born. Many of them were already U.S. citizens or permanent residents. In other words, immigrants are not a marginal addition to American science; they are a central part of its infrastructure.

This was one of the great secrets of American hegemony: the United States did not have to produce all the world's excellent scientists. It managed to convince many of them to come to it.

The system that defeated Europe is starting to eat itself.

government Donald Trump Presents his policy as an attempt to reduce waste, stop ideological bias, monitor grants, and restore what he calls “gold standard science.” There is no doubt that the grant system is not perfect. Peer review can be conservative, influenced by personal connections, and favor long-standing institutions. The government is allowed to demand transparency, replicability, and responsible use of public funds.

However, the steps taken since the beginning of Trump's second term go beyond correcting isolated deficiencies.

The administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2026 proposed to set the National Science Foundation’s budget at about $3.9 billion. For comparison, the foundation received about $9.06 billion in each of fiscal years 2024 and 2025. In other words, this was a proposal to cut its budget by more than half.

Congress has blocked many of the planned cuts, a sign that support for science still cuts across political lines. But even when official cuts are not fully implemented, freezes, delays, and grant cancellations can do deep damage.

Analysis published by the journal Nature As of January 2026, 5,844 National Institutes of Health grants and 1,996 National Science Foundation grants had been canceled or suspended. The number included grants at various stages and statuses, and some of the decisions were overturned by appeals or court rulings. Still, it illustrates the extent of the shakeup.

A scientific grant is not just a financial transfer to a senior researcher. It pays the salaries of postdoctoral fellows, doctoral students, technicians, and laboratory managers. It funds equipment, materials, animals, samples, databases, and clinical trials.

When a grant is terminated, it is not always possible to resume research a year from the point at which it was stopped. Samples are lost, long-term experiments are interrupted, and people look for work elsewhere. A young researcher who leaves academia because a position is not available does not necessarily return when the budget is renewed.

In June 2026, Johns Hopkins University announced the layoff of 110 additional employees due to the decline in federal research funding. The university, considered one of the world's leaders in medical research, had previously warned that the volume of new federal grants coming to it had fallen sharply.

From scientific determination to political approval

One of the most significant steps concerns not only the amount of money but the question of who decides which studies will be funded.

In an August 2025 presidential order, the White House stated that agencies should strengthen oversight by senior officials over grantmaking and ensure that funding is aligned with the president’s priorities. The order also expanded the ability to terminate grants that no longer serve agency policy or the national interest as interpreted by the administration.

An elected government has the right to set priorities. It can decide to invest more in cancer research, energy, space, defense, or artificial intelligence. But there is a difference between setting a national budget and the possibility that a political appointee will bypass a scientific process or stop research that has already been approved because its topic does not fit the current ideological line.

The biggest danger is not necessarily an official ban. It is enough for researchers to understand that certain words, populations, or topics may jeopardize their funding. They may begin to align their research questions not only with scientific knowledge but also with what is politically acceptable.

This is how self-censorship is created.

Why science cannot be run like an election campaign

A political system operates in cycles of two or four years. Science sometimes operates in cycles of decades.

Developing a drug can take more than a decade. Building a telescope or particle accelerator requires long-term planning. Training an independent researcher takes many years of study, a doctorate, and a postdoctoral degree.

Such a system needs stability. This does not mean that every grant should last forever or that every institution is eligible for funding. But researchers must be able to assume that the rules of the competition will not change in the middle of an experiment and that a government commitment will not be canceled because of a messaging exchange in the White House.

When the state becomes unpredictable, even a large grant becomes less attractive. A scientist choosing where to set up a laboratory is not just looking at the amount he might receive this year, but the chance that he might continue working there for twenty years.

China is no longer just chasing the United States

The United States does not operate in a vacuum. While it undermines its own science system, China continues to increase investments in universities, laboratories, artificial intelligence, chips, energy, space, and quantum technologies.

According to the 2026 State of the American Science and Engineering Report, China surpassed the United States in research and development spending for the first time in 2024, after adjusting for international comparisons. China spent an estimated $1.028 trillion in purchasing power parity terms, compared to $1.009 trillion in the United States.

China also leads in the total number of scientific publications. This does not mean that it already leads in every aspect of quality. The United States still has an advantage in the rate of high-impact papers and patents, in some of the world's best universities, in venture capital, and in the ability to turn research into large companies.

The Chinese system also has limitations. Centralized government, censorship, and restrictions on freedom of expression are not ideal conditions for science, which relies on criticism, openness, and a willingness to challenge authority. Huge government investment can quickly advance goals chosen from above, but many breakthroughs come from directions that no one has predicted.

But as the United States becomes less open, less free, and less predictable, it is itself narrowing one of the important gaps that gave it an advantage over China.

Beijing does not have to make its system as free as the one in the United States. It is enough for Washington to make the American system more like a centralized and political system.

Europe is trying to turn the crisis into an opportunity

The European Union also sees a historic opportunity. In June 2026, the European Commission launched the Choose Europe portal, designed to attract researchers and scientists to the Union through jobs, transition support, research facilities and funding sources.

The European message is not disguised. The Union presents itself as a place that offers scientific freedom, stable and predictable funding, and the possibility of conducting research without political pressure.

The European Research Council allows researchers of any nationality to apply for grants, and has even increased the possible support for senior researchers moving from a country outside the EU to set up a laboratory in Europe.

Europe still has difficulty competing with some of the advantages of the United States. Academic salaries are lower in many countries, bureaucracy is heavy, the system is fragmented between countries and languages, and there is difficulty in turning research successes into giant technology companies.

But Europe doesn't need to absorb all the American scientists to change the balance. The transfer of a few hundred leading researchers can create a cumulative effect. Each such researcher sets up a lab, trains students, attracts grants and encourages companies to set up nearby.

A science center is not just a collection of buildings and equipment. It's a network of people. Once the network starts moving, it's very difficult to bring it back.

The lesson from Germany — without comparing the regimes

There is no moral or political comparison between the United States today and Nazi Germany. Researchers in the United States are not persecuted by the racist and totalitarian violence with which the Nazi regime eliminated free German science.

But there is a structural lesson that must not be ignored: a scientific power can lose in a relatively short time an advantage built over generations, when the government weakens research institutions, alienates talented people, and subordinates the pursuit of knowledge to its political needs.

Germany did not lose its scientific standing because Germans ceased to be talented. It lost it because the regime expelled some researchers, silenced others, and destroyed the institutional environment in which they operated.

The United States was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this disaster. It absorbed scientists, learned from the European model, and built a larger and more stable system than the one that existed before the war.

Now it risks repeating the structural mistake — not on the same scale or for the same reasons, but according to the same principle: when a country makes scientists feel that they have no future in it, another country will benefit.

American hegemony was never taken for granted.

It's easy to treat the United States' scientific leadership as if it were a natural consequence of the country's size, wealth, or the talent of its citizens. History proves otherwise.

American hegemony was built on political and institutional decisions: to absorb immigrants, fund basic research, strengthen universities, establish relatively independent agencies, rely on peer review, and allow scientists to research even things whose benefits were not clear in advance.

It also relied on a willingness to accept failure. Most research doesn’t immediately translate into a cure, a chip, or a company. Many don’t produce the result the researcher hoped for. But a successful scientific system knows that many failures are the price of a small number of world-changing breakthroughs.

When science is measured only by immediate political benefit, the possibility of discovering things that no one knew in advance that they were looking for disappears.

The question of the year 250

In the full moon 250 years of the United StatesScience is one of its most impressive achievements. Within a few decades, the country has become a center for physics, medicine, computing, aerospace, genomics, chips, and artificial intelligence.

Science gave it Nobel Prizes and prestige, but more importantly, it gave it economic, military, and medical power. Publicly funded universities and laboratories created the knowledge on which private companies grew that changed the world.

The United States now faces a choice. It can fix deficiencies, demand transparency, combat conflicts of interest, and scrutinize the effectiveness of grants without destroying the independence of research. It can also change priorities while maintaining stable rules and professional judgment.

But if research funding becomes a reward for political conformity, if government commitments lose their credibility, if foreign researchers see the United States as a hostile place, and if outstanding students prefer to build their futures in Europe or China, the hegemony will erode.

A scientific collapse does not at first appear like a building collapsing. Universities remain open. Articles continue to be published. Technology companies continue to report profits. For years, one can live off the scientific and technological stock accumulated in the past.

The collapse is revealed later: in the laboratories that were not established, in the researchers who left, in the students who did not arrive, in the drugs that were not developed, and in the new industries that were born in other countries.

China and the European Union do not have to defeat American science. It may be enough for the United States to continue to dismantle the system that built its advantage.

This is the central historical lesson of the year 250: a scientific power can build its supremacy over generations—and lose it within a few years.

Ampem – People also search

Has science in the United States already collapsed?

No. The United States still has some of the world's leading universities, companies, and laboratories. The term "collapse" refers to the damage to the mechanisms that will ensure future leadership: stable funding, research independence, the absorption of researchers, and the training of the next generation.

How did the United States become the leading scientific power?

The combination included adopting the European research university model, absorbing scientists who had fled the Nazis, large federal investment after World War II, establishing the NSF, expanding the NIH, defense and space investments, and openness to scientists and students from around the world.

Why were Germany, Britain, and France scientific powers?

These countries had long-standing universities and research institutions, traditions of basic research, and investment in the training of scientists. Germany stood out in research universities, Britain in experimental science, and France in its combination of academic and state institutions.

Why do temporary cuts to the science budget cause lasting damage?

Many studies last for years and are dependent on continuity. A grant termination may result in the firing of researchers and technicians, the loss of samples, the halting of experiments, and the disbanding of research groups. Renewing the budget does not immediately restore the people and knowledge that were lost.

Has China overtaken the United States in science?

China already leads in the number of publications, and by 2024, according to an internationally adjusted estimate, it will overtake the United States in the volume of research and development performed. However, the United States still leads in many measures of impact, patents, venture capital, and knowledge commercialization.

How might Europe benefit from the American crisis?

The EU is trying to attract researchers through grants, infrastructure, support for relocation and emphasis on scientific freedom. The relocation of top researchers could strengthen European universities and industries for decades.

Why are immigrants so important to American science?

A large proportion of researchers with doctoral degrees in the United States were born outside the country. Immigrants founded laboratories and companies, trained students, and over the years became citizens and permanent parts of American society and the economy.

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