Ignorance Is Not Bliss

The Steady State | By Susan Koch

The assault by the Trump Administration on the nation’s intellectual capital undermines one of the most important, but least recognized, pillars of U.S. national security.

Our universities and publicly-supported research institutions make invaluable contributions to most elements of national power, including military, economic, technological, public health, national reputation and leadership.

U.S. colleges and universities attract excellent foreign students and researchers, who are eager to receive the world’s best education and opportunities for advancement. Think of Katalin Kariko, born and educated in Hungary, who came to the United States to do research forty years ago, and whose work on ribonucleic acid (RNA) made possible the rapid development of the most effective vaccines against COVID-19. In 2023, she joined the many American immigrants who have won a Nobel Prize. The importance of immigrant scientists to our national security was even more obvious in the Manhattan Project and later nuclear weapons, missile and space developments. Where would we have been without Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Edward Teller, Wernher von Braun and the like?

Now the Trump Administration is recklessly destroying the intellectual foundations of our military, economic, social and technological security. Budgets for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are being slashed, and their expert leadership replaced by political appointees with little or no scientific backgrounds. Those who argue that the research they support should be done by the private sector do not understand that basic research – whose payoffs might be great but are initially uncertain – is too risky to be undertaken by profit-seeking enterprises. That kind of investment in our future is a critical government activity, serving the long-term public interest. For example, Google was first developed by two Stanford graduate students working on an NSF-funded project. Consider the enormous economic, political and social payoff from that small investment.

The Administration also appears to be on a crusade to destroy the intellectual freedom and financial support that are critical to our great universities. Outrageous demands have been placed on Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and others to adhere to politically-imposed views. The charges of antisemitism are just cover stories; there were and are real problems there, but they are being addressed. When one university bows to the pressure, as Columbia did, the demands just escalate. The effort to destroy Harvard shows that the same can happen to universities that bravely, and wisely, resist. The assault on universities is unlike anything we have seen in this country, and is frighteningly reminiscent of so-called education in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Further, the Administration has destroyed much of the attraction that the United States has had to foreign students and researchers. Funding for the scientific work that they want to pursue – such as that which originally drew Katalin Kariko to Pennsylvania –is disappearing. Student visas are being arbitrarily revoked; although many have been restored, the fear of future revocations remain, and the Secretary of State has threatened to “aggressively” revoke visas issued to Chinese students. Further, the President is seeking to ban all foreign students from entering the United States if they intend to study at Harvard. And the Secretary of State has ordered a pause on issuance on any new foreign student visas.

Current foreign students are being imprisoned for simply exercising the First Amendment rights which apply to all those in the United States, not just to citizens. In some cases, as with a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, they have been pulled away by masked men with no uniforms and no identification – U.S. government officers acting like Mafia hitmen. Even if they are able to obtain visas, how many foreign students and scientists will decide not to pursue their studies or research in the United States, because of what they see happening to their counterparts?

Large universities with substantial endowments like Harvard probably will survive the Trump onslaught, although at real cost to their missions. Smaller, less prosperous colleges may not be so lucky. My undergraduate college is excellent, but has a limited endowment, and depends heavily on foreign student enrollments. The college may not last if Administration policies continue to discourage or even bar foreign students from coming to the United States.

While the Administration works to abandon our decades-long leadership in science and technology, another country is eager, and increasingly ready, to assume that role. The Xi Jinping government places a high priority on scientific and technological research and development, which it sees as essential to its national strategic goal of the “great rejuvenation” of the nation by 2049 (the 100^th anniversary of the People’s Republic). It undoubtedly sees the Trump assault on U.S. science and technology as a huge help in its quest for global leadership. A world dominated by China economically, scientifically and technologically would be a disaster for the United States and our allies.

Biological terrorism is another national security threat that could emerge from the Trump science and technology policies. The COVID-19 pandemic offered ample lessons in the possibility of global social, political and economic devastation from an initially very small disease outbreak. It would have been far worse, and much longer lasting, if it were not for the work of U.S. government scientists that led to the RNA vaccines in a historically short time. Because of the Trump policies, we will be ill-prepared to combat another pandemic. It cannot be lost on potential terrorists that many experts have left NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), that the FY2026 Trump budget request would dramatically cut each, and that their Cabinet Secretary is paring back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.

Two competing sayings come to mind in considering the impact of the Trump science and technology policies on national security. One – “knowledge is power” – has proven itself throughout modern history. To the great detriment of America and the world, the Trump Administration appears to subscribe to the opposite, and potentially catastrophic, belief that “ignorance is bliss.” We must not follow that path.

Dr. Susan Koch’s federal government service included work in the White House National Security Council Staff, State Department, Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, specializing in weapons of mass destruction arms control and nonproliferation. She is a member of The Steady State, an organization of former national security officials.

Initially founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 270 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.