Pissing Away America's Competitive Edge
Donald Trump and Elon Musk are creating a parade of scientists being lured away by the countries that Trump has betrayed in the name of Tariffs, Tyranny and Project 2025.
You may have noticed that Donald Trump rarely misses an opportunity to brag about his alma mater, the Wharton School of Business. It’s not enough that the fabled Wharton School has either dropped its classes on the Great Depression or Donald Trump skipped them when he saw the words Smoot-Hawley on the syllabus, during his tenure at his fabled B-School.
The poor folks at Wharton must be beside themselves as they watch the reputation of their School besmirched by a carnival barker masquerading as commander in chief.
What is clear, however, is how seriously broken our closest allies consider the new world order under the fast-fading garland of American leadership.
The Canadian election, completed yesterday, saw a 25% swing directly attributable to Canadians disdain for Donald Trump.
Not unlike the exodus of brilliant physicists, rocket scientists, and theoreticians who fled Europe in the wake of WWII, across the EU, an urgent effort is underway to capitalize on the U.S. brain drain in the wake of Doge and the Donald.
According to some very saavy reporting by Politico’s Timea Steingarte, hoping to tap into the exodus of intellectual talent from universities and the federal government in the US, European universities are courting top American scientists and researchers and intellectuals, en masse, with offers of what they are calling “academic asylum.”
The European Research Council has doubled the funding it offers researchers to move to the continent.
The cooler heads of a bloc of 12 EU nations are working together to fast-track visas, Horizon Europe grants, and relocation stipends in an effort to “poach” U.S. brainpower in accordance with their own strategic priorities.
In a letter addressed to the EU Commissioner for research and innovation, Ekaterina Zaharieva, officials from those nations urged coordinated action to attract scholars and researchers “who might suffer from research interference and ill-motivated and brutal funding cuts” and called for integrating the U.S.-trained researchers into Europe’s innovation ecosystem.
It’s part of a broader, ongoing strategy designed to boost EU competitiveness with the U.S. and China over the long term and promises to make Europe a leading center of research and innovation in the 21st century.
The dreams of thousands of brilliant and talented students from around the world who once dreamed of being on the cutting edge of a new American Century of innovation, research and advancement have crashed and burned at the hands of what is becoming the wreckage of American exceptionalism.
In France, Aix-Marseille Université launched an initiative called Safe Place for Science. According to Politico, The French university confirmed that it had received 197 completed applications for the program by March 31, primarily from researchers in climate change, disaster governance, immunology, infectious disease, mRNA, and human and social sciences.
In Germany, the Max Planck Society, Germany’s premier research institution with 84 institutions and 31 Nobel laureates, is now actively scouting U.S. talent.
Donald Trump and his administration have destroyed any goodwill that has been built up over the decades. If we don’t act now to restore the American Brand, Freedom and the Rule of Law may disappear from the planet.
Spirit Buffalo on a Ridgetop