For the first time, officials at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) have spoken publicly about how President Donald Trump is now calling the shots at the $9 billion research agency, with his administration reorienting it to focus on the twin White House priorities of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science.

The occasion was a presentation yesterday to the National Science Board (NSB), NSF’s presidentially appointed governing body, which meets three or four times a year. In an hourlong public briefing, acting NSF Director Brian Stone and Chief Management Officer Micah Cheatham, both nonscientists, explained how Trump’s goal of pumping up federal spending in those two areas has essentially shifted NSF away from its role as an independent agency that funds all fields outside clinical medicine using input from the research community into a vehicle for administration priorities.

The board traditionally helps NSF identify important new areas to fund. But when NSB member Roger Beachy, a prominent plant virologist, asked how NSF might respond to a recommendation by the board to invest more in research to reduce food costs, Stone acknowledged the model had changed.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/nsf-officials-break-silence-how-ai-and-quantum-now-drive-agency-grantmaking

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