I can't steelman the position that "the topic of the article might disappear at any moment because of funding cuts" is unrelated to the article. If it were a post about a startup releasing a new product, and the top comment was "hey FYI, this startup has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy", would that be off-topic too?
And: the article itself puffs about how this is attracting physics research to the US; how can contradicting claims the article makes be off-topic to discussion about self-same article? It can't be a "they're allowed to speak but we're not allowed to contradict"—this is HN! Discussion is the whole point!