American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history

The gov't here in Norway put $10 million on the table[1] for 2026 as a response to what's going on in the US. Due to reasons they can't direct it solely at US researchers, but the intent is there:

The minister has followed the recent developments in the United States closely:

"Academic freedom is under pressure in the United States, and it is an unpredictable situation for many researchers in what has been the world's leading research nation for many decades. We have had close dialogue with the Norwegian knowledge communities and my Nordic colleagues about the development. It has been important for me to find good measures that we can put in place quickly, and therefore I have asked the Research Council to prioritize grant funding schemes that we can implement rapidly," says Aasland.

The program is meant to last years, we'll see how it goes.

Now I know, $10m ain't much in the grand scheme of things, but we're just 5 million folks over here.

[1]: https://www.forskningsradet.no/en/news/2025/100-million-nok-...

That’s like a couple of DoE grants in the US.

It's an example showing that institutions elsewhere are actually responding to this (a question asked by the parent post), and Norway will very likely not be alone here.

Norway is a small (albeit wealthy) country. For conparables, you want to keep an eye on EU and Chinese science funding, and see if they're taking advantage of it. Norway is a good existence proof of countries reacting to this though.

Yea that's practically nothing, even accounting for your population. It's $2/person compared to NASA's pre-cut budget of about $80/person/year. Where are all these other countries that might pick up the slack? Seems nobody else in the world wants to pay for science. They might complain about American science funding cuts but are happy to keep their already tiny science budgets tiny.

Norway's overall science budget is $1 billion per year, or $200/person/year. US's was $200 billion/year or $600/person/year. So Norway isn't really pulling its weight.

Yeah I just mentioned Norway since I'm Norwegian. Other EU countries are doing similar, like France[1].

[1]: https://www.politico.eu/article/meet-first-academic-refugees...

100M NOK is a 1% increase to Norway's annual research budget, but to replace what the current US administration is asking Congress to cut the whole of Europe would have to raise its funding level by 300-400%.

Where did you get that $1 billion figure from? From what I can see[1][2], it's more like $4.6 billion? In that case it would be more like $920/person/year.

[1]: https://www.fpol.no/det-norske-statsbudsjettet-2025-gir-en-n...

[2]: https://nifu.brage.unit.no/nifu-xmlui/handle/11250/3166076 (second page, first section)

It's worth considering that there's still a chance that the cuts end up being more limited than proposed.

Kind of like the tariffs or the Tiktok ban that's totally going to go into effect after the most recent extended grace period ends.

So it makes sense that the current raises aren't big enough to make up the shortfall. They're aniticipatory in nature, with the assumption that the actual cuts will be a lot less crazy, and increases to take advantage of a talent exodus will take some time to ramp up.

I've lost it now, some site said 10 billion NOKs. Maybe it's classified in different ways. Either way, Norway is spending more on science than typical countries. Surprising if it's more per capita than the US though.

> Maybe it's classified in different ways.

This was my leading thought as well.

> Surprising if it's more per capita than the US though.

Well we do have these pipes in the ocean that spew money... Our oil fund is currently contributing 25% of the national budget, despite being below the somewhat stringent self-imposed spending rule[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_budgetary_rule