White House Releases Its Vision For Science: What Role For Energy?

Scientists in the U.S. have shown more than a little skepticism toward the new White House report, Science: A New Golden Age, released by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The document sets forth a vision for the future of American science that demands a complete overturn of the existing system and the role of basic research.

As portrayed by Science, America’s leading scientific journal, the plan is to “reduce funding to the nation’s leading universities, replace investigator-inspired research with much larger awards for teams working on [specified] grand challenges, emphasizes the physical sciences at the expense of other disciplines, and seeks alternatives to peer review for choosing the best ideas…”

The felt transgressions that Trump has pursued toward U.S. science are unparalleled, far-reaching, and globally impactful, so these are diplomatic words. More than any time in American history, the White House has sought direct political control over the scientific enterprise—a move associated with authoritarian regimes and profound damage to national systems of research.

In this brief essay, I want to examine one central theme in the new plan for science—that of energy. Besides offering a valuable lens on the scope and aim of Science: A New Golden Age, it does so in a way that, to many readers, will be both revealing and surprising.

The American Model – Vannevar Bush and the Endless Frontier

The report is styled in name and structure after the epochal 1945 document by Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier. Bush argued for building a postwar partnership, based partly on a model pioneer by Germany in the 19th century, by which government funding would drive self-directed basic research in universities. Bush’s premise, shared by many at the end of WWII, was that fundamental research would yield innovations able to accelerate economic growth and advance national security.

Such became, in large part, the U.S. model. Though amended over time in important ways—by a broadening of support from basic science alone to include forms of applied (use-inspired) research, for example—the original partnership held firm until the second Trump Administration.

Calling the model “calcified,” the new report promises a “new golden age” whose contrast with Bush’s “endless frontier” couldn’t be greater. In plain terms, it argues for a wholesale shift away from inquiry and knowledge to commercialization and wealth.

U.S. researchers know too well that the current scheme of funding, evaluating, and publishing research needs change. A burdensome process for gaining and managing grants and a reward system often driven by citation metrics rather than peer review, are two examples scientists often criticize. There are also problems related to the replicating of findings in some published research, plus other challenges.

Few, however, believe in dismantling and remaking the entire research system under a radically different set of principles. Nor are they likely to view the suggestions for reform in a neutral light, given recently proposed federal rules that would give political appointees oversight over grant funding, ban collaboration with foreign researchers, and realign “research” itself to presidential priorities.

Where, then does energy fit into this? In his transmittal letter to OSTP Director Michael Kratsios for the new report, Trump began by emphasizing U.S. achievements: “The Manhattan Project fueled the atomic era. The Apollo Program won us the space race. The internet connected us to a digital future.”

Energy’s role is central to all these examples. In seeming echo, Science: A New Golden Era makes it a core theme. Many would agree with this.

The question thus becomes what sciences and technologies are at issue? What does “energy” mean for the “new golden era”? Here, the answer is not what we may expect.

The Future of Energy Will Depend on One Source – Not What You May Think

It does not mean hydrocarbons. Oil and gas, in fact, aren’t given top billing in this revision of American science. They aren’t given a role at all, only a passing mention. Despite all the talk about “energy dominance” based on the shale revolution and massive U.S. coal reserves, none of this plays a part in Science: A New Golden Era.

Instead, the new “golden age” will come from a very different source: nuclear power.

This is not an error or oversight. Trump in his letter placed nuclear technology alongside AI and quantum information science as one of the three technologies where the U.S. must “secure its position as the unrivaled world leader.” Nuclear, he says, is among the fields that will “set the terms of the future.”

An especially revealing chapter in the new report is titled, “Securing U.S. Dominance in Critical and Emerging Technologies,” which begins with a striking sentence: “Our physicists translated Schrödinger’s equations into the weapons that ended World War II and defined the nuclear order that followed.”

Other than the question of how central Schrödinger’s equations were to the Manhattan project, many physicists today would reject the idea that weapons and reactors comprise a single “order” over which the U.S. must regain the full superiority it had in the late 1940s.

Nor would they agree that those who worked on the project were “ours.” A major portion of the most important scientists were recent immigrants—Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch, Albert Einstein, Leo Szilard, and so on.

But there is a deeper problem here. Basic science, including theoretic work, was absolutely essential to the A-bomb project and will be so for quantum computing, fusion (which the report promotes), and next-generation fission.

There seems a refusal to accept this anywhere in Science: A New Golden Age, given its demand for commercialization, defense capabilities, and demonstrations of innovation. In blunt terms, the new “golden age” would much prefer a new weapon system than discovery of a new fundamental particle, element, or species.

Nuclear Power as Icon of U.S. Technological Failures

But the real heart of why nuclear is so central has to do with it being the flagship illustration of how the U.S. has sabotaged its own technical capabilities.

“The nuclear industry illustrates the problem at its most extreme. The United States once led the world in nuclear technology. We built the reactors, trained the engineers, and wrote the safety standards that other nations adopted. Then we regulated the industry into paralysis.”

For many who continued to support nuclear after Three Mile Island, these words hold a significant measure of truth. Yet they ignore the central role of public fear in order to argue a political-ideological point.

For conservatives, “regulation” has long stood for harmful government interference in business and markets, an impediment to American leadership inspired by left-wing environmentalism. In recent decades, it has also taken on the cast of climate-inspired rules and barriers to restrain U.S. progress.

Nuclear becomes iconic in this context, because it counts as a domain of innovation America gave to the world but then essentially abandoned. It did so even as the technology continued to advance elsewhere, most recently and impressively in China. Few other examples can be found to match nuclear energy in this way, given the hopes and scale of development it attracted early on.

Today, it must be reclaimed and advanced because the “stakes are so high, driven by energy demands across America’s AI and manufacturing industries.” And as nuclear fission will secure reliable power to AI data centers across the country, “cutting-edge AI [will] advance fusion energy,” closing the circle and doubling the role and value of nuclear in coming decades.

A Stolen Consensus – More Iron than Gold

Nuclear therefore does some heavy lifting in this plan for American science. Four points stand out: (1) it proves the central claim that regulation, not science, is the binding constraint, (2) it will supply the energy infrastructure that AI ambitions require, (3) it frames the China rivalry in technological rather than commodity terms, and (4) it reaches back to the actual founding moment of American science policy in order to best reveal that, after 80 years, the time has come for conversion to a new set of ideas about what science must be and do.

Except that the original ideas about the fundamental value of basic research have only been confirmed during this period, not weakened. One would be hard pressed to find a significant number of scientists, mathematicians, engineers, or physicians who would agree that basic research should be considerably downgraded, with universities forced to obey in their scientific work the priorities of the executive branch in government.

As for the issue of over-regulation, Science: A New Golden Age is a political document in another way. It avoids any mention that the White House is carrying forward perceptions and proposals put in place by the Biden Administration and shared by a growing consensus of urban planners, economists, political scientists, energy experts, and others.

Clear evidence in the area of civilian nuclear power is the ADVANCE Act (Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy), signed by President Biden in July 2024. It directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up licensing, cut application fees, update safety requirements, favor advanced reactor designs, and more.

These are all measures that the Trump Administration has pursued with enhanced vigor, but for which it has claimed full and total credit—minus any mention of the climate connection—an assertion obediently and repeatedly made in Science: A New Golden Age.

This kind of stealing of consensus is hardly new to American politics, true enough. What makes this case different is that it harnesses such a consensus to an effort by government at bending the scientific enterprise to its will. Should it succeed, now or later—carrying its plans to conclusion—the result is likely to bring more iron than gold.