This post was originally published on here
“They want to stay, and we want them to stay,” Glass told Ars.
Another concerning outcome of Trump cuts that could hamper Genesis Mission: Entire research groups at many institutions were “displaced”—removed from their labs and left to work in cubicles without access to their equipment, Glass told Ars.
“I think scientists want to go where the best sciences are being done, but eventually these kinds of friction points and these hostile policies make them redirect elsewhere, even temporarily redirect, earn their doctorate in Europe and hope that the policy environment in the US changes,” Glass said.
To turn it around, Glass made several recommendations in his op-ed to help retain PhD graduates and create stable pathways for high-value talents. That includes suggesting that the Trump administration consider fast-tracking green cards for students in fields that Genesis Mission depends on, including AI and machine-learning researchers, quantum computing scientists, and semiconductor engineers.
He also thinks the US should “unlock the O-1A visa for researchers and entrepreneurs” by redefining what makes someone an “extraordinary” talent and creating dedicated “founder tracks” for international talent, as Britain and Singapore do. That visa is “uncapped yet underused,” Glass said, only approving 4,500 STEM candidates in 2023.
Without changes to the visa system, the US “risks redirecting those talent flows,” he said. “And like a river, once those talent flows get redirected, they are very difficult to reverse.”
And it won’t just be international talents jumping ship, Glass suggested, but also possibly US scientists forced to continue navigating potentially more of Trump’s cuts and indirect costs in the coming years.
“I think that’s the kind of thing that slowly eats away at someone’s desire to continue to do science in the United States,” Glass said.
Glass told Ars that he expects the US to stay on a “downward trajectory,” driving away talent in 2026, which Josephson suggested “will damage science both for the short and long term.”
