Terence Tao is an inspiring person in a field we all find compelling. He's formalized the plight of such field here as a result of the administration's approach to cost-cutting. That doesn't mean that it isn't necessary. Sure, there are better theoretical ways to reduce spending, but it doesn't take a tremendous amount of experience to recognize the incentives just don't align with accomplishing that goal. A cross-the-board stop/cut also neuters the pork-barreling and self-serving political advocacy that would kill more nuanced reductions.
A great question! I can't think of anything that will. I think one idea would be to trim the budget broadly every year in a similar vein to align with receipts and let the people periodically decide anew what to fund.
Yep. Sure, call it what you want, but (1) and (2) have proven not to work. The federalist political system has a weakness in that it incentivizes politicians to advocate for endless spending on behalf of their constituents. That means a perpetual state of either higher taxes or inflation. Over the last 50 years only a single federal government has operated with a budget that didn't increase the national debt.
Even if this take has merit, the approach taken here is simply cruel. There are ways the Administration could have implemented a "cross-the-board stop/cut" that would not be so devastating to so many /millions/ of people. The fact that they chose to execute in this chaotic, "effective immediately" manner suggests a certain un-seriousness to the whole thing. In other words, this is less about reducing spending and more about deliberately destroying institutions, which is the stated goal of many in the Administration.
I was surprised to not find the funding freeze discussed on HN yesterday and I am speechless today at some of the comments I am reading in here. Are readers not aware of the scope and impact of this? I will tell you my story: I am funded by NASA to develop and maintain open-source machine learning software that they use directly on satellites. I am not the only one: many open source scientific software projects that are in widespread use are funded via federal grants of one form or another.
Such grants are funded on a reimbursement basis (or at least mine is): each month, I submit an invoice (via the scientific software 501(c)3 of which I am a part). Then NASA pays it. When the EO was announced, my guidance was simply that NASA was not going to pay out for a while and my February paycheck was just going to not show up for a while. To my knowledge, this was basically the guidance for every NASA, NSF, NIH, etc. grant. (I believe DARPA grants are not frozen.) These do not just fund what the more conservative among us might call 'mathematical wankery', they fund all kinds of things across science.
The issue is not whether some of these grants should have been issued in the first place. The issue is that suddenly, a large group of researchers is either not going to get paid, or their organizations are going to have to float their salary themselves on behalf of the federal government, because the federal government has just said that they plan to renege on their agreements. How many will miss rent or mortgage payments?
Although the order has been blocked for now, it is still unclear what it will mean for me and others. (I would submit an invoice on Feb. 1... would it be paid?) It's not like I just got laid off and can go look for other work now: the funding is likely to come back, I just get the joy of having no idea when.
For those of you who seem to have little problem with the EO itself: please take at least a few moments to consider whether your principles outweigh the real human costs here, and whether there might have been a less brutalistic way of achieving the same principles.
I completely agree, the whole type of decision making wrecks people's life. Fine, if the government wants have a discussion of what programs to fund, lets have that, but this id.otic 'stop funding' orders is just horrific for people involved. There could be people on grants, who are just planning to move to the US from some other country, who finished their previous contracts whose lives will be suspended.
I remember the same thing happened last time with the 'travel bans'.
Obviously this new government does not give a sh.t about people and rational decision making, but it's bizarre how some people in this thread are trying to justify that...
This article is about funding freeze for the NIH (National Institutes of Health), not the NSF (National Science Foundation) but I suppose the situation is very similar.
> Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13, issued on Jan. 27, 2025, directs all federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of their financial assistance programs to determine programs, projects and activities that may be implicated by the recent executive orders. Therefore, all review panels, new awards and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis.
The Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13 lists a series of 8 different EOs none of which seem to be relevant to the NSF (although I haven't looked into them). It also says:
> The guidance establishes a process for agencies to work with OMB to determine quickly whether any program is inconsistent with the President’s Executive Orders. A pause could be as short as day. In fact, OMB has worked with agencies and has already approved many programs to continue even before the pause has gone into effect.
It would be good to know exactly which EOs are blocking the NSF's grants. Also, it sounds like the government are willing to approve spending as long as it has been through an internal review process which presumably if those grants were all but confirmed they should have already been through an internal review process.
I imagine anything involving "game theory" and "equilibrium" could be construed to involve "equity" and hence trigger DEI eviction protocols. Let's see if we're living in an Orwellian McCarthyian dystopia or not.
For fields like academia it is interesting to see them impacted, but other areas don't even relate to any meaningful government financial sponsorship. I've been wondering for a few decades now if we shouldn't create a rendezvous site outside of all the countries that require a visa to work. It's my understanding that some countries try to make special economic zones that fit the bill, but I'm a little sceptical these are that independent.
As an example, say I want to hire a asylum seeker who will be returned to Syria and wants to go anywhere else, is there a list of anywhere else we could agree to make a contract and done?
For me the question is the Nash equilibriums if people with libertarian interests don't at least trust governments to be a little predicable on some topics.. Hiring someone remotely doesn't really give them a visa where ever they want to be there are I think odd ideas of bilateral agreements to whatever state owns their nationality.
Is it also a disaster that many math education programs don't hinge on automated proof assistants?
"we just don't know" is a non-answer.
If Tao's point is in predicting rapid change from a game theoretic perspective, perhaps it would behoove university executives to court industry for research dollars, instead of an ouroboros of invented problems and federal tax dollars.
Even state tax dollars are more likely to have a clear purpose.
Generally speaking, conservatives are ambivalent on the topic of education and research. Why they may benefit from uneducated voters, they understand the value of qualified labour for their businesses.
Do you actually mean conservatives here, or Republicans?
I ask because the parties have functionally flipped at the moment. Democrats are doing whatever they can to keep what was already in place (i.e. "conserve") while Republicans are on a bit of a war path trying to change everything (i.e. "progress").
Maybe traditional conservatives, but they're functionally extinct now, and the only time Trump supporters are "pro-education" is when they can rage about how DEI is ruining education. At least, from what I've seen so far.
Readit News
I doubt that in the long run. This is just a grab of control that will likely result in one set interested parties being replaced by another.
1) Do nothing 2) Try to have detailed review of different programs 3) Stop everything
The latter is the most beneficial.
Dead Comment
Such grants are funded on a reimbursement basis (or at least mine is): each month, I submit an invoice (via the scientific software 501(c)3 of which I am a part). Then NASA pays it. When the EO was announced, my guidance was simply that NASA was not going to pay out for a while and my February paycheck was just going to not show up for a while. To my knowledge, this was basically the guidance for every NASA, NSF, NIH, etc. grant. (I believe DARPA grants are not frozen.) These do not just fund what the more conservative among us might call 'mathematical wankery', they fund all kinds of things across science.
The issue is not whether some of these grants should have been issued in the first place. The issue is that suddenly, a large group of researchers is either not going to get paid, or their organizations are going to have to float their salary themselves on behalf of the federal government, because the federal government has just said that they plan to renege on their agreements. How many will miss rent or mortgage payments?
Although the order has been blocked for now, it is still unclear what it will mean for me and others. (I would submit an invoice on Feb. 1... would it be paid?) It's not like I just got laid off and can go look for other work now: the funding is likely to come back, I just get the joy of having no idea when.
For those of you who seem to have little problem with the EO itself: please take at least a few moments to consider whether your principles outweigh the real human costs here, and whether there might have been a less brutalistic way of achieving the same principles.
The cruelty is, and has always been, the whole point with these people.
You’re trying to appeal to decency in a desert of decency.
Dead Comment
[Edit: I initially confused the NSF and the NIH. Have now corrected the link]
> Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13, issued on Jan. 27, 2025, directs all federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive review of their financial assistance programs to determine programs, projects and activities that may be implicated by the recent executive orders. Therefore, all review panels, new awards and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis.
The Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-25-13 lists a series of 8 different EOs none of which seem to be relevant to the NSF (although I haven't looked into them). It also says:
> The guidance establishes a process for agencies to work with OMB to determine quickly whether any program is inconsistent with the President’s Executive Orders. A pause could be as short as day. In fact, OMB has worked with agencies and has already approved many programs to continue even before the pause has gone into effect.
It would be good to know exactly which EOs are blocking the NSF's grants. Also, it sounds like the government are willing to approve spending as long as it has been through an internal review process which presumably if those grants were all but confirmed they should have already been through an internal review process.
https://new.nsf.gov/executive-orders
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/923/
As an example, say I want to hire a asylum seeker who will be returned to Syria and wants to go anywhere else, is there a list of anywhere else we could agree to make a contract and done?
There's always Svalbard
"we just don't know" is a non-answer.
If Tao's point is in predicting rapid change from a game theoretic perspective, perhaps it would behoove university executives to court industry for research dollars, instead of an ouroboros of invented problems and federal tax dollars.
Even state tax dollars are more likely to have a clear purpose.
Deleted Comment
I ask because the parties have functionally flipped at the moment. Democrats are doing whatever they can to keep what was already in place (i.e. "conserve") while Republicans are on a bit of a war path trying to change everything (i.e. "progress").
Dead Comment
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