White House wants to divert billions of dollars in research funding from ‘slow consensus peer review’ to individual scientists and AI

The White House wants to reallocate hundreds of billions of dollars in federal funding to universities and peer-reviewed research committees.
Funding would instead go to individual scientists and AI-native labs.
The plan’s credibility is undermined by the US government’s record on science and AI.

The Trump administration has unveiled plans to shift about $200 billion in research funding to individual scientists and a “national AI for science initiative.”

The move would take funding away from academic research and “slow” consensus peer review panels in an effort to stay ahead of China, which is making great strides to catch up in AI and quantum computing technology.

The plans were outlined in a new report, titled “Science: A New Golden Age,” presented to Donald Trump by Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Michael Kratsios.

Funding will be transferred to AI and individual scientists

Peer-reviewed studies have been the basis of American research since the end of World War II, but Krastios says science must be reinvented again in a way “that frees America’s scientists to do their most innovative work, reignites the nation’s pursuit of ambitious scientific missions, and positions the United States to lead the AI-driven scientific revolution that will define the next century.”

The report is a suggestion of the direction in which the Trump administration wants to shape the future of federal science funding, but the federal funding budget is guaranteed by Congress.

The goal of peer-reviewed research is to prevent research from being conducted in an echo chamber, to spot errors and misinformation, and to provide critiques of research methodology and biases. By moving away from peer review and awarding funding to individual scientists (presumably approved by the government to provide party-line conclusions), this shift in the way academic research is conducted will undermine the scientific credibility of the United States, both domestically and on the global stage.

The report also suggests fully funding “Mission Genesis,” which aims to unite “national laboratories, industry, academia, and many others to harness AI for breakthroughs in energy dominance, scientific discovery, and national security” by creating “AI-native scientific institutions better suited for an era of machine-augmented research.” There are obviously use cases for AI in science, but the US government doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to using AI for science.

The US government has already been caught using AI to create documents presented at hearings, with a research report presented by US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. riddled with errors and citing studies that didn’t exist – a classic case of AI hallucination.

Trump also made significant deviations in the direction of climate science in the United States, with the removal of authoritative, peer-reviewed assessments of the U.S. national climate from U.S. government websites, the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, as well as funding and staffing reductions at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Mauna Loa Observatory, and several climate monitoring centers.

In order to stay at the forefront of AI development, the United States is also experiencing massive construction of AI data centers to provide pioneering usage, training, and model development capabilities. But this presents a major challenge: providing enough power to sites already operating, as well as planned sites that will require multi-gigawatt connections.

Trump has encouraged AI companies and data center developers to rely on fossil fuels to provide additional energy capacity, with many AI campuses deploying turbines burning natural gas. Some of these sites operate at noise levels comparable to an international airport 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with local residents reporting illnesses and symptoms such as dizziness, nausea, vertigo and sleep disturbances due to the infrasound emitted by the turbines.

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