You know there’s a problem when scientists in the United States increasingly see European bureaucracy as a safer setting for conducting their cutting-edge research than their home country’s own institutions.

The European Research Council, which grants funding for academic work in the European Union, has seen a surge in applications, the Financial Times reported this week. That included nearly triple the number of proposals from Americans compared to the year before.

The United States is still the world’s leading scientific research power, but competition is growing more fierce, and it’s a dangerous time to dull the country’s competitive edge. Like so many of President Donald Trump’s initiatives, his effort to take down the wall that progressives built up around U.S. academia started with a worthy cause — pressing universities and other research institutions to seek greater viewpoint diversity — but it is faltering due to overreach.

The administration has cancelled or frozen billions of dollars for research, often based on politically triggering keywords such as “gender,” “bias” or “climate science.” It also mounted pressure campaigns on universities to micromanage their curricula and crack down on campus protests. At the height of the slash-and-burn tactics, one survey found that 75 percent of American researchers were so frustrated that they were considering working elsewhere.

Other countries have seen the drama as an “once-in-a-century brain gain opportunity,” as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute put it. France’s Aix-Marseille Université launched a program called “Safe Place for Science,” which attracted nearly 300 applications, primarily from U.S.-based researchers. The European Commission similarly pledged half a billion euros to make the continent a “safe haven” for scientists.

China, too, has used the Trump administration’s policies as a tool to lure Chinese-born engineers and scientists working in the U.S. back to their home country, a long-held priority for communist leaders in Beijing. One advertisement from a group connected with the Chinese Academy of Sciences specifically targeted “talents who have been dismissed by the U.S. (National Institutes of Health) or other universities/institutes.”

There’s reason to be skeptical that these recruitment efforts will succeed in dramatically weakening America’s scientific engine. It’s one thing for researchers to say they want to leave, and quite another to follow through, especially given limited slots at foreign institutions.

Yet the headwinds threaten to hold back the country’s intellectual might, just as China appears to build momentum in its application of AI-powered technologies. The U.S., which has benefited greatly from its ability to draw the best minds from across the globe over the past century, can ill afford to lose its academic sheen.

— Washington Post