Hello and welcome to Science Minute. Today we look at a New York Times report on how U.S. policies under President Trump are driving scientific talent straight into China’s labs. Even before visa crackdowns and funding cuts, Beijing was already winning the global race for top researchers, luring Nobel laureates and MacArthur “Genius Grant” winners to places like Westlake University in Hangzhou. Now, with U.S. research budgets slashed and international students under pressure, more scholars are choosing Chinese institutions. One ad from a group linked to the Chinese Academy of Sciences even welcomes “talents who have been dismissed by the U.S. NIH.” As anatomy expert Zhang Xiaoming put it, “The United States is shooting itself in the foot,” after leaving Baylor College of Medicine to lead Westlake’s medical program. If the U.S. wants to stay on top of innovation, experts say it may need to rethink its approach to foreign researchers.
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