Trump and the Decline of American Innovation

It appears as if President Trump is intent on reducing American innovation and scientific achievement, playing into China and Russia’s hands. Many of his policy moves make no sense at all in terms of advancing the nation’s scientific and military prowess. Trump and his supporters do not seem to believe in science and scientific expertise. His administration appears to be filled with Luddites who don’t understand the need for scientific innovation to keep America ahead of other nations in technology, military and commercial applications.

First of all, Trump has cut government funding dramatically for research and development for both government agencies and universities. Instead of cutting funding, he should have increased it, for money is the lifeblood of scientific advances in all fields. At this time, when we are in direct competition with China in terms of scientific innovation and technological progress, it is imperative that we spend as much money as necessary to keep abreast or ahead of China. Federal R and D funding increases productivity for our entire economy. Trump’s budget requests have gutted funding for both scientific and health research. Funds for the NIH and National Science Foundation which dispenses the money for basic research has been slashed 40-50 percent. Attempting to balance the budget on the back of scientific research is both nearsighted and foolish given what it portends for American science. The Trump administration does not appear to appreciate what scientific research does for the nation, in both the short and long term. According to economists Andrew Fieldhouse of Texas A and M and Karel Mertens of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, government R and D spending over the past 75 years has boosted U.S. productivity and economic growth. There has been a direct correlation between government R and D spending and productivity, more so than private R and D funding.

Aside from government spending on scientific R and D, just as important is the matter of excluding foreign scientists and students from coming to the United States to work in our laboratories, study in our universities and remain in our country to join our technology companies or form their own start-ups. Two thirds of tech employees at Silicon Valley companies are foreign born. 55 percent of American start-ups valued at $1 billion or more had at least one immigrant founders. 60 percent of the top American AI companies had at least one immigrant funder. Many of these tech founders came to the U.S. as students and then stayed on to work at tech companies or start new ones.

Immigrant entrepreneurs are acknowledged as one of the main drivers of innovation and economic growth in the U.S. Yet President Trump is banning foreign students from coming to the U.S. to study and stay on as entrepreneurs and become citizens. It’s almost as if Trump is purposely trying to destroy the American economy and make us a second-class power. He has no concept of how important STEM immigrants are to our science, technology and economy. China, India and the E.U. are chomping at the bit to get the educated immigrants we are rejecting to come to their schools and stay and work in their nations. According to Forbes and Statista, in 2016, China had 4.7 million STEM graduates, India 2.6 million, and the U.S. 568,000. In the years since, the disparity is likely even greater. How can we possibly keep up with the innovations and advances in science, technology and engineering without encouraging foreign STEM graduates to continue their educations in the U.S. and stay on and work here. Trump does not seem to understand this. How can he be convinced to recruit foreign STEM immigrants to come to the U.S. instead of banning them?

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Tags: foreign students, government funding, innovation, R and D, science, Trump

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The US has entered the Israel-Iran war. Here are 3 scenarios for what might happen next

Ian Parmeter , Australian National University

After prevaricating about whether the United States would enter Israel’s war on Iran, President Donald Trump finally made a decision.

Early Sunday, US warplanes and submarines struck three of Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, where the Iranians have a uranium enrichment plant buried about 80 metres beneath a mountain.

These strikes have to be viewed as part of an overall continuum that began with the Gaza war following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and then continued with Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah (the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon) and the fall of the Iran-backed Assad regime in Syria.

Iran has never been weaker than it is now. And when Trump said it may take two weeks for him to decide whether to bomb Iran, the Israelis likely pushed him to act sooner.

We can assume there was a lot of Israeli pressure on Trump to use the massive ordnance penetrators , the 30,000-pound (13,600-kilogram) “bunker buster ” bombs that only the US can deploy with its B2 bombers.

Now that Trump has taken the significant step of entering the US in yet another Middle East war, where could things go from here? There are a few possible scenarios.

1. Iran strikes back

The Iranians know they don’t have the strength to take on the US, and that the Americans can do enormous damage to their country and even put the Iranian regime’s stability at risk.

This is always the prime consideration of the clerical regime led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – everything else is subordinate to that.

To gauge Iran’s possible reaction, we can look at the how it responded to the first Trump administration’s assassination of the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020.

Iran said there would be a major reaction , but all it did was launch a barrage of missiles at two American bases in Iraq, which caused no US fatalities and very little damage. After that token retaliation, Iran said the matter was closed.

Iran’s reaction to the new US strikes will likely be along these lines. It probably won’t want to get into a tit-for-tat with the US by launching attacks against American facilities in the region. Trump has promised to respond with force:

Iran, a bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.

It’s also unclear how long Iran will be able to prosecute this war. This depends largely on how many ballistic missiles and launchers it has left.

There are various estimates as to how many ballistic missiles Iran may have remaining in its stockpiles. It was believed to have about 2,000 missiles capable of reaching Israel at the start of the war. Some estimates say Iran has fired 700 of them; others say around 400 . Whatever the number is, its stockpiles are dwindling quickly.

Israel has also destroyed about a third of Iran’s ballistic missile launchers . If Israel is able to destroy all of them, Iran would have very limited ability to fight back.

2. Iran backs down

Before the US got involved in the conflict, Iran said it was prepared to negotiate, but it wouldn’t do so while Israel was still attacking.

So, one scenario is that some sort of compromise can now be worked out, in which Israel announces a ceasefire and Iran and the US agree to resume negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program.

The big problem is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he doesn’t trust the negotiating process and he doesn’t want to stop Israel’s military actions until all of Iran’s nuclear facilities have been completely destroyed. He’s also been bombing Iran’s oil terminals and gas facilities to put even more pressure on the regime.

But the regime has shown itself to be incredibly determined not to lose face. It was under great pressure at different times during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and never considered surrendering until a US missile mistakenly took down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people.

Iran then agreed to a UN-brokered ceasefire. But the Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years, causing an estimated one million deaths. And when the then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, agreed to the ceasefire, he said it was “worse than drinking poison ”.

Given the state of Iran’s military capabilities, Khamenei, the current supreme leader, might surrender simply to try to preserve the regime. But this would be quite a climbdown as far as he’s concerned, and he has been very obstinate in the past.

The regime is very unpopular, but the Iranian people, in my experience, are strongly patriotic – loyal to their country, if not the regime. Though it’s difficult to gauge opinion in a country of 90 million people, a lot of Iranians would not want to be ordered to do anything by the US or Israel, and would rather fight on.

Netanyahu has said he wants to create the conditions for the Iranian people to rise up against the regime.

But it’s worth bearing in mind that the opposite of autocracy is not necessarily democracy. It could possibly be chaos. Iran has a number of different ethnic groups and there may be huge disagreements over what should take the place of the clerical regime, were it to fall.

At this stage, the regime will probably be able to hold together. And even if Khameini were to die suddenly, the regime will likely be able to quickly replace him .

Though we don’t know his probable successor, the regime has had plenty of time to plan for this. Those in senior positions will also know that a post-Khamenei succession struggle really would put the regime at risk.

3. The US engagement is limited

According to the new polling by The Economist and YouGov, released on June 17, 60% of Americans were opposed to joining the conflict between Israel and Iran, with just 16% in favour. Among Republicans, 53% opposed military action.

So, these strikes were not an obviously popular move among Americans at this stage. However, if this is an isolated event and succeeds in bringing a swift end to the war, Trump will probably be applauded by a majority of Americans.

If the US has to go back with more bombers – or there are serious attacks on US interests in the region – there could be more adverse reactions among Americans.

Another question is whether Iran’s 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium have been destroyed in the US attack.

If it hasn’t been destroyed, and depending how much damage has been done to its centrifuges, Iran may be able to reconstruct its nuclear program relatively quickly. And it could have more incentive to further enrich this uranium to 90% purity, or weapons-grade level, to build a nuclear device.The Conversation

Ian Parmeter , Research Scholar, Middle East Studies, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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Adquieren drones artillados para combate del crimen organizado en la frontera sur de México

Por ÉDGAR H. CLEMENTE

TAPACHULA, México (AP) — Autoridades de seguridad del estado de Chiapas informaron sobre la adquisición de una flotilla de drones artillados para combatir el crimen en esa zona del sur de México, donde tiene lugar una disputa entre los cárteles de la droga Sinaloa y Jalisco Nueva Generación.

El equipo tecnológico estará a cargo de la Secretaría de Seguridad local, a la cual pertenece la Fuerza de Reacción Inmediata Pakal, cuyos elementos cruzaron recientemente en una persecución contra presuntos integrantes de la delincuencia organizada a territorio guatemalteco, lo que ocasionó un conflicto diplomático entre los dos países fronterizos.

“Estamos activando estos drones, podemos cargar ametralladoras, podemos usarlo también para incendios”, dijo durante un evento público Óscar Aparicio Avendaño, titular de la Secretaría de Seguridad de Chiapas.

La dependencia agregó en un comunicado que dos de los drones artillados serán enviados a la frontera con Guatemala para apoyar las tareas del grupo Pakal.

“Los (drones) presentados tienen una capacidad de carga de hasta 35 kilos, son autosuficientes y pueden cargar ametralladoras, se pueden usar para incendios, cuentan con cámaras infrarrojas”, detalló el comunicado.

Aparicio Avendaño informó, además, que se adquirieron dos bases móviles blindadas —de cuatro que se pretenden obtener— denominadas “Kanan” y con capacidad para albergar a 24 elementos, que serán desplegadas en zonas remotas.

Desde diciembre pasado, cuando asumió el gobierno local Eduardo Ramírez, del oficialista partido Morena, declaró un combate frontal al crimen para revertir la espiral de violencia en la que se enfrascaba la región fronteriza con Guatemala por la disputa de las rutas del tráfico de drogas, armas y migrantes.

Incluso creó un grupo de élite —los Pakales— integrado por exagentes de la extinta Policía Federal y exmilitares. Sin embargo, ya pesan diversas denuncias. En mayo pasado uno de sus miembros desertó y denunció a otros compañeros de corrupción, así como presuntos vínculos con la delincuencia organizada. Ello motivó el despido de un mando y se abrió una investigación.

El caso más reciente fue el ingreso indebido de los Pakales con vehículos blindados y artillados a territorio guatemalteco durante una persecución que comenzó en el lado mexicano, cuyo saldo fue cuatro presuntos criminales abatidos.

Recientemente el gobierno local presumió que la entidad se posicionó como la más segura del país con el menor índice de delitos de México.

Pero la estrategia ha sido cuestionada por organizaciones de la sociedad civil. El Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Bartolomé de la Casas en un reciente informe consideró que la pacificación que proclaman las autoridades parece deberse a la mayor militarización de la región y no al desmantelamiento real de los grupos criminales.

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Porzingis llegaría a los Hawks en canje entre 3 equipos según fuente de AP

Por TIM REYNOLDS

Kristaps Porzingis sería traspasado de los Celtics de Boston a los Hawks de Atlanta como parte de un canje entre tres equipos que les dará a los Nets de Brooklyn otra selección en la primera ronda del draft de la NBA que se realiza este miércoles, según una persona con conocimiento del acuerdo.

Porzingis iría a los Hawks, mientras que Boston obtendría a Georges Niang y una selección de segunda ronda. Brooklyn recibiría a Terance Mann y la 22da selección, que está en manos de Atlanta, en el draft del miércoles, dijo la persona, quien habló con The Associated Press bajo condición de anonimato porque no se espera que el intercambio se finalice sino hasta el inicio del nuevo año de la liga, el 6 de julio.

ESPN fue el primer medio en informar sobre el intercambio, que luego fue mencionado por The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

El movimiento es el segundo importante de la semana por parte de Boston, después de que el equipo acordó traspasar a Jrue Holiday a Portland. La combinación de esos movimientos aún mantiene a Boston por encima de la línea de impuestos para la próxima temporada, pero fuera del segundo umbral.

Ello daría más flexibilidad a futuro a los Celtics —que estarán sin Jayson Tatum por, al menos, una parte significativa de la próxima temporada debido a una rotura de Aquiles.

Estar por debajo del segundo umbral es importante; una vez superado, ese límite restringe las formas en que los equipos pueden intercambiar o fichar jugadores.

Porzingis —quien, al igual que Holiday, fue parte del equipo que ayudó a Boston a ganar el título de la NBA en 2024— devengará 30,7 millones de dólares la próxima temporada con un contrato que está cerca de expirar. Fue frenado por una enfermedad en la segunda mitad de la pasada campaña, así como en la carrera de playoffs de Boston esta primavera. Pero tiene la intención de jugar por la selección deLetonia en el EuroBasket este verano, lo cual es una buena señal.

“Gracias por todo el apoyo y las preguntas sobre mi salud”, publicó Porzingis en las redes sociales esta semana. “Me he sentido excelente durante todo el receso después de la temporada y espero con ansias un torneo europeo de campeonato, saludable y fuerte.”

Porzingis promedió 19,6 puntos, 6,8 rebotes y 2,1 asistencias en 42 duelos esta temporada.

Los Nets ahora técnicamente tienen cinco selecciones en la primera ronda del miércoles. Ya poseen la 8va, 19na, 26ta yh 27ma. Y, esencialmente, estarán eligiendo para los Nets ahora también en el número 22.

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Deportes en español AP: https://apnews.com/hub/deportes

Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.

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