Latest news with #Kratsios
Time of India
3 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Trump signs orders to boost US drone defenses, supersonic flight; aims to counter threats; cut America's reliance on China
US President Donald Trump on Friday signed three executive orders aimed at enhancing drone security and promoting future air technologies, including electric air taxis and supersonic commercial aircraft, the White House announced. The new orders will allow drones to operate beyond the visual line of sight of their operators—an important step toward enabling widespread commercial drone deliveries. They also aim to reduce America's dependence on Chinese drone manufacturers and advance the testing of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, benefiting companies like Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation. To support these efforts, Trump is launching a federal task force to strengthen US control over its airspace. The task force will expand protections around sensitive sites, increase the government's ability to detect drones in real time, and provide support to state and local law enforcement. According to Reuters, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy said that, Trump further aims to address the "growing threat of criminal terrorists and foreign misuse of drones in US airspace." "We are securing our borders from national security threats, including in the air, with large-scale public events such as the Olympics and the World Cup on the horizon," Kratsios added. Sebastian Gorka from the National Security Council highlighted drone threats in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and at US sporting events. The issue of suspicious drones also gained significant attention last year after a flurry of drone sightings in New Jersey. The FAA receives over 100 monthly reports of drone sightings near airports, with incidents disrupting flights and events. "We will be increasing counter-drone capabilities and capacities," Gorka said. "We will increase the enforcement of current laws to deter two types of individuals: evildoers and idiots," Gorka added. The orders also instructed the FAA to remove the 1973 ban on overland supersonic transport. Environmental groups have criticised supersonic aircraft for higher fuel consumption per passenger compared to subsonic alternatives. "The reality is that Americans should be able to fly from New York to LA in under four hours," Kratsios told the Reuters, further adding that, "advances in aerospace engineering, material science and noise reduction now make overland supersonic flight not just possible, but safe, sustainable and commercially viable." The order directs FAA to repeal the supersonic speed limit as long as aircraft do not produce an audible sonic boom on the ground. Airplane manufacturer Boom Supersonic welcomed the move. Its CEO, Blake Scholl, said: "The supersonic race is on and a new era of commercial flight can begin." Commercial supersonic flights ended in 2003 with the retirement of the Concorde, used by British Airways and Air France for 27 years. The FAA has been instructed to eliminate the supersonic speed restriction, provided that aircraft maintain noise levels that prevent sonic booms from reaching ground level. The announcement received positive acknowledgement from Boom Supersonic, an aircraft manufacturing company. Its CEO, Blake Scholl, stated: "The supersonic race is on and a new era of commercial flight can begin." While Trump's orders do not explicitly ban Chinese drone companies, they come amid growing scrutiny of firms like DJI and Autel Robotics. DJI, the world's biggest drone maker, supplies over half of all commercial drones used in the US. Although legislation signed by former President Joe Biden last year could ban China-based DJI and Autel Robotics from selling new models in the country. The new orders reinforce the push to reduce US dependence on Chinese technology in critical sectors like aviation and drone operations. Stay informed with the latest business news, updates on bank holidays and public holidays . AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Automotive
- The Herald Scotland
Trump takes big step to make flying cars a reality
"This year, flying cars are not just for the Jetsons. They are also for the American people in the near term," Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told reporters. Trump in an executive order directed the Federal Aviation Administration to expedite approval for routine commercial drone operations that retailers such as Amazon have said are crucial to expanding airborne deliveries. Orders that Trump signed will also allow manufacturers to begin testing flying cars and removed regulatory barriers his administration says are preventing supersonic over land passenger flights from being introduced in the United States. The changes will also allow drones to be used to be used in emergency response situations, including responding to wildfires, and long-distance cargo and medical delivery, the administration says. Trump's order establishes a pilot program for electrical vertical take-off and landing aircraft, known as eVTOLs, a type of flying car, that his administration hopes will lead to public private partnerships across the country. It is based on a 2017 program from the first Trump administration and will apply to emergency medical services, air taxis and cargo deliveries among other areas. The administration says the program will allow companies that are already conducting this type of testing, such as Joby's air taxi service, to partner with state, local and tribal governments. The California-based company plans to begin flight testing in Dubai within months and aims to launch passenger services on the aircraft in late 2025 or early 2026. Flying cars are coming! Here's how they could change the way you travel. Another order instructs the FAA to establish a standard for noise certification and lift a ban on overland supersonic flight. Kratsios said that advances in aerospace engineering and noise reduction have made over land supersonic flight safe, sustainable and commercially viable but federal regulations have grounded the speedy passenger flights and weakened U.S. companies' competitiveness. "The reality is that Americans should be able to fly from New York to LA in under four hours," Kratsios said. Trump separately established a federal task force to review and propose solutions to threats to America's airspace from personal unmanned aircraft and directed his administration to step up enforcement of civil and criminal laws against drone operators who endanger the public or violate airspace restrictions. The directives were issued with the 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Summer Olympics on the horizon.
Politico
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Politico
The mystery of Trump's science cuts
Presented by What's really behind the Trump administration's massive cutbacks in research funding? Since January, agency after agency has seen massive spending cuts — adding up to a historic slashing of the globally dominant American research apparatus. The White House's proposed budget would cut National Science Foundation funding by more than half. A Senate minority staff report cited a $2.7 billion drop in funding commitments to the National Institutes of Health through March compared to last year. In states spanning the political spectrum — purple Virginia, red Texas, blue Massachusetts — the White House has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. Why? In a major speech this week, top White House science official Michael Kratsios laid out the rationale for the cuts: He framed them as part of a larger project to get American science on a more efficient, innovative track by de-emphasizing research perceived as overly ideological or non-scientific. Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, cited a NASA requirement for research proposals to 'include plans for furthering inclusion goals' as exactly the kind of effort the GOP wants to root out — an intrusion of progressive political goals into totally unrelated research. To many people who have been watching these cutbacks, that doesn't come close to explaining the scale or sweep of what Trump is doing. 'If the administration has any goal other than to significantly hurt the U.S. science and research system, it will not achieve that,' Rob Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, told DFD. 'This isn't about cutting a few projects that embraced radical DEI, or making some changes to get a little bit more efficiency. This is actually cutting meat and bone from the entire research enterprise.' According to a report published today by the New York Times, funding cuts extend far beyond eliminating allegedly 'woke' programs like the one Kratsios cited. The National Science Foundation, a key funder of basic scientific and technical research, has been rolled back to its pre-1990 size and ambitions. In perhaps the harshest blow to American researchers, the administration has eliminated more than 1,600 active grants. Observers from the tech and research worlds have been left gobsmacked, wondering if the administration's stated rationale of eliminating 'wokeness' is a fig leaf for a far more destructive project. As many people in the sciences will point out, if Trump officials really wanted to tear up the Biden-era playbook for federal grants — taking out diversity, improving accountability — they already have a tool to do it. Federal grants come with extensive requirements already, which are set by … the federal government. 'Having your grant reviewed is a bit like running a gauntlet,' University of Maryland associate dean Kelly Mix wrote in an op-ed published in The Conversation this morning seeking to demystify the grantmaking process. Mix cites the merit review that grant proposals undergo, where at each round of funding the responsible agency assigns anonymous experts to review them for 'anything from innovation in the question posed to logical flaws in the hypotheses or technical problems with the planned data analyses.' Of course, the Trump administration's very critique of American science is that progressive biases are too baked into that review process, funding 'woke' make-work projects at the expense of hard science. But federal agencies, as Mix points out, maintain sweeping power over what's in their RFPs, or requests for proposals, the document that tells researchers exactly what it is the government wants to fund. So what's stopping the Trump administration from simply remaking the grant process in its own ideological image, rather than gutting research funding overall? In response to a request for comment on the administration's rationale, a spokesperson for the OSTP referred DFD to an extensive FAQ on the NSF's website that states 'NSF is continuing to prioritize cutting-edge discovery science and engineering (S&E) research, advancing technology and innovation' and 'Awards that are not aligned with program goals or agency priorities have been terminated, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), environmental justice, and misinformation/disinformation.' That sounds a lot like what Kratsios argues in his speech — but doesn't explain why the administration appears to be more focused on cuts than any particular requirements. There's one possible explanation for the seeming disconnect between the Trump administration's chest-puffing about the importance of American innovation, amid its direct attack on the research behind that innovation. Universities are prime recipients of federal research money. And in a March interview with the New York Times, right-wing gadfly and Trump ally Christopher Rufo described how conservatives angry about the liberalism of American universities might strong-arm academia into cultural compliance by cutting off their funding, forcing them to accept the Trump administration's policies and premises. 'A medium- or long-term goal of mine is to figure out how to adjust the formula of finances from the federal government to the universities in a way that puts them in an existential terror and have them say, unless we change what we're doing, we're not going to be able to meet our budget for the year,' Rufo told the NYT's Ross Douthat. Rufo isn't formally affiliated with the Trump White House, but his relentless culture-war ethos is a major influence on the far-right wonks, media personalities and political loyalists who staff it, and his extreme hostility to American universities is a major feature of Trump 2.0 policy. For now, it seems clear that American researchers will have to do more with less in the manner the OSTP leader laid out, regardless of how, or why, the grant-making progress might change under the second Trump administration. The report today from the New York Times on NSF cuts identified a 67 percent overall cut in funding through May 2025 for math, physics and chemistry compared to last year; 57 percent to core engineering disciplines; and a 52 percent cut to biology. 'Because of these significant cuts to NSF, NIH, and perhaps other research funding agencies, there will be irreparable and probably permanent harm to the U.S. science research and innovation system,' ITIF's Atkinson said. 'There's really no way to spin that.' an imperiled news partnership California is reworking a major deal that would make Big Tech pay for news. POLITICO's Christine Mui and Chase DiFeliciantonio reported today on threats to funding for the deal after Google announced Wednesday it would lower its contribution from $15 million to $10 million. Former state Sen. Steve Glazer, who authored a failed bill that would have taxed digital revenue to fund newsrooms, said 'Google got almost everything they wanted,' and the downsized contribution means newsrooms will have to 'fight over crumbs.' Additionally, the California State Library will host the fund after UC Berkeley's journalism school walked away from the program late last year. The agreement included an additional $12.5 million per year from Google for researching and developing AI tools, something they told Christine and Chase remains unchanged. memecoin dinner Who's attending today's memecoin dinner with the president? POLITICO's Declan Harty reported on the roll call for tonight's dinner at President Donald Trump's golf club in Virginia, held for hundreds of the biggest investors in the $TRUMP memecoin. The top 25 investors, including crypto mogul Justin Sun and a Singapore-based startup called MemeCore, will have a special reception with the president beforehand. The Trump family's bear hug of crypto has inspired a backlash in Congress among Democrats who have accused them of self-dealing (not to mention some in the crypto world who fear the Trumps' forays will give their utopian project a bad name). 'This is the Mount Everest of American corruption,' Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who will attend a planned protest outside Trump's golf club during the dinner, told Declan. 'This isn't about raising money for a campaign. This is about personal profit, and what he's selling is influence on himself and his Cabinet and the U.S. government.' wright <3 lpo Secretary of Energy Chris Wright stood up for an office at his department that's threatened by congressional budget cuts. E&E News' Nico Portuondo, Brian Dabbs and Christa Marshall reported on remarks Wright made at a Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee hearing on the Department of Energy's budget request Wednesday, where he said the Loan Programs Office, which gives loans to experimental domestic energy projects, should keep its current levels of funding. 'It is really the most efficient tool we have in the department to help emerging energy technologies,' Wright said, touting 'Creative incentives to build nuclear reactors in our space … We do need to make sure we have funding available in the Loan Programs Office, because used judiciously it's a way to leverage private capital to make things happen fast.' The LPO has become a cause celebre among a bipartisan coalition of wonks hoping to boost new energy projects, with the right-leaning Foundation for American Innovation's Emmet Penney telling DFD last week the cuts would 'Really [hurt] nuclear' and 'threaten the bipartisan consensus.' post of the day THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS Stay in touch with the whole team: Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@ Steve Heuser (sheuser@ Nate Robson (nrobson@ and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@
Boston Globe
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Massachusetts leads the nation in lost NSF research funding
New England has lost about twice as much money to CDC and NIH cuts as it has to NSF cuts: about $560 million. The purge is a piece of the Trump administration's effort to extensively reshape how federal money for research, science, and health is used. Advertisement The new data showing the NSF cuts' outsize toll in the state coincided with Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, both Democrats, sending a letter to Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy earlier this week, seeking an explanation for the 'ongoing chaos and upheaval' at the agency. The senators said the NSF cuts potentially violate court orders and endanger the country's scientific excellence. Advertisement 'Cutting the research we need to train scientists, build safer bridges, and advance innovation is foolish and shortsighted,' Warren said in a statement Monday. 'I want answers about why this is happening and what Trump's science advisor is going to do about it." Kratsios and the White House did not respond to a request for comment. Kratsios described American research as stagnating and suggested private investment could play an even greater role in supporting science in 'To get more bang for America's research bucks, we need to enhance the creativity and precision of our funding,' he said. Deep cuts in grant funding are part of a radical reorganization at the NSF. The publication The NSF is reviewing its awards to eliminate funding for projects that don't match the Trump administration's Last year, the Related : Advertisement All 10 of the largest National Science Foundation grants canceled in New England were in Massachusetts — about half tied to programs focused on diversity and equity. The terminations, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said, are 'halting research and scientific breakthroughs, stifling job creation and economic growth, and hurting American competitiveness and leadership in technologies and innovation.' Harvard University accounts for $195 million, or 78 percent of the state's canceled funding and 74 percent of New England's total. Beginning May 6, Harvard received letters from several government funding entities, including the NSF, stating that the $2.2 billion in grants 'It is insane, period,' said David Charbonneau, a Harvard astronomer and one of the world's leaders in the search for extrasolar planets, who lost a more than $537,000 grant. 'We are the envy of the world. Why we would cut the legs out from that system makes no sense.' Alan Brown, a structural biologist whose $1.2 million NSF grant was terminated last week, came to Harvard eight years ago from Cambridge University. He described America as the best place in the world to do science. The Trump administration's approach to science funding has rattled that opinion. Advertisement If he had to make a career move now, Brown said, 'I would not be looking to come to the US.' Brown's work, a collaboration with Swiss scientists, focuses on a parasite that causes the sometimes fatal illness Leishmaniasis. Understanding how the parasite swims, and learning how to hobble it, could help prevent Leishmaniasis and provide insights into how similar mechanics play a role in other health problems, including male infertility. The biggest loss outside Harvard was nearly $9 million to Northeastern University for its Engineering PLUS program, which aims to boost participation of underrepresented groups in STEM fields. 'These students are future scientists and engineers who will go work in companies, start companies, and innovate,' said Matthew Lackner, a professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst who lost a $3 million grant that supported 26 graduate students. 'We need all the engineers and scientists we can get.' Lackner said the university is seeking emergency matching funds to cover the project this summer, but long-term support remains uncertain. It's not clear if all the grad students will be able to continue their education. In their letter, Warren and Markey raised questions about the NSF's leadership structure and expressed alarm that the NSF has virtually frozen its grant award operation while subjecting previously approved grants to additional scrutiny. They sought details about how the NSF determined which grants failed to align with the Trump administration's priorities and whether its review of grants was guided by good science and rigorous peer review. The senators sought specifics, too, about how Trump's executive orders affected the nation's scientific research priorities. Advertisement 'We write to seek answers regarding why the Trump administration has led the agency into such disarray,' the letter stated. Jason Laughlin can be reached at
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cantwell, researchers lament Trump administrations calls to halve funding for National Science Foundation
May 20—America's globally dominant position in scientific research could be jeopardized by the White House's drastic proposed cuts to the National Science Foundation's funding and staff, Sen. Maria Cantwell warned Monday at a round table with sector experts and engineers, including a WSU researcher focused on the integration of artificial intelligence in agriculture. President Donald Trump recently called for a 55% cut in funding for the NSF, the independent agency of the federal government responsible for funding research and education into nonmedical sciences. It's a counterpart to the medical research-focused National Institutes for Health, for which Trump has also proposed cutting funding by 40%. If the cuts are enacted, the NSF's budget would drop from $9 billion to about $4 billion at the start of the next fiscal year in October. Many researchers were alarmed and argued such cuts could have long-ranging impacts on the country's security, industries and economy. Based on a 2024 study of the long-term economic benefits of government funded R&D, University of Georgia professor John Drake recently wrote in a column in Forbes that these cuts would ultimately cost the U.S. economy $10 billion annually in unrealized gains. The White House, meanwhile, has argued the cuts are part of a necessary realignment of government-funded scientific research, accompanied with an announcement earlier this month that the NSF would be majorly restructured and drastically reduce the number of funded programs. Instead, the agency has been directed to refocus its remaining funding to five key research priorities for the president: artificial intelligence, quantum information science, biotechnology, nuclear energy and translational science. Michael Kratsios, the president's science and technology advisor, told the National Academy of Sciences on Sunday that a surge of research spending in the last 40 years has not seen an accompanying return on investment, echoing the president's call for more focused spending. "More money has not meant more scientific discovery, and total dollars spent has not been a proxy for scientific impact," Kratsios said. "Spending more money on the wrong things is far worse than spending less money on the right things." Cantwell and a number of researchers at Monday's roundtable said Kratsios misunderstood the value of the federal government's investments in cutting edge research that often takes decades to reach consumers. "The Nobel Prize winner for developing the mRNA vaccine (Katalin Karikó) was judged to not be doing any kind of useful research for many years by a lot of her peers, so I don't think any one person can judge the value of research that NSF invests in," said Dr. Dean Chang, chief innovation officer and associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship and economic development at the University of Maryland. Ananth Kalyanaraman is the interim director at Washington State University's School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the director of AgAID, a USDA- and NSF-funded program to research the use of AI in agriculture. The impact of NSF's cuts to WSU would be far-reaching, Kalyanaraman added, including into the school's research on aquaculture, health, power grids, cyber security and the integration of robotics and AI into several other sectors such as manufacturing and production, as well as his own research into agriculture. "We are deeply concerned about the nearly $5 billion in cuts to NSF which will directly undercut this vital work and also our nation's ability to remain globally competitive," Kalyanaraman said Monday. "Critically, NSF funding also supports the development of future workforce, and without it, we'll fall behind in our ability to produce the much needed next generation of AI-ready graduates." Francis Cordova, former director of NSF under both Presidents Trump and Barack Obama, said workforce development has been a vital priority for the agency that is now at risk. "Industry representatives often tell me that arguably the most important investment NSF makes is in the workforce training of STEM talent," Cordova said. "Arguably the most important part of our economic security, our national security and the relatively high standard of living we enjoy in this country is due to government funding of basic research in the scientific workforce." While budget cuts to the agency have not yet been approved by Congress, the White House has been shaking up the NSF for months. The NSF has announced it will lay off an unspecified number of its 1,700-person workforce and slash the number of academic researchers it employs to help guide what research to fund from 368 to 70 by June 9. The agency, along with NIH and the Department of Energy, also attempted earlier this year to cap the percentage of grant funds that could cover "indirect research" costs such as equipment, facilities and administrators, though those decisions have been tied up in legal battles. Since January, NSF has terminated more than 1,500 grants worth more than a billion dollars, Cantwell claimed Monday. In April, all NSF grants were frozen, reportedly under the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency, while the Elon Musk-led agency reviewed grants for possible diversity, equity and inclusion-related grants for termination. "DEI initiatives, in particular, degrade our scientific enterprise," Kratsios told the National Academy of Sciences on Sunday. "DEI represents an existential threat to the real diversity of thought that forms the foundation of the scientific community."
