Every time I read about one of the national labs doing this research, I wonder how much longer we will head about these. I feel fairly positive that DOGE's layoffs and budget cuts mean this output will fade away in time.
I worry about this, but these capabilities are hard to replace. This kind of research hasn’t historically been something you can outsource to private companies. Or—at least—it hasn’t been until now. Even if this administration wants to open that door, the infrastructure investment required for the accelerators alone is staggering: easily in the multiple billions.
Maybe I'm misreading your comment, but you seem like you're talking about privatizing this research whereas the other commenter seems to be talking about public cuts leading to a reduction of research. Just because something gets cut doesn't mean it gets outsourced elsewhere.
I guess my point is that it's hard to simply cut research that's essential for certifying that the stockpile is safe and works. I'll avoid making any predictions, because who the hell knows what's going to happen, but I think dynamic imaging work may prove a tough target for DOGE.
Yes. It is hard to this honestly and correctly. That would mean that normal people wouldn't make these cuts.
It also has very little predictive power for the loon with the checkbook right now. He might just as likely notice that people care a lot about that issue and hold it for ransom.
I think the overall aim of DOGE is simply to move research into privately controlled entities, especially those that can’t be cut. Its simply a continuation of transferring the national asset base (tax/usd) from democratic control, into private control.
It doesn’t need to be profit making in the normal sense (see SpaceX) it just needs to be the only game in town when the US Gov spends on national security
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon’s most over-budget, out-of-control projects — the modernization of America’s aging, ground-based nuclear missiles.
What Will It Cost to Renovate the ‘Free’ Air Force One? Don’t Ask.
For sure. But depending on what Congress does, think defense budgets could grow, which would mean more money for defense-positioned Labs like Los Alamos.
Nuclear research is done under the Department of Energy, not DoD. Los Alamos is a DoE lab, and the DoE received major cuts in the recent budget bill, though that shifts energy efficiency research into weapons research and net increases lab funding.
Los Alamos is an NNSA lab; NNSA is a semi-autonomous component of DOE and its weapons activities budget is distinct from the general DOE budget. NNSA’s nonproliferation budget has been cut but they’re still very well funded on the weapons side even if they’ve lost quite a lot of people in the last few months.
The national labs are organized under the Office of Science (17 labs), NNSA (LANL, LLNL, Sandia), the Office of Nuclear Energy (INL), the Office of Environmental Management (Savannah River), Office of Fossil Energy (NETL), and Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (NREL). Some offices are doing better than others re: funding in the current environment!
I have heard that their internal review processes for papers have started telling people to not say stuff like "XYZ may be useful for climate research" or "this is an alternative energy source that's environmentally friendly." Like they are literally discouraged from talking about climate stuff at all lol.
Wouldn't surprise me. Getting rid of the other research programs won't be great for the labs though. The weapons research has a bunch of weird incentives because of the geopolitical context it exists in. The goal usually isn't to operationalize research, it's to have credible evidence of a functioning nuclear program, maintain the arsenal, and act as a jobs program for nuclear physics. The other programs act as a way to operationalize things in socially acceptable ways. If you get rid of them, I suspect the labs aren't going to be better-off for it even with more funding.
Labs like this also have huge black budget spending that we don't get to see.
I'm guessing we'll see more hidden spending in future as the nukes and the engineers that made them get older. its worth asking if they even work (in some countries arsenals at least)
Your framing of the question suggests you believe in ideology, because you're posing a purity based based on hypotheticals alone. Where is the actual data for DOGE, in any department doing science?
You have not made an argument based on data, you made an argument based on having wishful thinking about Doge and what the government will do with "the savings".
These savings are not material. And if they were they wouldn’t matter—the Congress blew out our deficit by trillions irrespective of anything DOGE did.
> Your answer to this question determines whether you believe in ideology or data.
I mean, you're technically right, but that doesn't invalidate anything the parent commenter said.
I could equally ask "What if it turned out that turpentine was actually _healthier_ than water?".
Like, yeah, if that assertion turned out to be the case and you rejected the new data, you'd be following dogma rather than data. That doesn't mean that the assertion is likely to actually be true though.
If there was a coherent plan in DOGE to make more money available to do important science, maybe that could work. However, nothing DOGE has done has shown any sort of logic in terms of outcome maximization. The collection of activities (partly DOGE, partly Trump org) applied to scientists has been super-impactful (in an entirely negative way) for science we already know is important
The pool of skilled scientists to be hired shrinks when you cut funding in arbitrary ways.
Basic research is important science and is in societies best interest to support it.
A quote from Carl Sagan’s, Demon Haunted World.
> We are rarely smart enough to set about on purpose making the
discoveries that will drive our economy and safeguard our lives.
Often, we lack the fundamental research. Instead, we pursue a
broad range of investigations of Nature, and applications we never
dreamed of emerge. Not always, of course. But often enough.
He's absolutely right. Long-shot research with little to no immediate applicability has been the basis for innumerable breakthroughs over the years. If DOGE existed back in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, we wouldn't have mRNA vaccines[0], Google[1] (or the modern internet for that matter[2]), and many modern cancer treatments[3], to name but a few examples of research that would have been easy to brand as wasteful and not "important science".
There's no scenario where messing with a working system people rely on and then getting rid of everyone who understood it will produce a savings. What DOGE has done would simply destroy a corporation, and we know this because we've helped corporations perform this kind of system analysis and understand the cost of change.
We're at a point right now where we can't even calculate the damage Musk has done, where the discovery process on that issue alone will be a multi-million years long effort. We're looking at large-scale remediation projects on every system Trump gave him access to because the cost of not doing that is functionally unknowable. E.g. every table DOGE had the ability to change is now a legal liability per row.
exactly, you worship an ideology. That's my point. The claim that saving government funds could actually help fund research (or have other positive effects) is a foregone conclusion. So you close your mind to the possibility because it would force you to agree with Trump on something, but your ideology (not unlike a militant islamic jihadist) has already prescribed you to declare "that side" as the enemy. That's why I said in another comment on this thread, that you (liberals) will deny any evidence that doesn't support your claim. And seeing how badly I was downvoted on my parent comment, it's clear they do NOT want to be forced to admit this about their tribe. It's a religion. you may not have a church or a leadership structure, but you believe what your tribe says, on faith. and most of you are atheists, so it jibs with the theory that you replaced the love-of-god (from your previous generations, where statistically your ancestors were religious) with love-of-government. That theory fits tighter than a glove to explain the turn-your-brain-off-and-believe state of modern leftism. Especially in a forum such as this, where the content is otherwise much more intellectual.
What if we found leprechauns and they gave us their pots of gold, think of all the scientists we could hire then! Certainly we should be prioritizing the leprechaun search.
