The opportunity to attract scientific talent
The steep cuts that US President Donald Trump has begun to implement at his country's universities and research centers have two impacts on Catalan science, and on European science as a whole. The most direct and immediate impact will be negatively affecting many international projects in which the contributions of highly relevant US centers play a significant role. We explain in this report The concern this has generated in our country. In the immediate future, many fear losing their jobs, and with them, groundbreaking advances and research.
At the same time, the other impact has a potential positive effect: it opens up an opportunity to attract talent. Panic is already brewing in Catalonia, where it has begun to circulate. a McCarthyist questionnaire which seems to have come from the US administration, but the atmosphere is even worse in the United States, where there is a lot of uncertainty in a country with a high concentration of high-level research (70% of the world's best universities are American).
The Trump administration is not only suddenly cutting public funding for universities and research, but it is also vetoing lines of research that were previously relevant (for example, on climate change or health issues). All of this is opening the door to a talent drain. Important researchers based in the US have begun knocking on the doors of European colleagues. However, if we want to attract them, we will have to make a decisive commitment that necessarily implies an increase in budget.
Just as there was an exodus of scientists to North America during and after World War II, in many cases Jews from Central Europe, now we would try to promote the opposite path. Are Catalonia and Europe ready to make this possible? By the way, if we don't get our act together, it's more than likely that the booming countries of Asia will take advantage of this window of opportunity.
On the other hand, it seems obvious that the loss of the American partner cannot be seen solely in military and economic terms. This desertion across the ocean can and should also be interpreted scientifically. The increase in spending on arms production and procurement (an industry also linked to research) cannot be the only factor in rethinking Europe's future.
The scientific and technological sphere should weigh heavily on the path taken from now on, given the Trumpist United States, which is rapidly moving away from the historic transatlantic alliance and which seems unconcerned about the possibility of losing leadership in the future in a science it distrusts. Making a virtue out of necessity is always an option: Europe, and Catalonia, well positioned within it, can make a leap forward in cutting-edge research and, through it, in the knowledge economy and the green economy. It would also be an intelligent way to strengthen itself in the medium term against the imperial trio of the United States, Russia, and China. Security, science, and economics are not so far apart, and when combined and intertwined, they can give political weight to the Old Continent.
