U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press about deploying federal law enforcement agents in Washington to bolster the local police presence, in the Press Briefing Room at the White House, in Washington D.C., U.S., August 11, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

August 6, 2025 marked the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima on orders from U.S. President Harry Truman, who had taken over the presidency following the April 12, 1945 death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The research that paved the way for the United States' development of nuclear weapons was known as the Manhattan Project, which got underway in 1942 and included input from the U.K. and Canada.

The Manhattan Project has generated plenty of debates among historians over the years, some of whom argue that the development of nuclear weapons opened a dangerous Pandora's box.

In an article published by the New York Times on August 12, journalist/author Garrett M. Graff notes that a "tradition of government-supported science, technology and education efforts" grew out of the Manhattan Project" but stresses that this "tradition" is being endangered by the second Trump Administration.

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"Those fields became a source of national strength and arguably the primary driver of American economic hegemony and prosperity in the eight decades since," Graff explains. "Organizations like the national labs at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Berkeley that grew out of the Manhattan Project became the backbone of a stunning period of scientific and technological advances in the decades after the war. They were joined by the National Science Foundation, founded in 1950; Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, founded in 1958; and the National Institutes of Health, which became a major grant-maker after the war — not to mention a host of other agencies like NASA and the Department of Energy."

Graff adds, "The return on a relatively modest government investment has been astounding; DARPA alone helped birth the internet, GPS and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine."

But scientific research, Graff warns, is being aggressively defunded by the second Trump Administration.

"Agencies like the National Science Foundation have been gutted, and the (Trump) Administration's war on universities is already leading to huge cuts at science and health labs around the country," Graff observes. "The Republican Congress and Trump Administration are squashing progress in technologies like solar panels and electric vehicles that the rest of the world is mostly keen to adopt, likely leaving the United States not only behind but potentially not even in the game."

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Graff continues, "Even necessities like weather forecasting and high-quality government data collection face wreckage, and officials are starting to unwind public health advances like fluoride in water and mandatory childhood vaccinations. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Department of Health and Human Services is targeting for cuts research breakthroughs that appear just around the corner — including mRNA-based treatments that could help address high-mortality diseases like glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer…. If China is able to capitalize on our self-inflicted wounds to invent and secure the future of the 21st Century instead, we may find that we have squandered the greatest gift of the Manhattan Project."

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Garrett M. Graff's full New York Times op-ed is available at this link (subscription required).