Several weeks ago, National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Sethuraman Panchanathan announced that the new Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) would focus on four technology areas over the next three years, a substantial reduction from the 10 technology areas mandated by Congress in the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The agency cited budget constraints as the reason it had been forced to reduce the initial scope of the TIP from ten to four technology clusters: artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced communications technology, and data storage. As Congress has also directed, NSF published a road map to guide the agency’s investments for “maximal effects on US competitiveness.” It remains to be seen how Congress will react to this substantial revision of its priorities—and how this all plays out in the larger debate over NSF’s historic basic research centrality versus the increasing pressure from Congress to expand its role in fostering crucial technologies.

NSF Budget Juggling. In the heady atmosphere surrounding the passage of the CHIPS and Science Act, there was speculation that the NSF budget would double over the next few years. Over the past few months, however, a harsher readout has set in: After making a CHIPS down payment in the fiscal year 2023 budget (12 percent increase for NSF), Congress slammed the brakes and cut NSF’s fiscal year 2024 budget by 8 percent, down to $9 billion from the almost $11 billion requested. Chair Emeritus of the National Science Board Dan Reed labeled the cuts “devastating.”

In practical terms, this means the TIP and the larger basic research areas face substantial limits—and form the backdrop for the NSF director to risk the ire of Congress over his drastic reduction in the near-term plans for the mandated TIP priority technology sectors.

NSF Mission Juggling: TIP, Venture Capitalist. Certainly, the bulk of the NSF’s funding and resources will still entail basic research grants to universities and other research institutions, aiming to advance the frontiers of science in areas such as biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. However, the technology mandate accompanying the TIP directorate has taken the agency into a vast new program universe that will require a very different set of policy and program judgments. The TIP Roadmap sets forth the analysis behind the agency’s initial technology development priorities. The language and frame of reference for TIP decision-making are strikingly different from NSF’s traditional frame of reference.

Rather than searching for scientific frontiers, the Roadmap speaks of “investment” in technology “portfolio[s].” It states that a sophisticated risk analysis produced the decision to focus on the four technologies over the next three years. In determining the size and nature of its coming investment, NSF’s central goal will be to advance US competitiveness: “The TIP Roadmap sets out a framework for the directorate to stage investments in the key technology areas for optimal effects on U.S. competitiveness.” This ambitious undertaking includes national security and geopolitical factors, as well as supply chain issues surrounding the individual priority technology areas. Though NSF has able civil servants, it is doubtful that the agency—and possibly any government agency—has the depth of knowledge about future market permutations, to successfully guide its “investment” and future “portfolio.”

Meanwhile, the struggle to balance the agency’s traditional role as the focal point for federally funded basic research will continue to be challenged by the new priority to lead in investment decisions in the “key technology areas that will define the nation’s future economic and national security.