Week After Week, the US Is Dismantling Knowledge Infrastructure
11 days ago
- #US democracy
- #knowledge infrastructure
- #research defunding
- The US is systematically dismantling its knowledge infrastructure by firing professionals, defunding data collection, and replacing experts with loyalists.
- Key institutions like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives are being targeted, eroding critical knowledge production.
- The National Science Foundation has terminated hundreds of grants, stopped payments, and halted new awards, with proposed budget cuts of 55%.
- The assault on knowledge infrastructure includes universities, libraries, archives, and statistical agencies, undermining transparency and verifiable information.
- Defunding publicly funded research hampers data accessibility, stifling innovation and creating permanent inaccessibility to valuable knowledge.
- Knowledge infrastructure serves three economic functions: verifying reality through statistics, fueling discovery via research, and protecting knowledge through libraries and archives.
- The destruction of knowledge infrastructure risks increasing information asymmetries and eroding America's innovation edge.
- Future historians will struggle to document a period that actively destroyed its own documentation and dismantled knowledge production chains.