Science News & Analysis

Ushering in a New Golden Age of American Innovation: Fiscal Year 2028 Administration Research and Development Budget Priorities (July 21, 2026)

Memorandum NSTM-5 / M-26-16, Executive Office of the President, 21 July 2026.

Issued to the heads of executive departments and agencies over the signatures of Michael J. Kratsios, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Russell T. Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, this memorandum translates the recommendations of Science: A New Golden Age into budget guidance. Its diagnosis is that the federal research enterprise has fallen out of balance: industry's share of national R&D funding has doubled over the past half century while the government has not updated how it funds research or partners with the private sector; federal investment is higher than ever, but much of the non-defense increase is concentrated in the life sciences and the pace of significant breakthroughs has slowed; and American discoveries too often yield manufacturing and supply chains to competitors abroad. Against that, the memorandum sets nine priorities — rebalancing portfolios toward foundational research and the physical sciences and engineering, advancing national science and technology missions, applying AI to accelerate research, expanding R&D infrastructure for broader use, translating advances into regional prosperity, developing new funding mechanisms, improving how scientific talent is identified, studying and improving how federal science is funded, and integrating federal R&D into the wider enterprise. It invokes Vannevar Bush's 1945 report as its lineage, noting that document gave rise to the National Science Foundation and the government-university-industry partnership that "won the American Century."

The specific directives are granular. Agencies are told to increase the share of foundational research relative to later-stage development, and to prioritize both the absolute level and relative share of funding for the physical sciences, computer science, and supporting engineering and mathematical disciplines — "especially within national security-relevant research portfolios." Detailed field lists follow across physical sciences, chemistry and materials, mathematics and computer science, engineering, and biological sciences. Agencies with broad life-sciences missions are instructed to "prioritize foundational research in the biological sciences over the life sciences, a broader category not focused on foundational research." Where agencies propose expanding later-stage development, they must justify why the work would not happen without federal support. Six national missions are named for alignment: the Genesis Mission (launched November 2025, aiming to double the productivity and impact of American research within a decade, per Executive Order 14363); QC-ADDS, a quantum computer at a scale intended to begin quantum-enabled discovery, per Executive Order 14413; demonstration of commercial fusion power by the mid-2030s; return of Americans to the lunar surface by 2028 together with a lunar base and the National Initiative for American Space Nuclear Power, per Executive Order 14369; general-purpose autonomous robotics; and next-generation semiconductors including EUV-and-beyond photolithography and 3D advanced packaging.

Beyond budget lines, the memorandum prescribes changes to how science is funded and who is selected to do it. Agencies are urged to supplement consensus-driven peer review with mechanisms better suited to high-risk work: long-duration grants of five years or more fully funded in year one; low-friction "fast grants" with applications of a few pages and review timelines under a month; prizes targeting at least 3:1 leverage of private to federal investment; and experimentation with "golden tickets" permitting individual reviewers to advance proposals that would fail a consensus panel, along with advance market commitments, regranting models, and what the document calls more speculative approaches such as quadratic funding and eigenfunding. On workforce, the memorandum states that "exceptional talent is defined by demonstrated technical ability, not background or identity," and directs agencies to anchor selection in reasoning assessments, domain competitions, engineering portfolios and technical work "rather than relying on self-selection, essays, institutional referrals, or polish and credentials," explicitly citing SAT scores and comparable standardized quantitative assessments as identification mechanisms. A metascience section observes that the government invests roughly $200 billion in R&D annually while allocating little to understanding which mechanisms actually work, and directs agencies to build evaluation capabilities, maintain "gap maps" of unmet scientific need, empower program officers, and reduce administrative burden. Implementation runs on two tracks: budget formulation proceeds through the standard FY 2028 submissions to OMB, while every agency holding $3 billion or more in FY 2026 R&D budget authority must, within 90 days, submit an action plan describing how it will implement the priority practices — including how execution of its already-appropriated FY 2026 and FY 2027 budgets can be turned toward them.