Comment from Gregory Fuchs

[200.205, 200.340] To Whom it May Concern: I am a professor of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. My research is focused in two areas. First, materials and devices for quantum information science, especially solid-state spin systems and superconducting circuits, and second, magnetic materials and devices for advanced technology. I am writing in my personal capacity to oppose the proposed revisions to sections 200.205 and 200.340 that would undermine the integrity of federal grant review processes and federal science agencies' ability to identify and fund impactful research. My grants have already been effected by presidential mandate through a blanket stop work orders to Cornell. While my research topics have not been targeted by political appointees thus far, I am not comfortable with individuals, motivated by political ideology, to make decisions that could substantially limit science and competitiveness in the United States. If my research grants were terminated it would devastate my research. Our work requires graduate students and postdocs to spend time in the lab, in the cleanroom, and on the computer to make progress. Experimental science and engineering isn't the kind of work that I can do alone in my office. Given that my former students and postdocs are all working in the US tech industry, US government laboratories, and universities, it would substantially choke off the supply of US trained scientists and engineers in 5-7 years. The proposed changes will make federal science in the US an unreliable and unethical process, that will undermine the integrity of science and engineering. The arbitrariness of this approach will ultimately discourage our best and brightest students and faculty from doing this kind of work. Because scientific and engineering discovery at universities and national labs is a low-cost driver of innovation, these proposed changes will substantially weaken the United States's scientific, technological, and economic future.