The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report July 21 that calls for changing how the federal government funds research and development (R&D). The report, titled “Science: A New Golden Age,” also came paired with budget guidance that gives agencies a deadline to respond.
The report acts as a set of recommendations rather than a directive. It suggests how the federal research sector might be reshaped, but it does not require any agency to change current funding practices.
The budget guidance attached to it works differently. OSTP Director Michael Kratsios and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought issued the Fiscal Year 2028 R&D Priorities Memorandum adjacent to the report. The memo tells agencies how to build their next budget requests, per White House officials.
According to the report, federal research spending has grown in recent decades while the pace of major breakthroughs has slowed.
The report also finds that the research sector depends too heavily on a narrow set of long-running institutions. Private industry now funds the majority of American R&D, it says, while the federal government has not adjusted its own role to match that shift.
The recommendations in the report are organized into four pillars: revitalizing the science and technology enterprise, securing U.S. leadership in critical and emerging technologies, launching an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered era of discovery and ensuring science benefits Americans in every region.
The adjacent memo is where those pillars start to carry weight. The White House issues a research priorities memo each year, with agencies using it for guidance as they assemble the budget requests they send to OMB.
This year’s memo, dated July 21, lists nine priorities for fiscal year 2028 (FY28). They include shifting more funding toward foundational research in the physical sciences and engineering spaces, applying AI to speed up research, opening R&D facilities to broader use and testing new ways of awarding grants.
The memo also lists six national missions and asks agencies to explain, in those same budget requests, how their own programs could support them:
- Genesis Mission — Applying AI across the research sector.
- Quantum — Building a quantum computer large enough to be useful for scientific research.
- Fusion energy — Demonstrating commercial fusion power in the United States by the mid-2030s.
- Space — Returning Americans to the moon by 2028 and building a lunar base, along with space nuclear power and national security space work.
- Robotics — Developing general-purpose autonomous systems that can handle real-world environments.
- Semiconductors — Advancing next-generation chip technologies.
The memo separately sets a deadline for the government’s largest research funders. Agencies holding $3 billion or more in FY26 R&D budget authority, which is the money Congress has already given them to spend this year, have 90 days from the July 21 memo to file an action plan with OMB and the White House. That puts the deadline in October.
The action plans differ from the budget requests. Where the requests lay out what agencies want to fund in FY28, the action plans lay out what agencies will do with money they already hold.
The memo further asks agencies to open national laboratories, testbeds and user facilities to more industry use. It asks them to consider an applicant’s commercial potential alongside scientific merit when deciding who gets access. The guidance also calls for simplifying Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) and the licensing process.
That expanded facility access comes with an expectation of matching investment. The memo asks agencies to favor proposals that include non-federal cost share, particularly for later-stage manufacturing and demonstration work. It also directs agencies to buy commercial computing capacity when doing so is cost-effective.
None of this moves money on its own, however. Agencies still have to write the priorities into their FY28 requests and Congress still has to appropriate the funding. The October action plans will arrive first, offering the earliest read on which priorities agencies plan to pursue.
Photo by Chris from Pexels
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