A key National Science Foundation (NSF) office charged under the CHIPS and Science Act with safeguarding U.S. research lost nearly half of its staff earlier this year, according to testimony before Congress on Thursday.
The cuts to NSF’s Office of the Chief of Research Security, Strategy, and Policy (OCRSSP) came as part of broader efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to sharply reduce the federal workforce, according to Rebecca Keiser, acting chief of staff at NSF.
Keiser told the House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight that prior to the Trump administration taking office, OCRSSP had a total of eight members.
OCRSSP was created under the CHIPS Act – signed into law by former President Joe Biden in 2022 to grow semiconductor manufacturing in the United States – to coordinate, identify, and lead efforts to safeguard against national security threats posed to U.S. innovation while promoting open science.
The CHIPS Act requires that OCRSSP have a minimum of four members. Keiser told Ranking Member Emilia Sykes, D-Ohio, during questioning that while the office is meeting its four-member requirement, it is working to build its staff.
“Currently, we have the chief of research security and three additional personnel, and we are in the process of increasing those resources,” Keiser said. “Of course, we have been concerned about this reduction across the foundation. We have lost quite a few staff members. We’re very aware of the priority of research security, and so actually, we are in process of adding an additional representative onto the office.”
Keiser told lawmakers the office is also working on a hiring plan to make OCRSSP “even more robust,” and that will be shared with the Office of Personnel Management and the White House within the next few months.
The hiring plan, Keiser noted, is required under an executive order signed by Trump during his first administration in 2021. The order requires executive agencies to strengthen protections for U.S. government-supported research and development against foreign interference.
Sykes pointed to the Trump administration’s “months-long campaign” to “make civil servants … not want to go work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”
“They’re trying to protect us from the villains, but nonetheless, they are gone,” Sykes said. “This administration has wanted to force or encourage people out of the federal workforce and act to the detriment of research security, and they have succeeded.”
The OCRSSP update came during a hearing held to evaluate how agencies are meeting national security threats posed by China and other countries in stealing U.S. research. Both Republicans and Democrats agreed that more must be done to vet, train, and verify who gets access to research and federal funding to better secure American innovation.
“Openness has become a prime target for exploitation right here in the United States, the U.S. invests billions of taxpayer dollars – in my opinion, not enough, quite frankly – into cutting-edge research and technology. We cannot allow foreign actors to siphon off those investments by stealing our investments,” Subcommittee Chair Brian Babin, R-Texas, said in opening remarks.