Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is taking aim at wide swaths of the federal government, which could mean cuts to research and U.S. expeditions in Antarctica. With programs’ funding continually being slashed, scientists worry this could lead to a geopolitical struggle at the South Pole — and bring vital Antarctic research to a halt.
Most notable are cuts to the National Science Foundation (NSF), which coordinates the majority of American scientific research in Antarctica, overseeing the Office of Polar Programs and the United States Antarctic Program. But the future of these programs could be in jeopardy with continued NSF cuts.
About 10% of NSF workers fired
The NSF is a $9 billion agency that “supports scientific advancement in practically every field apart from medicine,” said The New York Times, which reported that DOGE eliminated about 10% of the foundation’s 1,450 career employees. The NSF helps manage the three U.S. research bases in Antarctica that are staffed year-round: Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, McMurdo Station and Palmer Station.
Research at these stations has been the “bedrock of the [United States’] presence” in Antarctica, said the Times. But it is not just the staff at the bases themselves that could see cuts. The U.S. Coast Guard’s “Polar Security Cutter (PSC) program remains in disarray,” and could be a “perfect target” for Musk’s “team of cost-cutters,” said Forbes. These icebreaker ships help support Antarctic research, but are “years late, wildly over-budget, and both the budget and the schedule are at risk of slipping even further into the red,” meaning DOGE might target them.
Cuts with widespread implications
At these research stations, scientists “operate a number of major research projects, studying everything from climate change and rising sea levels to the cosmological makeup and origins of the universe itself,” said Wired. With large funding cuts, many “Antarctic scientists and experts don’t know if their research will be able to continue, how U.S. stations will be sustained, or what all this might mean for the continent’s delicate geopolitics.”
Many of the fired NSF employees were program managers for Antarctic projects. These individuals are “critical for maintaining communication with the infrastructure and logistics arm of the NSF,” said Wired, as well as “planning deployment for scientists to the continent, keeping track of the budgets, and funding the maintenance and operations work.”
Even if these cuts were reversed, it might take a long time for these programs to get going again. Even “brief interruptions will result in people walking away and not coming back,” Nathan Whitehorn, a Michigan State University professor and Antarctic scientist, said to Wired. It “could easily take decades to rebuild.” Without these project managers, “everything stops,” another NSF scientist said to Wired. This scientist had “no idea who I am supposed to report to now or what happens to submitted proposals.”
This could also provide an opportunity for other nations to expand their reach onto the continent. Countries “such as Korea and China have been rapidly expanding their presence, while the U.S. has been sort of maintaining the status quo,” marine scientist Julia Wellner said to the Times. It is possible that American scientists could simply collaborate with other countries, but those “other countries have their own scientists,” said Wellner. “I don’t think South Korea or the U.K. is just going to make room for all of us.”