The South Korean artificial sun, which goes by the name KSTAR (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research), has made an important scientific discovery concerning nuclear fusion by being able to sustain plasma in high-confinement mode for a period of 102 seconds while simultaneously managing to keep plasma temperature at 100 million degrees centigrade for 48 seconds. This development by the Korea Institute of Fusion Energy (KFE) is another move towards achieving clean fusion energy, whose ability to generate unlimited amounts of electricity with little to no carbon emission is promising.
https://usfusionenergy.org/fusion-united-states maybe just admit you’re wrong.
The NIF’s work is genuinely impressive. Achieving ignition ten times with a record yield of 8.6 MJ in April 2025 is real scientific progress and is amazing. American scientists are not the problem, nor did I say that they were.
But notice what you just linked me. NIF is a Department of Energy federal research facility. Publicly funded. Government science. The same category of institution the current administration is actively dismantling.
While there were past achievements, at the same time the Trump administration proposed 40% cuts to NIH and 55% cuts to NSF in 2026. By November 2025, $2.3 billion in NIH grants and $700 million in NSF grants had been frozen or terminated across nearly 4,000 projects. NSF awards dropped 50% in 2025 compared to recent years. Over 25,000 science agency employees left, many voluntarily through resignation incentive programs, many at early career stages. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship halved the number of fellowships awarded in 2025. Universities across the country froze hiring and cut research spending in response.
The fusion breakthroughs you’re pointing to were built on decades of sustained public investment and institutional infrastructure that is currently being systematically defunded. The scientists who achieved those results are the same ones that are now being told their grants are frozen, their fellowships are cut, and their agencies are being restructured around defense priorities.
So yes, the US has done remarkable fusion research. Past tense is doing a lot of work in that sentence. The comment was about where we’re headed, being present tense. And where we’re headed is a country that just told its early career researchers their scientific purpose has been knocked off course by illegal funding cuts while other countries continue to make advance after advance with no signs of stopping, even further, being fueled by the exodus of researchers.
So, yes, the US is sitting in the corner having, at present, taken a very anti-science and anti-education stance through funding cuts and deregulation.
Reading comprehension gets them every time 🤔
Budget cuts:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/cost-trump-administrations-attacks-research-funding
https://cen.acs.org/policy/nih-nsf-ostp-science-research-funding-cuts/103/web/2025/12
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nih-nsf-cuts-2025-data
https://www.aau.edu/key-issues/federal-research-cuts-threaten-us-innovation-and-leadership
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586-026-00088-9/index.html
Proposed cuts:
https://cen.acs.org/policy/trump-budget-fy2027-science-nsf-epa-nih-fda/104/web/2026/04
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administration-proposes-massive-budget-cuts-to-science/
Researcher exodus/brain drain:
https://medium.com/scitech-forefront/science-funding-cuts-break-the-research-pipeline-ce02c7073253