The Drain on America's Brain
As Trump hammers H-1B visas with $100,000 fees, an exodus of researchers, engineers, and scientists begins
The United States is facing a mass exodus of researchers, engineers, and scientists. On the surface, much of it looks voluntary. People are willingly leaving, but it’s because the environment has become so hostile to both their professions and their safety that they’re unwilling to ask their families to endure it or tolerate the hostility themselves.
It’s a famous quote now.
“Smart People Don't Like Me.”1
You get one guess at who said that.
You are correct.
The Chinese exodus begins
I don’t know if former Intel semiconductor architect and designer Su Fei liked the crazed autocrat of Pennsylvania Avenue or not, but I do know he’s gone.
After spending twenty years in a prominent role growing Intel’s semiconductor capabilities, he’s returned home to China and his alma mater, Tsinghua University, where he will teach Chinese students the art of semiconductor design and help lead China as it roars past the U.S. in technology while the Trump regime tears down America’s scientific community.
According to CEO Insights Asia:2
During his tenure at Intel, Su’s contributions covered the complete processor development process – from initial design concepts through large-scale manufacturing – emphasizing the enhancement of dependability, protection, and sustained functionality of sophisticated microprocessors utilized across various applications, from mobile devices to server facilities.
Su received his PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Duke University in 2006 and joined Intel shortly after. It didn’t take long for him to make an impact, from helping to formulate IEEE standards to helping create self-monitoring super chips that can prevent circuit meltdowns while you’re navigating your computerized car along the 405.3
It would be dishonest of me to insist that the Trump regime was the only possible reason for Su’s return home. China is a vastly different country than it was when he left. Despite its own problems with an autocracy, Chinese society has opened up considerably during the last twenty years. Maybe he moved there simply because he liked what he was hearing.
However, many Chinese scientists and other professionals have made their home in the United States. Many are reconsidering their options as Asian Hate becomes part of national policy.
I don’t know if Wang Leyao liked Trump, either. She was one of the top epidemiologists in the U.S. before she, too, returned to China. Most of these folks don’t have a big political social networking profile, so we don’t know what they think of the toxic orange marmalade bubbling up out of the Rose Garden.
But I’ll make a guess anyway. The Trump regime snatched millions of dollars in academic funding from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass), where Wang was an assistant professor of epidemiology. The regime pulled funding, and now she’s off to the Chinese mainland and the Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation (Smart) as a senior research fellow at the Institute of Human Immunology.4
She joined Shan Liang, a tenured professor from UMass, who left for Shenzhen’s Human Immunology Institute. Shan was a big-time HIV researcher here, saving lives by taking deep dives into the microbiology of the sinister disease. He’s gone.
According to the Chinese institute he’s joining, Shan’s studies, “laid an important foundation for elucidating the immune mechanisms of HIV infection and developing functional cure strategies.”5
Wang also joins former NIH senior investigator Lu Wei in Shenzhen.
Lu’s focus was on neurobiological mechanisms of synaptic development and functional regulation. Yeah, I have no idea what any of that means, either. That’s part of the problem. Many of these researchers work on things that have no meaning to us in our workaday world. But since the context of his primary focus was the effects of anxiety, depression, and alcohol, it’s a safe bet he helped someone you know, even if indirectly.
This is a small sampling of people leaving the United States, all to one city in China. China has hundreds of institutes like the ones that have poached the kinds of people the Trump regime wants out of the U.S. Every human resources department in China has Chinese STEM professionals living in the U.S. on speed dial.
Ironically, a mass exodus of Chinese professionals and scientists from the United States should open China further to the radical notion of free speech (unless the folks reentering China decide that free speech begat Trump), something the Trump regime is actively trying to destroy.
The H-1B Visa mess
Other people vital to the healthy functioning of the United States are leaving, too.
Some are being forced out. Others who might normally wish to try their luck here are suddenly faced with a big fat “NO” sign from the Trump regime in the form of a new $100,000 fee on H-1B visas (up from around $200).6
In typical Taco Trump style, the original H-1B announcement implied that all H-1B visas would be subject to the new fees. The calvacade of protest from the business community was instantaneous. So the White House issued a “correction” (TACO-speak for giving in to irreconcilable protest) and insisted that only new visas would be affected.
Keep in mind, though, that under the TACO presidency, what often happens is that the original change that brought outrage is often quietly reintroduced, usually on an early Saturday morning when most of us are wondering where the hell the Epstein tapes are.
What’s an H-1B Visa, anyway?
The H-1B visa system is a program that permits non-U.S. citizens with Science, Technology, Engineering, and/or Mathematics (STEM) degrees to work in the U.S. on a temporary basis if sponsored by an employer to do so.
The process is managed by a U.S. government agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which allocates a specific number of visas per year.
According to the American Immigration Council: 7
The H-1B is a temporary (nonimmigrant) visa category that allows employers to petition for highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations” that require at least a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent. Jobs in fields such as mathematics, engineering, technology, and medical sciences often qualify. Typically, the initial duration of an H-1B visa classification is three years, which may be extended for a maximum of six years.
There is almost always a yearly cap of some kind established by Congressional statute. Currently, that cap is between 60 and 80,000, depending on the types of qualifications.
One of the primary reasons the U.S. needs to issue H-1B visas is that its STEM education has floundered during the last few decades. Companies and research universities need STEM graduates to help counter the effect.
One of the reasons you don’t hear a lot of Americans complaining about the new fees is the myth that H-1B visa recipients take away American jobs.
I worked in the software industry for 20 years. The vast majority of H-1B visa professionals I worked with were entry-level or close to it, and were brought in because there weren’t enough qualified candidates to cover all the job openings.
Those whose expertise was beyond my level were needed for similar reasons. In my experience, and as someone who has interviewed candidates for software positions, it’s a hassle hiring H-1B visa recipients. It’s a lot easier to hire Americans, and the cost difference isn’t as much as you’d think.
It’s enough of a hassle that many companies rely on outsourcing firms that specialize in handling the process for them, such as Cognizant Technology Services. Companies like Cognizant then supply other firms with workers on a contract basis.
Nevertheless, in 2025, Cognizant only hired 2,493 H-1B visa professionals. That barely puts a dent in overall STEM employment.
Have mediocre American software engineers had to work a little harder to keep their jobs in the face of the H-1B competition?
Not in my experience. I’m a small sample size, as small as it gets, but in my experience, it was all about collaboration, not worrying if some Indian guy was going to take my job.
And the great software engineers? They were never out of work, no matter where they came from.
I know people working for other big tech firms, such as Amazon, which signed up the most H-1B workers in 2025 (14,365).8 They’ve never complained. Ageism can be a problem, but that depends on who you work for. I never encountered it with big firms, but I did with punky start-ups:
That’s a very different topic, and an important one, but I don’t see H-1B workers impacting that at all.
Shutting down the War on Cancer
As the New York Times slowly wakes up from its awful reporting during a presidential election campaign that did Kamala no favors, it’s starting to churn out stories with headlines like this:
I’ve already written about the wrecking ball the regime has taken against the National Institutes of Health. There, I provided some gross and gaudy numbers:
The New York Times article provides a human-oriented story reflecting the impact of these numbers by telling us about Rachael Sirianni, professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, who is one of humanity’s only experts in medulloblastoma, a form of pediatric brain cancer.
According to the article:
Sirianni had spent the last several years working on a potentially transformative approach to treating the most malignant type of medulloblastoma and was making real progress.
Now, it looks as though all her funding is going to evaporate, including funding that had previously been approved by the primary funding arm of these things, the NIH, mostly because the Trump regime, through Russel Vought’s OMB, has gutted NIH and ordered it to freeze all its funding, including stuff that was already approved.9
Dr. Sirianni is no unicorn. Per the NY Times article:
In a matter of months, the Trump administration has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in cancer-related research grants and contracts, arguing that they were part of politically driven D.E.I. initiatives, and suspended or delayed payments for hundreds of millions more.
According to former NIH director Michael Lauer, and its previous grants czar:10
“It’s an absolutely unmitigated disaster. It will take decades to recover from this, if we ever do.”
Thanks to research mostly funded by the U.S. government, cancer death rates have fallen by 34 percent since 1991. This translates to 4.5 million more people surviving cancer than would have without the research and without the work done by researchers like Sirianni. And folks from other countries trying to make a home here who are being chased out by the regime.
The web of cancer research extends far beyond just cancer. Cancer research has led to discoveries in the fields of H.I.V., hepatitis, and Covid. Quoting the Times article again:
The Cancer Genome Atlas, which collected and analyzed DNA samples from 11,000 cancer patients over 12 years, didn’t just become a model for the mapping of other diseases; it also accelerated the evolution of the emerging interdisciplinary field of data science.
The Trump regime has blown this all away with a few strokes of a prepubescent pen.
But the web of darkness spun by the right-wing has spread much further, and much more quickly, than the web of cancer research.
Even we here at Substack are not immune to the assault. Palantir, the data company that monitors everything from how many Gazans are attending weekly mosque services in the rubble to how often you take a dump, has not only gifted us with Peter Thiel and his friend JD Vance.
They’ve also given us Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who took a break from monitoring your bathroom habits to write a Substack article attacking biomedical research called “Fix the N.I.H. to Fix American Science,” in which he lied about the progress made by researchers and justified gutting NIH.
Lonsdale, who cofounded a Christian-based Texas university called the University of Austin, writes brilliant quips such as, “If you don’t understand Christianity, you can’t understand the West.”
Chris Hedges wrote of Lonsdale in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, allegedly by a MAGA family member who’d gone gamer and cosplay crazy:11
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale capitalized on Kirk’s death to advocate for a takedown of the “red-green alliance” of “Communists and Islamists” who he claims have united to destroy Western civilization. He proposes an app where citizens can upload pictures of crime and homelessness in exchange for “property-tax rebates.”
The dismantling of American science is taking place at the behest of some very powerful people, many of whom should know better, but who have decided that clinging to the fascist power train running through the Oval Office is best for their economic well-being.
Isn’t it amazing that I haven’t even mentioned Bob Kennedy’s destruction of the Department of Health and Human Services yet? And I won’t because that’s another post of its own. A very long one that other people have done enough times that I don’t need to add to the redundancy aside from mentioning that if you’re a STEM professional, you’re probably trying very hard right now to get out of this country, no matter your national origin.
Also? Acetaminophen.
The War on Immigrants
The Trump regime’s war on American immigrants has been well documented elsewhere. I’ll just add that if you hail from a country targeted by the regime, would you stay here? I would argue that the smarter you are, the less likely you’ll want to stick around for the finale.
Even Europeans and (of course) Canadians are leaving. To which I say to both, I wish you wouldn’t, but I sure understand, and to Canadians specifically, Elbows 🇨🇦 Up!
Consider economist Matthias Doepke, who joined Northwestern University’s faculty in 2008 and established himself as a prominent researcher.
According to the Chicago Tribune:12
In April, Doepke sold his house and permanently moved his family to England to teach at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Bye, Matthias! Have some crumpets for me! And maybe a bitter ale.
Notes
Thanks for reading!
Please consider these ways to help fund me if you want more news, rants, heavily researched articles, and fiction (you can control what kind of newsletters you get in the Substack settings):
Or fund me one time…
Yes, even restacking helps fund me indirectly…
Footnotes
It’s worth reading the Snopes attempt to debunk this quote. Snopes is losing credibility when it relies on a magat Instagrammer, Republican “strategist” Nicole Kiprilov, who used the now constant refrain of magats everywhere: “It was taken out of context” in an attempt to refute the quote.
Loe, Megan. 2025. “Did Trump Say, ‘Smart People Don’t like Me’? What We Know.” Snopes. Snopes.com. September 17, 2025. https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/09/17/trump-smart-people-quote/.
“CEO Insights India.” 2025. Ceoinsightsasia.com. 2025. https://www.ceoinsightsasia.com/news/intel-chip-architect-su-fei-returns-to-china-after-20-years-nwid-13915.html.
“CEO Insights India,” ibid
“South China Morning Post.” 2025. South China Morning Post. August 30, 2025. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3323594/human-microbiome-scientist-wang-leyao-leaves-troubled-us-government-agency-china
“South China Morning Post.” 2025. South China Morning Post. August 23, 2025. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3322358/award-winning-hiv-scientist-shan-liang-leaves-us-join-chinese-research-institute?module=inline&pgtype=article.
Li, Yun. 2025. “Big Tech Companies, Foreign Governments Scramble after Trump Slaps $100,000 Fee on H-1B Visas.” CNBC. September 20, 2025. https://www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/20/trump-h-1b-visa-tech-foreign-governments.html.
“The H-1B Visa Program and Its Impact on the U.S. Economy - American Immigration Council.” 2025. American Immigration Council. September 23, 2025. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/h1b-visa-program-fact-sheet/.
CNBC, ibid
GIFT LINK
Mahler, Jonathan. 2025. “How Trump Is Shutting down the Cancer Research System.” Nytimes.com. The New York Times. September 14, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/magazine/cancer-research-grants-funds-trump.html.
The New York Times, ibid
Hedges, Chris. 2025. “The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk - Read by Eunice Wong.” Substack.com. The Chris Hedges Report. September 12, 2025. https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-martyrdom-of-charlie-kirk-read\.
Armanini, Kate. 2025. “This Northwestern Professor Fled the US under Trump. He Hasn’t Looked Back.” Chicago Tribune. September 2, 2025. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/09/02/northwestern-university-professor-flees-chicago/