Federal R&D in the antiterrorist era

The President's budget proposals for fiscal 2003 envision that government R&D will play a substantial role in the War on Terrorism. The antiterrorism initiative could have two effects: to shift significant R&D resources to projects to fight terrorism, and to reconstitute the broad bipartisan coalition favoring all forms of R&D that has substantially weakened since the end of the Cold War. In practice, the President's budget proposals do not indicate either effect. The amount allocated for antiterrorist activities is minuscule, and the President's budget continues a long trend of rapid growth in biomedical research and stagnation or decline in nearly every other category.