Zero CS or robotics hires in a lavishly funded talent-recruit program, analyst notes

Afinetheorem · x · 2026-08-28

The author analyzes a lavishly funded program meant to recruit 64 world-class researchers, concluding that while it landed a few very big names and counts as a success, it falls short of the "recruit 64 world-class folks" ambition relative to the money involved.

Two notable observations: first, there are zero computer science or robotics hires — apart from one researcher applying AI to ecological conservation — despite these presumably being priority areas; some AI-adjacent biomedical researchers did make the cut. Second, the historic pattern holds: top hires lured away from the US tend to be citizens of the hiring country.

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