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Without the university infrastructure around these Labs they'd EACH have to each employ their own construction, maintenance, housekeeping, legal, bookkeeping, HR, IT, compliance (and more) staff.

There will still be some research done if the cuts to the indirects survive the courts but it will be drastically reduced in scope as the labs staff will have to cover any functions no longer provided by the host university.

And you probably know this but this money isn't getting stuffed in to university presidents pockets or anything. It's paying (some) of the salaries of ordinary people working at jobs that pay about 20% (or more) less than they'd make in the private sector.

Things indirect cost reimbursements fund at my institution:

- The research animal facilities - HPC staff, upgrades, etc. - Our BSL-3 facilities (the only ones for a long way) - Various and sundry research cores - New faculty startup funds

Those are all pretty tightly correlated with success, and very difficult to support via single grants.

What “outcome” would meet your standards for justifiable research spending? Is a 26% cap on the percentage that indirects can go to all administration - all staff apart from researcher hours directly dedicated to the project - a sufficient “outcome”?

The GP post explicitly mentioned the growth of Chinese research capability that they directly saw. It's no secret that China has explicitly and deliberately invested in ramping up R&D.

Also, requiring absolute proof in a system as vast and complex as R&D at the scale of the US leads to complete paralysis. It's a bit like cutting off your fingers because you want to lose weight.