Yes.

I think well meaning people in the west are looking for a silver lining and in the process overcomplicating a rather simple issue: the US government is cutting spending everywhere while its electorate demands even deeper cuts. The money has dried up and people are leaving.

(One of my best friends was a nuclear medicine phd who left his cancer research lab after covid to work at a VoiP company, so i too have anecdotes)

Sigh.

The US is in a weird spot. The electorate does not generally want education and research cut.

Republicans here have convinced their base that education and the educated are bad, which has fed their desire to cut academic funding and research at all levels.

That is to say, the federal government doesn't have a popular mandate to do any of this. They simply hold all levers of power through a slim majority of the voting populace.